Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line 9783836635110, 9783836685115

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Kathleen Wehnert

Passing

Copyright © 2010. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line

Diplomica Verlag

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

Kathleen Wehnert Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line ISBN: 978-3-8366-3511-0 Herstellung: Diplomica® Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, 2010

Copyright © 2010. Diplomica Verlag. All rights reserved.

Dieses Werk ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Die dadurch begründeten Rechte, insbesondere die der Übersetzung, des Nachdrucks, des Vortrags, der Entnahme von Abbildungen und Tabellen, der Funksendung, der Mikroverfilmung oder der Vervielfältigung auf anderen Wegen und der Speicherung in Datenverarbeitungsanlagen, bleiben, auch bei nur auszugsweiser Verwertung, vorbehalten. Eine Vervielfältigung dieses Werkes oder von Teilen dieses Werkes ist auch im Einzelfall nur in den Grenzen der gesetzlichen Bestimmungen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der jeweils geltenden Fassung zulässig. Sie ist grundsätzlich vergütungspflichtig. Zuwiderhandlungen unterliegen den Strafbestimmungen des Urheberrechtes. Die Wiedergabe von Gebrauchsnamen, Handelsnamen, Warenbezeichnungen usw. in diesem Werk berechtigt auch ohne besondere Kennzeichnung nicht zu der Annahme, dass solche Namen im Sinne der Warenzeichen- und Markenschutz-Gesetzgebung als frei zu betrachten wären und daher von jedermann benutzt werden dürften. Die Informationen in diesem Werk wurden mit Sorgfalt erarbeitet. Dennoch können Fehler nicht vollständig ausgeschlossen werden und der Verlag, die Autoren oder Übersetzer übernehmen keine juristische Verantwortung oder irgendeine Haftung für evtl. verbliebene fehlerhafte Angaben und deren Folgen. © Diplomica Verlag GmbH http://www.diplomica-verlag.de, Hamburg 2010

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

Table of Contents

1.

Introduction………………………………………………………..…………1

2.

Setting Passing in ContextDouble Consciousness and the Harlem Renaissance………………………4

Passing- The Instability of the African-American Identity………………15

4.

Passing- The Journey for an African-American Identity………………...22

5.

Critical Reflection & Conclusion: Passing and the Instability of Race….34

6.

Bibliography……………………………………………...…………………41

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3.

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

1. Introduction

My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack. I wonder where I’m gonna die, Being neither white nor black?1

These are the first words with which Nella Larsen commences her novel Quicksand in 1928. The quatrain belongs to the poem ‘Cross’ (1925) by Larsen’s contemporary Langston Hughes and addresses the issue of duality, where mixed racial heritage leads to self-doubt and struggle in the definition of identity. Larsen and other African-American writers, including James Weldon Johnson, explored the intricacies and contradictions of the concept of race at the beginning of the 20th century, in particular by addressing the phenomenon of ‘passing’. Passing has many definitions, most often it is associated with the term ‘passing for white’, which implies the crossing of the colour line from black to white in order to transcend racial barriers. Ratna Roy refers to it as “assimilating into white society by concealing one’s antecedents”2 and according to Sollors, passing can be understood in a more general

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sense as the “crossing of any line that divides social groups.”3 Perhaps most importantly is to understand passing as the ability of a person to be completely accepted as a member of a sociological group other than their own.

1

Larsen, Nella. Quicksand & Passing. (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2001), 0. Sollors, Werner. Neither Black Nor White Yet Both- Thematic Exploration of Interracial Literature. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 247. 3 Sollors, 247. 2

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

Until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, writers hardly had addressed the passing figure in literature because racial passing only “thrived in modern social systems in which as a primary condition, social and geographic mobility prevailed.”4 Passing has always been a much camouflaged topic because the successful passer does not want their identity to be uncloaked. This constitutes probably also the main reason why only little, and rather pioneering, research has been conducted up to today and why it still remains difficult to investigate the issue. The sole witnesses of the concepts of passing in the time period are passing narratives. James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man (initially published anonymously in 1912 but reissued under Johnson’s authorship in 1927), Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928) and her novella Passing (1929) are perhaps the most exemplary and promising examples of an analysis of the passing figure and classic epitomes of the racial situations during the Harlem Renaissance. The novels challenge stereotypes of race and disclose concepts of doubleness and visibility. In order to disentangle the complexities of the theme, these novels, will serve to examine in depth in the nature and the motifs of the phenomenon of passing. In this dissertation, I will be exploring the motifs of passing in these novels of the Harlem Renaissance in the context of DuBois’ concept of double consciousness and the discourse of race. Chapter One will set the critical historical and cultural context for the passing narratives, as this is indispensable and crucial for the

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understanding of the motifs of the theme. Since DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and his theory of the double consciousness of the African-American prove to be fundamental and very constructive in investigating the issue of passing, his

