65 pages • 2 hours read
Nella LarsenPassing
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1929A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Quiz
Reading Check, Multiple Choice & Short Answer Quizzes
Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.
Part 1, Chapters 1-4
Reading Check
1. How does Irene characterize the Clare Kendry she knew in her childhood?
2. What is the potential danger in Clare’s recognition of Irene in the Drayton hotel?
3. What differentiates Irene’s relationship to passing with Gertrude and Clare’s experiences?
4. What facet about Irene’s life does Clare question?
Multiple Choice
1. What reason does Clare give for writing her letter to Irene?
A) Clare needs to give Irene news from their hometown.
B) Clare needs Irene’s help.
C) Irene has filled Claire with an inexplicable ache.
D) Clare owes Irene money.
2. When they encounter each other at the Drayton hotel, why doesn’t Irene ask Clare about her family and marriage?
A) Irene knows that Clare is passing as a white woman, founding her marriage on a lie.
B) Irene has heard that Clare’s husband abuses her, and she isn’t sure how to help.
C) Irene suspects that the death of Clare’s father when they were children still haunts Clare.
D) Irene used to date Clare’s husband, and she finds it awkward to ask about him.
3. Why is Clare afraid to have more children?
A) She worries that she will lose her independence.
B) She lost her own mother to childbirth.
C) Children keep her tied to her husband.
D) She worries that her children will have dark skin.
4. Why is Irene determined to put Clare out of her mind by the end of Part 1?
A) Irene finds Clare’s commitment to passing a betrayal to their history.
B) Irene is worried that Clare will ask for help in leaving her husband.
C) Irene feels that Clare put Irene in a humiliating situation with her racist husband.
D) Irene suspects that Clare wants Irene’s husband.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What is the symbolism of the letter Irene receives in Chapter 1?
2. Why does Clare tearfully reject Irene’s offer to visit?
3. What does Clare’s husband do or say that changes the tone of the novel in Chapter 3?
4. What future conflicts does the author foreshadow in Chapter 4?
Part 2, Chapters 1-4
Reading Check
1. What biological reason does Irene’s husband Brian give to justify passing?
2. What reason does Irene give to Clare for why white people attend the Negro Welfare League events?
3. At first, why is Irene pleased that Clare and Brian dance together?
4. How does Clare use her charm to ingratiate herself into Irene’s social circle without inviting questions about her background?
Multiple Choice
1. What disagreement do Irene and Brian have over their son Junior’s education?
A. Irene worries Junior is learning about sex too early.
B. Irene worries that Junior isn’t learning about African American history.
C. Irene worries that Junior is hanging out with boys who get him into trouble.
D. Irene worries that Junior is learning to respect men more than women.
2. Why does Clare insist on attending the dance Irene is planning for the Negro Welfare League?
A. Clare wants to meet new people ahead of her move to New York.
B. Clare misses socializing with Black people.
C. Clare wants to help Irene with her community service project.
D. Clare is depressed and needs a night out.
3. What does Hugh Wentworth suspect about Clare?
A. Hugh suspects that Clare is looking for a man with whom to have an affair.
B. Hugh suspects that Clare is researching Black culture for her own art.
C. Hugh suspects that Clare is passing as a white woman.
D. Hugh suspects that Clare is an alcoholic.
4. What does Clare tease Irene about?
A. Clare teases Irene about her good-looking husband.
B. Clare teases Irene about her misbehaving sons.
C. Clare teases Irene about her political stances.
D. Clare teases Irene about how seriously she takes motherhood.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does Irene get so frustrated with Brian during their argument about Junior?
