Metaphors Plainly Written: Psychoanalysis and Passing, Essay Example

Writers typically hide their metaphors in long themes or complicated plots, teasing the reader with hints of what they might possibly mean. However, Nella Larsen’s book Passing gives a glimpse into two parallel lives attaches meaning to many physical props of the story, making metaphors of letters, the heat, and the title itself. These metaphors reveal as much about the characters which they describe as they do about the larger feeling of dissatisfaction with a world of black and white, with rigid rules of sexuality, with the rules and privileges of high society, and with the deeper, riskier potential happiness of the simple life. Whether Irene makes the choice or Clare’s choices make her, each woman finds herself at a crossroads, passing at last into a permanent way of life.

No one wants to finish last, and the last letter in the big pile of ordinary ones, the letter from Clare Kendry represents Clare herself, on the edges and picked to be different but trying in every way to be exotic and rich. Every description of the letter and its appearance describes its writer, too—“furtive, but yet in some peculiar, determined way a little flaunting. Purple ink. Foreign paper.” (Larsen 3) The letter is a metaphor for her many secrets, for her ability to hide in plain sight, and her desire to cloak the “writing on the wall” in a more agreeable shade. In the first pages of Passing, Irene expresses contempt for the showy displays of affection with which Clare pleads to see her again. As long as Clare has Irene in her pocket, she straddles both worlds and leaves strings attached to her recognition of her old friend, her old flame, the tie which brought back the best of her years as she grew out of them in undeserved comfort.

Clare often becomes associated with heat- the heat of that summer in Chicago, the heat of the forbidden relationship between Clare and Irene, the heat of the lies collapsing upon Clare as she continues to bury herself in greedy mistakes. Irene first runs into Clare during a Chicago summer so hot and intense that “quivering lines sprang up from baked pavements.” (10) From the sweaty bodies on the streets to the steamy fling of Clare and Irene, the two women who share so many similarities brand themselves with this experience, using it to keep each other away. They are magnets, strong and pulling or pushing, changing each other but always what they were back when they were in Chicago. Surely Larsen herself felt the heat as she wrote this book which combined so many intrigues of the day: race, class, money, and sexuality. This heat, which they first share in the thrill of being unburdened with race, consumes their sexuality. First, they must have each other, but Clare is not the type of woman to let go of anything that gives her pleasure. Her sexuality burns, and it will not stop at ‘one time in Chicago’, with her rich white husband, or even with a fling. Her bond with Irene consumes her imagination and ignites her sexuality, so Irene’s husband draws the burn as a person near the real object. Underneath the sex, Clare’s heat is every type of desire and rage, an unquenchable, spreading wildfire. As Irene suspects Brian’s involvement with Clare, “she closed her unseeing eyes and clenched her fists…no effort could check the hot tears of rage and shame”. (164) This association with heat best shows Clare’s spirit, her constant structure burning out others in her path, like poor ‘Rene.

Passing itself layers several aspects of these two women’s lives together. Clare passes between the black community of her heritage and the white community of her marriage; she passes from man to man in a quest to take up anything that catches her interest; she passes from the threat of her husband and her friend, Irene, into death, the stage of life which people often call “passing on”. Although Clare feels the sting of privilege as a white and racism as a black deeply, Irene feels the betrayal and threat to her status as the end of her life, her passing from use. Clare chooses to wear her deceit openly, and Irene stews bitterly. After all, Irene made herself a life in Harlem- where if Clare stole her husband she would be left as only a woman and not even white enough to do anything about it. Through each woman’s situation, the reader sees that tragedy and great personal loss wait, but through Irene’s eyes the reader feels the acceptance of her fewer options, her secret fears, and her simple wants. For these reasons, the readers feel that these two similar women, who collided so interestingly before, pass each other in the night. They see each other but never see enough.

Each life has its freedoms. In the white world, the freedom to live with rights and opportunities bound only by the rules of fellow members of the club of social high class; in the black world, the women hold the freedom to live without much judgment- wild, and as happy as a person allows themselves to be. Clare’s mistake was wanting benefit without sacrifice, wanting the one life of privilege bought through her marriage and “all the time seeing the bright pictures of the other”. (Larsen 8) However, she did not mind exposing her own friend and former flame to a life filled only with sacrifices- no rights and no happiness. She would not allow Irene to forget their past and move on. No, Clare insisted on thrusting herself into view and just beyond reach, as the exotic letter in purple ink, the letter which flew out of the window and onto the ground. Clare’s pursuit of the better life overwhelmed her enjoyment of it- until she was dead for trying to live. The women tell their stories through the props of the book—Irene casting off the ‘good life’ only to be threatened with the little she keeps and Clare finding deception as natural as breath.