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Sollors, 247. 2

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

concept, but also the era and movement when it was most acknowledged and employed, will be explored in detail. With this in mind, the second Chapter will account for what destabilizes the African-American identity and thus identify the motives of passing. It will explore how external factors like legislation as well as extremely influential social taboos affect the mulatto protagonists and what influencing variable double consciousness, as an internal factor, plays. In quest for a stable and fulfilling identity, African Americans travel along the colour line and pass into different roles for a life outside the veil without restrictions. In Chapter Three, I will therefore analyse passing as an attempt to escape the confines of race and double consciousness and will also pay special attention to the motif of travel. At this point, I will in particular explore the question whether the journey of Larsen’s and Johnson’s passing figures fulfils its promise of a stable or even new form of identity. The concluding Chapter will critically reflect on the subject of passing and its potential to challenge racial categorization and boundaries. I will analyse whether passing proves a successful strategy to refrain from social restrictions and double consciousness and whether concepts like that of DuBois’ third self are promising for a stable identity. This final Chapter will incorporate a conclusion in which I will look behind the veil of the phenomenon and explore the ways in which passing defies the

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essentialism of the discussions of race.

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

2. Setting Passing in Context Du Bois, Double Consciousness & Harlem Renaissance

A critical fundament in which to understand and analyze the phenomenon of passing in the Harlem narratives by Larsen and Johnson proves to be DuBois’ influential concept of double consciousness. In order to comprehend the core of DuBois’ theory, it is necessary to explore first the movement from which he emerged and which he enormously influenced. An analysis of the movement as well as the era in which it took place is also important so as to identify the writer’s intention with their novels about passing. Furthermore, the phenomenon of passing will be culturally and historically contextualized since the issue of racial passing can only be understood if one acknowledges the one-drop rule as explained below.

The Harlem Renaissance

One of the most controversial and complex movements in African-American

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cultural and literary history is the Harlem Renaissance. Equally known as the New Negro Movement, it describes a moment of creative cultural and artistic activity, which not only extended beyond the borders of Harlem but also beyond its time span. In view of earlier articulations of ideas that were to persist or events that were influential in the rise of the movement, the Harlem Renaissance spans from its start in

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

the early 1910s until its decline in the late 1920s and early 1930s. W.E.B. Du Bois, an American civil rights activist as well as author, constituted with his book The Souls of Black Folk, for instance, a very influential and foundation laying work for the New Negro Movement in 1903. It had such a great impact on thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance that it was even recalled as “the bible”5. Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, firstly published in 1912, also anticipates many issues that were central to intellectuals of the New Negro Movement, like concepts of identity and race, and thus justifying its presence in the Harlem Renaissance. In this movement of hope and declaration of independence, a new AfricanAmerican consciousness emerged in the United States. This new consciousness and confidence was the result of the awareness of changing times. Not only did many people of African descent travel, as part of the Great Migration, from the South to the North, also the leadership changed from the political conservative regime of Booker T. Washington to a radical, black culturally nationalistic and Pan-African regime of W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. According to Alain Locke in The New Negro (1925), African-Americans “shook off the psychology of the ‘Old Negro,’ of the implied inferiority of the post-reconstruction era, to become the ‘New Negro,’ selfassertive and racially conscious as though for the first time.”6 The newly obtained confidence of the New Negro encouraged many African-Americans to travel through

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America and to other continents like Europe. Accordingly, also the writer’s minds and

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“William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.” Drop Me Off in Harlem- Exploring the Intersections. March 2003. (02/03/2007) http://artsedge.kennedycenter.org/exploring/harlem/faces/dubois_text.html. 6 Hill, Patricia Liggins (ed). “ ‘Bound No’th Blues.’ African American History and Culture 1915-1945. ‘What happens to a Dream Deferred?’” Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 768. 5

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

eyes wandered in all directions and addressed topics like passing, which had been silenced before and in which the motif of travel plays an essential role. On reflection, the era in which the Harlem Renaissance took place appears to be a time when, paradoxically, boundaries were persistently erected and dismantled as well as acknowledged and disregarded. This contradiction becomes most visible when looking at race and racial definitions. At no other place in time have the borders been so fixed and in no other moment in time has such a revival of racial theory, which gives an explanation for prevailing practises and the furthering of discrimination, separation, and violent behaviour to reprimand contravention, taken place. W.E.B. Du Bois declares conclusively “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.”7 Even though slavery had been abolished in the 13th Amendment of the American Constitution in 1865, the ‘colour-line’ was still a very obvious and physically visible boundary of separation. Brian in Passing explains illustratively, “coloured people [were not] allowed in [places] at all, or [would] have to sit in Jim Crowed sections.”8 Brian here describes the normality of the African-American life during the zenith of the era of the Jim Crow laws, from 1910 to 1919, in which America was separated into black and white zones. This form of discrimination lead to a very crucial question, which influenced life significantly during this time: who can be considered black? A very common view was “that a black is any person with

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any known African black ancestry.”9 This definition, which exposes the long experience of African-Americans with slavery and Jim Crow segregation, became

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DuBois, W.E.B.. The Souls of Black Folk. (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2004), LIII. 8 Larsen, Passing, 198. 9 Davis, James. Who is black?- One nation’s definition. (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 5. 6

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

widely known as the “one-drop rule”. It implies that one single drop of black blood transforms a person into a black person. Anthropologists also referred to it as the “hypo-descent rule”

