Introducing Nella Larsen’s Passing. 
Introduction by Amardeep Singh, January 2025. 

This open-access edition is derived from page scans at Archive.org. It was corrected and formatted by Amardeep Singh in December 2024. As of January 1, 2025, the novel is out of copyright in the United States.

This edition is meant as a convenience for students and teachers who need an accessible, open-access version of the text. Scholars interested in researching the novel would do well to consult Carla Kaplan’s Norton Critical Edition of the book (2007) or Rafael Walker's Broadview Edition (2023). 

Passing met with critical approval when it was published in 1929, near the end of the first flowering of the Harlem Renaissance, and we are including a limited number of excerpts from reviews by well-known Black authors and editors at the time below. Knopf printed three editions of the text in 1929 itself, selling 3000-4000 copies -- a modest commercial success. More recently, however, Passing has become a mainstay of African American literature, and is among the most widely taught books by 20th century African American writers in college classrooms. Carla Kaplan noted the surprise of this in her introduction to the Norton Critical Edition of Passing in 2007: 

So it is interesting to imagine what she would have made of the recent explosion of interest in her wxiting, reputation, and life. Quicksand and Passing, her two published novels, were favorably received in 1928 and 1929. But they certainly never generated the celebrity now accorded Larsen as one of the central figures of the African-American, modernist and feminist literary canons. With approximately two hundred scholarly articles and more than fifty dissertations now dedicated to her work,' Larsen's status among early twentieth-century black women writers is rivaled only by Zora Neale Hurston's, in spite of Larsen's comparatively slim output and the fact that after 1930 she ceased to publish and dropped out of NewYork's literary circles altogether. (Carla Kaplan: "Introduction: Nella Larsen's Erotics of Race" [2007], ix)

And that was more than fifteen years ago; today the number of articles and dissertations dealing with Larsen must be considerably higher than that. At the risk of oversimplification, it's possible that there are some straightforward explanations for Larsen's enduring popularity in the classroom: Larsen's clear, elegant writing style, the ambiguity of the ending, and the intriguing relationship between Clare and Irene give readers much to think about and much to discuss.

Even as it is a highly accessible text, Larsen's novel contains some profound insights on the nature of race in American society. Some of these are connected to the phenomenon described in the title -- as one sees in the incredible set-piece in the opening chapter, where both Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry are passing for white at the Dreighton Hotel, and are shocked to discover each other there (and Irene does not even recognize her old friend at first!). What is Blackness, if not visible in the skin? Throughout the novel, there are profound insights in Larsen about the fundamental instability of the concept of race, as Kaplan describes here: 

In Passing, Larsen took her assault on racial prejudice even further. Where Quicksand destabilizes racial attitudes, Passing questions the very idea of race, exposing it as one of our most powerful—and dangerous—fictions. Discussing the phenomenon of passing with her husband Brian, Irene Redfield poses the question of why passers "always come back."^ " 'Why?' Irene wanted to know. 'Why?' " " 'If I knew that,' " Brian responds, " 'I'd know what race is' " (38). Brian's question of "what race is," the novel suggests, cannot really be answered. While portraying the absurd contradictions on which our ideas of race are built. Passing probes our longing for the very identities that it questions. (Kaplan, 2007, xi)

Alongside its striking insights on the American concept of race, Larsen's novel is a brilliant exploration of women as desiring subjects. In this way, she differed from male peers like Claude McKay, who in male-centered novels like Home to Harlem tended to represent women's sexuality almost exclusively through sex-workers. In her introduction to the 1986 Rutgers University Press edition of the novel, critic Deborah E. McDowell sees a close kinship between Larsen and her peer Jessie Fauset in this respect, and writes the following: 

Both Quicksand and Passing wrestle simultaneously with this dialectic between pleasure and danger. In their reticence about sexuality, they look back to their nineteenth-century predecessors, but in their simultaneous flirtation with female sexual desire, they are solidly grounded in the liberation of the 1920s. Their ideological ambivalences are rooted in the artistic politics of the Harlem Renaissance, regarding the representation of black sexuality, especially black female sexuality. (Deborah E. McDowell, Introduction to Passing, 1986.)