2. What is ironic about Clare’s desire to go to the N.W.L dance to meet Hugh Wentworth?
3. What does Irene theorize about white people in Harlem, and how is this significant to the book?
4. How does the author use Clare’s characterizations to imply a deeper problem?
Part 3, Chapters 1-4
Reading Check
1. Why didn’t Irene invite Clare to Hugh Wentworth’s birthday party?
2. What is Irene’s moral conundrum about getting rid of Clare?
3. What is problematic about Irene’s run-in with John Bellew?
4. How does Irene feel about Clare’s death?
Multiple Choice
1. Of what does Irene suspect Brian?
A. Irene suspects that Brian is helping Clare leave her husband.
B. Irene suspects that Brian is encouraging Clare to start her life over as a Black woman.
C. Irene suspects that Brian is having an affair with Clare.
D. Irene suspects that Brian is trying to convince Clare to leave Harlem for good.
2. Irene realizes that she has an easy way of getting rid of Clare. What can she do that would get Clare out of her life and away from Brian?
A. Irene can confront Brian about the affair.
B. Irene can confront Clare about the affair.
C. Irene can move her family away from Harlem.
D. Irene can reveal Clare’s Black identity to Clare’s husband.
3. Why does Irene change her fantasies from Clare being discovered to fantasies of Clare dying?
A. If Clare dies, Irene doesn’t have to betray her race.
B. If Clare dies, Irene will truly be forever rid of her.
C. If Clare dies, there is no possibility of John divorcing her and leaving Clare free to marry Brian.
D. If Clare dies, her daughter Margery will never have to know that she is Black.
4. What happens to Clare at the end of the novel?
A. Irene pushes her out the window to her death.
B. John pushes her out the window to her death.
C. Clare jumps out the window to her death.
D. The author leaves this detail unclear.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What evidence is there for Brian’s affair with Clare?
2. Why does Irene feel ashamed of being Black for the first time in her life?
3. Why does Irene decide to stop worrying about Clare being around Brian?
4. What is the author’s purpose in handling Clare’s death as she did (in terms of blame)?
Quizzes – Answer Key
Part 1, Chapters 1-4
Reading Check
1. Irene characterizes Clare Kendry as impulsive, sometimes mean, and sometimes loving. (Part 1, Chapter 1)
2. Both women are Black but passing as white to enter the top floor of the hotel bar. Recognizing one another could reveal their real identities and threaten their safety. (Part 1, Chapter 2)
3. Irene’s husband and son are dark-skinned, so Irene can only pass when she is alone. (Part 1, Chapter 3)
4. Clare questions if Irene’s marriage to a Black man when she could have married a white man and passed for white the rest of her life is the wisest decision. (Part 1, Chapter 4)
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. The letter Irene receives from Clare Kendry in Chapter 1 holds a weight that is disproportionate to its size. Irene feels a dark foreboding when she sees the letter. Though it’s a physically dainty letter, the story Irene knows it holds is a threat to Irene’s happiness and sense of self. The symbolism of this letter in Chapter 1 is a foreshadowing of deep conflict to come. (Part 1, Chapter 1)
2. Clare cannot risk the possibility that her husband will find out that she is passing as a white woman. Any socialization with Black people jeopardizes Clare’s safety, but this makes her emotional because she misses her sisterhood of Black women. (Part 1, Chapter 2)
3. Clare’s husband calls her “Nig,” a racist slur, because he jokes that her skin is getting darker with age. He says this in front of Irene and Gertrude, two Black women who also pass for white in his eyes. The irony of this situation (a racist white man mocking Black people in front of a group of Black women without knowing they are Black) creates a tension that shifts the tone of the novel. Whereas before this moment Irene had some excitement about seeing Clare, her husband’s overt white supremacism puts them all in danger. Thus, Larson establishes that Irene can’t become friends with Clare without risking her life. (Part 1, Chapter 3)
4. Larsen foreshadows two major conflicts in Chapter 4. The first is the inevitability of Irene and Clare meeting again. The second is Irene’s husband’s growing restlessness. (Part 1, Chapter 4)
Part 2, Chapters 1-4
Reading Check
1. Brian posits that passing allows for the Black race to survive, which is a biological necessity. (Part 2, Chapter 1)
2. Irene explains that some white people enjoy the spectacle of Black culture, to use for stories or for a more exotic type of socializing. (Part 2, Chapter 2)
3. Irene at first doesn’t mind Clare dancing with Brian because she is happy that Clare will learn that Black men can be superior to white men. (Part 2, Chapter 3)
