“It Was That Smile That Maddened Irene”: Ambiguous Antics and the Power of Uncertainty in Nella Larsen’s Passing

Abstract

Nella Larsen’s seminal 1929 novella Passing; is a text deeply riddled with ambiguity. Written into the fabric of seemingly every line is an element of uncertainty which peaks in and concludes with the ambivalent fall and demise of Clare Kendry. The text’s relentless linguistic undecidability is not simply a case of unreliable narration: rather, it is the text itself which presents as subtly fragmented and traumatised, continually voicing and silencing itself in an attempt to perform an impossible decisiveness. This systemic undecidability becomes a marker of a transgressive liminality which offers the potential to question given societal norms. It is thus that the text opens with the transgressive act of racial passing, foreshadowing the stubborn ambiguity which runs through its entirety to culminate in an ending that becomes instrumental in hardening uncertainty, highlighting fluidity instead of stability. Utilising Wolfgang Iser’s theorisation of the Gestalt alongside Jacques Derrida’s conceptualisation of the ‘cryptic,’ this paper seeks to theorise the way in which Passing is structured according to a poetics of the ambiguous which is anchored in and negotiated through identity politics. Deploying ambivalence as systemic dynamism allows Passing to explore complex themes such as race, sexuality, and gender as well as class mobility within 1920s America through a secure prism of indecision.