Passing

Background

Biographical context

As early as 1925, Nella Larsen had decided that she wanted to be among the "New Negro" writers receiving considerable attention at the time. Initially writing short stories that were sold early in 1926 to a ladies magazine, she was rumored that year to be writing a novel. In a letter to her friend, Carl Van Vechten, she acknowledges, "it is the awful truth. But, who knows if I'll get through with the damned thing. Certainly not I."[7] In April 1927, Larsen and her husband, Elmer Imes, moved from Jersey City, New Jersey to Harlem to be closer to the cultural phenomenon.[8] The following year, Larsen published her first novel Quicksand with New York-based publisher Knopf, and its favorable critical reception encouraged her ambitions to become known as a novelist.[9]

Historical context

The 1920s in the United States was a period marked by considerable anxiety and discussion over the crossing of racial boundaries, the so-called "color line" between blacks and whites.[10] This anxiety was exacerbated by the Great Migration, in which hundreds of thousands of Blacks left the rural south for northern and midwestern cities, where, together with new waves of immigrants, they changed the social makeup. The practice of persons "crossing the color line"—attempting to claim recognition in another racial group than the one they were believed to belong to—was known as "passing". As many African Americans had European ancestry in varying proportions, some appeared visibly European.[11] The legacy of slavery, with its creation of a racial caste, and the imposition in the 20th century of the so-called one-drop rule (by which someone with even one ancestor of sub-Saharan-African origin was considered black) led to a hardening of racial lines that had historically been more fluid; at any time, the concept of race was "historically contingent."[12] Although the exact numbers of people who passed is, for obvious reasons, not known, many estimates were made at the time. The sociologist Charles S. Johnson (1893–1956) calculated that 355,000 blacks had passed between 1900 and 1920.[13]

A significant precedent for Larsen's depiction of Clare and Jack's relationship was the 1925 legal trial known as the "Rhinelander Case" (or Rhinelander v. Rhinelander).[14] On the urging of his family, Leonard Kip Rhinelander, a wealthy white man, sued his wife, Alice Beatrice Jones, for annulment and fraud; he alleged that she had failed to inform him of her "colored" blood.[15][16] The case concerned not only race but also status and class, as he had met her when she was working as a domestic. Although the jury eventually returned a verdict for Alice (she contended that her mixed race was obvious, and she had never denied it), it came at a devastating social cost for both parties; intimate exchanges between the couple were read out in court,[17] and Alice was forced to partially disrobe in front of the jury in the judge's chambers in order for them to assess the darkness of her skin.[18] Larsen refers to the case near the end of the novel, when Irene wonders about the consequences of Jack discovering Clare's racial status: "What if Bellew should divorce Clare? Could he? There was the Rhinelander case."[16] The case received substantial coverage in the press of the time, and Larsen could assume that it was common knowledge to her readers.[19]


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