4. Clare doesn’t mind seeming pitiful, which keeps people both sympathetic to her and distanced from her. (Part 2, Chapter 4)
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. Irene is frustrated because she feels that Brian is willfully refusing to see her point. She finds her husband argumentative for the sake of argument rather than real principle. Living in a house of males, Irene’s voice as a woman is secondary to her husband’s more authoritative perspective on how boys should be raised. (Part 2, Chapter 1)
2. Ironically, Clare wants to go to the N.W.L dance in part to meet Hugh Wentworth, a white author. This is ironic because Clare passes for white and, like an actual white man, wants to go to the dance to meet other white people and watch Black culture, as if for entertainment. This is also ironic in the question of whether Clare will try to pass as white at the dance or embrace her Black identity. (Part 2, Chapter 2)
3. In a conversation with Hugh Wentworth, Irene theorizes that white people come to Harlem not out of a genuine interest in Black culture, but out of a revulsion that they enjoy nurturing. This is significant because (1) Irene is confronting this reality with a white man who may be accused of doing just that; (2) this theory through Irene’s voice helps Nella Larsen state an important criticism of the way white people supported the Harlem Renaissance out of pity and fear rather than genuine interest and respect. (Part 2, Chapter 3)
4. Larsen uses Clare’s characterization as a charming, social woman to imply that she is hiding darker anxieties, as evidenced by her breakdown at the end of Part 2, Chapter 4. Clare is always playing a part, whether she is with her husband or with her friends in Harlem. This takes a toll on her, emotionally, and suggests that Clare is unsatisfied or even depressed about her secret life with her white husband and daughter. (Part 2, Chapter 4)
Part 3, Chapters 1-4
Reading Check
1. Irene didn’t invite Clare to Hugh’s party because Hugh and Clare don’t get along. (Part 3, Chapter 1)
2. On the one hand, Irene wants to get rid of Clare so that Irene can preserve her family. On the other hand, revealing Clare’s Black identity to get rid of her would be a betrayal to Irene’s relationship with her race. (Part 3, Chapter 2)
3. When Irene runs into John Bellew, she is walking with a Black friend. This is problematic because it could signal to John that Irene is herself Black, as in John’s world, Black people and white people don’t socialize. This could also potentially put Clare in danger. (Part 3, Chapter 3)
4. Irene feels shocked and confused about Clare’s death, in part because she feels more relief than sadness. (Part 3, Chapter 4)
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. Irene doesn’t have any concrete evidence that Brian and Clare are having an affair. Irene believes that the affair is happening because of Brian’s uncharacteristic moodiness. What’s more, Brian loses his temper with Irene when she tells him she didn’t want Clare to be invited to Hugh’s birthday party. Brian’s behavior signals to Irene that there is an affair, though she has no proof. (Part 3, Chapter 1)
2. Irene feels shame about her race for the first time in her life, because the reality of her race forces her to choose between her own individual happiness and the symbolic wellbeing of all Black people. In betraying her race, Irene will betray herself. It’s a cyclical problem she can’t reason herself out of. (Part 3, Chapter 2)
3. Irene decides to care less about the affair. She reasons that she is simply tired from the stress of it all, but really, she figures that it’s unlikely that Brian will ever leave her for Clare. Brian cares too much about their family unit to commit to Clare. Furthermore, the affair has made Irene reevaluate her own happiness, and makes her question if she ever was in love with Brian, or if she was simply looking for her own form of security. (Part 3, Chapter 4)
4. Larsen doesn’t clarify if Irene did indeed push Clare to her death. There are a few reasons why Larsen keeps this a mystery. First, it highlights for the reader Irene’s guilt that she wanted to push Clare. Secondly, while readers might find it easy to blame John, a white racist man and the more likely antagonist, a witness claims Clare was not pushed but fell; this makes the reader question John’s role in Clare’s death. Lastly, it shows readers that Clare had the chance to make one final decision about her own life: killing herself. None of these endings is satisfactory, because Larsen’s point is the victimization of Clare, not the culpability of her murder. (Part 3, Chapter 4)
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