Finally, alongside its insights on race and gender, Larsen's novel has been read by many recent critics as reflecting unspoken queer desire between Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield. The most influential such reading might be Judith Butler's 1993 essay, "Passing, Queering," where she writes: 

The question of what can and cannot be spoken, what can and cannot be publicly exposed, is raised throughout the text, and it is linked with the larger question of the dangers of public exposure of both color and desire. Significantly, it is precisely what Irene describes as Clare's flaunting that Irene admires, even as Irene knows that Clare, who passes as white, not only flaunts but hides—indeed, is always hiding in that very flaunting. Clare's disavowal of her color compels Irene to take her distance from Clare, to refuse to respond to her letters, to try to close her out of her life. And though Irene voices a moral objection to Clare's passing as white, it is clear that Irene engages many of the same social conventions of passing as Clare. Indeed, when they both meet after a long separation, they are both in a rooftop cafe passing as white. And yet, according to Irene, Clare goes too far, passes as white not merely on occasion, but in her life, and in her marriage. Clare embodies a certain kind of sexual daring that Irene defends herself against, for the marriage cannot hold Clare, and Irene finds herself drawn by Clare, wanting to be her, but also wanting her. (Judith Butler, "Passing, Queering" [1993] from "Bodies the Matter")

The queer subtexts of Larsen's novel that Butler alludes to here are ably captured in the recent film adaptation of Passing that was produced by Netflix, and directed by Rebecca Hall. (As a side-note, it's striking that Passing is one of the only Harlem Renaissance novels to ever be adapted by Hollywood! See Rafael Walker's 2021 essay, "Passing into Film" for more on the film & its relationship with the source text.)

Readers who enjoy Passing might want to check out Larsen's powerful first novel, Quicksand (1928). They might also enjoy novels by Larsen's peers, some of which may be familiar:  Jean Toomer’s Cane (1923), Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem (1928), Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun (1928), Walter White’s Flight (1926), Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker The Berry (1929), and George Schuyler’s Black No More (1931). We would also recommend Zora Neale Hurston’s short stories published in the 1920s, as well as of course her masterful novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). 

Specifically for readers interested in “passing,” the places to start from the list above might be Plum Bun and Flight, both which deal with this historical phenomenon quite directly. Black No More is also worth a look as a comic science fiction approach to the question: what if a scientist invented a pill that could make you white? 

Why did Nella Larsen stop publishing fiction after Passing? (1930 Plagiarism controversy) 

Nella Larsen only published two novels, Quicksand and Passing. In 1930, she published a short story called "Sanctuary" in Forum Magazine which critics alleged bore striking similarities to a story by a British author named Sheila Kay-Smith (the story in question was a 1922 story called "Mrs. Adis"). Larsen denied the charge of plagiarism, and the edtiors of Forum also sided with her; no plagiarism charge was ever filed by Kaye-Smith. While some of Larsen's peers were quite harsh regarding the implications of the plagiarism allegation, it is not entirely clear that Larsen gave up writing because of it. She won a prestigious and lucrative Guggenheim prize in 1930, and spent time in Europe where she apparently continued to work on her third novel. However, Larsen was going through some serious personal issues in her marriage at the time as well as depression, and it is possible that she simply no longer had interest in publishing fiction after 1930. After 1937, Larsen returned to working as a nurse, and lived quietly in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

For reference, we are including both short stories here:
Sheila Kaye-Smith, "Mrs. Adis" (1922)
Nella Larsen, "Sanctuary"  (1930)
 

Was the plot of Passing based on a real incident?

