Surviving Oppression through Self Re-invention

In Nella Larsen’s Passing, Irene is desperate for stability. She yearns for the power gained through acceptance into a powerful social group, and her inherent privilege as a light-skinned member of the middle class provides her tantalizing proximity to this social security. While a major aspect of Irene’s assimilation consists of conforming to pre-established social norms, her pursuit of stability ventures beyond masking her own identity. In order to designate herself as part of an in-group, whether a member of the bourgeoisie, the patriarchy’s ideal woman, or white enough to skirt everyday racism, Irene ostracizes those who stick out more than her. Through this proliferation of oppression, Irene differentiates herself from the undesirable ‘other’ and establishes affinity with the oppressors but traps herself within a cage of strict social conventions.

Irene seeks power in her pursuit of privilege. She is desperate to be accepted as a member of Harlem society’s ‘in-group’. As the standard of the upper-middle class has been established by wealthy whites, the social norms of the bourgeoisie are designed to restrict the liberty of women and people of color. This makes Irene’s aspiration towards the upper class a paradox, as the very concept of the bourgeoisie rests on the exclusion of people like her. Still, she attempts to project an acceptable image, censoring her language in social settings. When she first meets Mr. Bellew, Irene suppresses her fury at his racist remarks. She is “still able to answer coolly as if she had not that sense of not belonging and of despising the company” (36). In a situation with an impending threat of violence, Irene twists her presentation into a mask palatable to the white upper-middle class, epitomized by Mr. Bellew. Affirmed as white-passing and upper-class by a racist, Irene accesses the privileges of passing as rich and white in a segregated world.

In addition to race and class, Irene’s security is dependent on her gender. Within the patriarchal framework of her society, Irene is dependent on her husband, the sole provider for her family. To retain her financial stability, Irene is forced to tread lightly around Brian, hyper-aware of pushing him away at the slightest upset. When she proposes that they move their son to a different school, Brian ridicules her concerns. Only the reader is privy to Irene's inner monologue, chastising herself for transgressing the gender prescriptions in her marriage. To appease him, she gushes, “‘I’m sure you wouldn’t make a mistake about your own boy.’ (Now, why had she said that?)” (59). Irene instantly regrets speaking up to Brian, illustrating the power hierarchy in their relationship. As the dependent, Irene is forced to acquiesce to Brian’s wishes. This pattern of performance to gain acceptance forces Irene into a condition of servitude to others, even when their views conflict with her personal values. 

Much the same as her personal pantomime of social stability, Irene tries to shield her family from the violent, racialized world by utilizing their proximity to social privilege—their class. Irene believes that the farce of an upper-middle-class white family will become true if her family can follow all the established rules. Yet, this delusion is uniquely accessible to her, as she is the only member of her household who enjoys significant proximity to whiteness. In service of this charade, she shuts down discussions of racial violence, asserting that they are not appropriate for the children. She declares, “There’ll be time enough for them to learn about such horrible things when they’re older” (102).  Her vague allusion to “horrible things” suggests that Irene distances her sheltered home life from the events she sees on the news like the lynching Brian brings up. To recognize that facing the truth of racial violence is vital education for her children, Irene would have to accept that nothing she does can protect them from the violence of the world because, unlike her, they cannot conceal their blackness.

While she has power in her private sphere, Irene’s status in the public sphere is reliant on her ability to pass as a member of privileged groups, like the white upper-middle class. Yet because acceptance into these spheres is dependent on the judgments of those in the group, Irene is forever paranoid of being othered. Thus, she has internalized the sociopolitical hierarchy of the upper-middle-class to make herself invulnerable- ostracizing others before she can be targeted. When describing Gertrude, a close friend from her childhood, Irene issues a scathing judgment of her appearance. From her “over-trimmed” dress and “sleazy stockings”, Irene asserts that “Gertrude… looked as if her husband might be a butcher” (35). Here, Irene utilizes her cultural capital to shred Gertrude’s attempt at assimilation, clinging to her access to the in-group of high-class society. Irene focuses on surface-level identifiers, picking them apart against the beauty standards of the white bourgeoisie, which demonizes fatness, blackness, and the working class. In comparison, her physical description of Mr. Bellew is exceptionally lenient. She describes a man who despises her very identity as “a fairly good looking man of amiable disposition” (42). Irene is more forgiving of Mr. Bellew’s overt racism than of Gertrude’s poor dress because he has money, and she does not. Mr. Bellew represents an unspoken aspiration of class mobility while Gertrude is a reminder of how others scrutinize outsiders, a status Irene feels dangerously near. To become a member of the exclusive bourgeoisie, Irene has adopted the oppression of people of color and the working class.

Despite evidence otherwise, Irene refuses to recognize her internalized prejudice. When chatting with Gertrude and Clare, she bristles at their fear of bearing dark children, yet she perpetuates colorism in her own home. While she describes Clare’s skin as shining “golden” (74) and “ivory” (92), Irene identifies her maid Zulena as a “small mahogany-coloured creature” (54) and points out her other maid’s “ebony face” (32). Larsen demonstrates Irene’s pervasive race anxiety through her fixation on skin color as a key identifier throughout the book. While Irene likens Clare’s rich whiteness to highly valuable commodities, she compares the maids’ complexions to woods, even dehumanizing them as “creature[s]”. By contrasting the maids’ skin colors with Clare’s, Larsen illustrates Irene’s hypocrisy, illuminating the value she assigns to whiteness. Despite her proclaimed pride in blackness, to Irene, the rich are white, and the help is dark. These unconscious biases reflect Irene’s internalization of upper-middle-class values in order to assimilate. To gain acceptance, Irene, a black woman, goes so far as to perpetuate racism.

Regardless of her efforts to play by the rules, Irene will never be ‘correct enough’ for her oppressors.  To accept this reality would be to admit that the rules she adhered to were meaningless and that her self-censorship was always futile. In dismantling institutionalized oppression, individuals face the same realization. When the structures established by systems of domination are disproven, the world descends into chaos. People struggle to reconcile the inherent contradictions of racism, sexism, and classism, as these systems are revealed as illogical. Although painful, this visceral reckoning is necessary for meaningful change. Attempting to live in false consciousness only proliferates injustice. Larsen exposes Irene’s contradictions to illustrate how those with proximity to power internalize prejudice to survive. Although Irene never escapes her self-delusion, she illustrates that to be truly free, the individual must decolonize their mind.