While Passing is clearly a work of fiction, scholars have linked the plot of Passing to a  historical incident, the Rhinelander-Jones case (1924-1925), or Rhinelander vs. Rhinelander, where a rich white man named Kip Rhinelander married Alice Beatrice Jones, who was of African descent and who was apparently passing as white -- or at least, not consistently disclosing  her heritage. After the secret marriage followed by public disclosure that Alice’s father was Black, Kip Rhinelander was threatened by his parents with disinheritance, and sued for the annulment of the marriage. The trial was rather bizarre – at one point, Alice was asked to show parts of her body to the jury, including her upper chest, back, and legs, to establish that her husband could not have been fooled into believing she was white. At another instance, it was revealed that Kip Rhinelander had spent time with Alice's family, including with her dark-skinned father as well as her dark-skinned brother-in-law, and therefore must have been aware of their identities -- and therefore of Alice's. The jury ruled in her favor, and her husband later had to pay her a substantial settlement once a proper divorce was filed several years later. 

Excerpts from Reviews

1. Alice Dunbar-Nelson: 

“Nella Larsen delights again with her new novel, Passing, Alfred A. Knopf ($2.00), New York. It is apparently slighter in structure than the previous one, Quichsand, and you are apt to think as you are read- ing it, that it is of comparative unimportance. What could be more commonplace than the story of a fair girl, a waif almost, who finds that life is easily switched from one key to another, and takes the dominant key? Clare succeeds, marries, and is apparently happy. She has a strange urge to return to her own people, and therein lies danger, disaster, tragedy. Slight the story, you feel as you read it, slight, if absorbing. 

Then the denouement comes. It is so surprising, so unexpected, so startling, so provocative of a whole flood of possibilities, so fraught with mystery, of a "Lady or Tiger*'" problem, that you are suddenly aware that you have been reading a masterpiece all along, and that the subtle artistry of the story lies in just this—its apparent inocuousness, with its universality of appeal.” (Published in The Washington Eagle, May 3, 1929) 

2. W.E.B. Du Bois:

Nella Larsen's "Passing" is one of the finest novels of the year. If it did not treat a forbidden subject—the inter-marriage of a stodgy middle-class white man to a very beautiful and selfish octoroon—it would have an excellent chance to be hailed, selected and recom- mended. As it is, it will probably be given the "silence", with only the commendation of word of mouth. But what of that? It is a good close- knit story, moving along surely but with enough leisure to set out seven delicately limned characters. Above all, the thing is done with studied and singularly successful art. Nella Larsen is learning how to write and acquiring style, and she is doing it very simply and clearly.

Three colored novelists have lately essayed this intriguing and ticklish subject of a person's right to conceal the fact that he had a grandparent of Negro descent. It is all a petty, silly matter of no real importance which another generation will comprehend with great difficulty. But today, and in the minds of most white Americans, it is a matter of tremendous moral import. One may deceive as to killing, stealing and adultery, but you must tell your friend that you're "colored", or suffer a very material hell fire in this world, if not in the next. The reason of all this, is of course that so many white people in America either know or fear that they have Negro blood. My friend, who is in the Record Department of Massachusetts, found a lady's ancestry the other day. Her colored grandfather was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and through him she might join the D. A. R. But she asked "confidentially", could that matter of "his—er—color be left out?" 

Walter White in "Flight" records the facts of an excursion of a New Orleans girl from the colored race to the white race and back again. Jessie Fauset in "Plum Bun" considers the spiritual experiences andrewards of such an excursion, but the story of the excursion fades into unimportance beside that historical document of the description of a colored Philadelphia family. That characterization ought to live in literature. 

Nella Larsen attempts quite a different thing. She explains just what "passing" is: the psychology of the thing; the reaction of it onfriend and enemy. It is a difficult task, but she attacks the problem fearlessly and with consummate art. The great problem is under whatcircumstances would a person take a step like this and how wouldthey feel about it? And how would their fellows feel? (Published in The Crisis, July 1929)