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, which implies that racially mixed people are assigned the

status of the subordinate group and thus, experience disadvantages and hindrances in society. The one-drop rule was first adopted as written law in Tennessee in 1910. Louisiana followed Tennessee in the same year and by 1925, almost every state had enacted a one-drop law or something equivalent. These laws empowered bureaucrats like Walter Plecker of Virginia and others to chase families of mixed ancestry and to push them to the black side of the colour line. In 1967 the Supreme Court of the United Stated invalidated Plecker’s Virginia Racial Integrity Act (1924), along with its pivotal component the one-drop rule, as illegal. The definition of the one-drop rule developed in the South and was generally accepted, even though not agreed, in both the white and black society. However, the problems it caused were complex. The application of the one-drop rule resulted in defining a population as black that was actually, according to James Davis “all colours”11 and indeed very diverse in terms of racial heritage. By compelling individuals to identify as either black or white, it in actual fact erased mixed-race people from the social landscape. This induced ambiguities, divergences, and traumatic experiences, which were tremendously reinforced by the cultural associations that were made with what Franz Fanon has called the “epidermal

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schema”12 of racial difference to ones identity. Rottenberg’s discovery that “racial identity and classification seems to be” only “constituted through skin color”13 by the

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Davis, 5. Davis, 1. 12 Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. (London: Pluto Press, 1993), 112. 13 Rottenberg, Catherine. “Passing: Race, Identification, and Desire.” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 45.4 (2003, 439. 11

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

concept of race, appears however to be a false promise and evokes problems in the identity of African-Americans. As a consequence a new (third form of) identity developed, which refuses to be assigned to either side of this rigidly into black and white categorized world and which surmounts the barriers that are imposed on her by society in order to build an independent identity which is not defined by attributes of others. This identity became visible in the mulatto figure and active in the passing figure.

The Passing Figure

Estimated figures show that tens of thousands crossed the colour line in the U.S. and passed from black to white, in particular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As a result, literary documents employed the passing figure in the beginning and during the Harlem Renaissance. Since passing is tremendously ambiguous, it appears to be very difficult to investigate the act as well as its figure. As announced in the introduction the act of passing can be described as the ability of a person to be regarded and successfully accepted as a member of a specific group other than their own, such as race and class. However, the passing figure, who lives a secret and elusive life, has more

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designations than the event. She can be referred to as mulatto, quadroon or ‘white Negro’ 14; but these names do not automatically describe the passing figure and can even less be blindly employed to identify the passer with her character. The term 14

While the name white Negro suggests the description of a person with white skin and black blood, the word quadroon refers to a historically racial category, which denotes a person with one quarter of black ancestry. 8

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

mulatto, for instance, appears to be more a subcategory than an explanation and can be found in the English language since the sixteenth century. According to Samira Kawash, the term mulatto “as an appellation for an individual of mixed race is […] revealed to be deeply implicated in the theoretical efforts to prove scientifically a permanent and absolute racial division.”15 The word mulatto can, on the one hand, be retraced to the Spanish word mulo, deriving from the Latin word mulus, and denote a hybrid animal, which is unable to reproduce. Kawash claims that “Just as the mule proved the horse and donkey were distinct species, so the mulatto proved that white and black were forever separate and distinct.”16 This definition appears very offensive and does not seem appropriate in this context as the person is classified like a biological species. The second meaning, on the other hand, is implied by the dictionary of the Real Academia Española and refers to a person that is characterized by strength and vigour.17 Even though the passer can be to a certain extent associated with these qualities, this rather linguistic explanation does also not offer a description of the character with its feelings who passes, as the following quotation of Irene in Nella Larsen’s Passing might offer:

She wished to find out about this hazardous business of ‘passing,’ this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chances in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but not

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entirely friendly. What, for example, one did about background, how one

15

Kawash, Samira. Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hybridity, and Singularity in African-American Narrative. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 5. 16 Kawash, 5. 17 “Mulo.” Real Academia Española. 24/06/2004. (11/12/2006). http://rae.es. 9

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

accounted oneself. And how one felt when one came into contact with .

other Negros.18

The difficulty that appears in the nomenclature and the consequential insufficiency of the terminology alludes that passing must be seen as a phenomenon of the individual, of the human being and therefore cannot be classified in linguistic or even biological terms. Ginsberg corroborates:

Passing is about identities: their creation or imposition, their adoption or rejection, their accompanying rewards or penalties. Passing is also about the boundaries established between identity categories and about the individual and cultural anxieties induced by boundary crossing. Finally, passing is about specularity: the visible and the invisible, the seen and the unseen.19

Predominantly situations of vast inequalities between groups in society cause the appearance of the phenomenon of passing. Passing, according to Stonequist quoted in Sollors, “signifies that a group conflict is so severe that the individual is compelled to resort to subterfuge.”20 The individual crosses the colour line to adopt a new identity in order to break out of a circle of subordination and repression which

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accompanies the old (black) identity and to access the privileges and reputation of the new one. A physically white appearance enables the act of passing for white. However, the passing figure, in search for identity, is not only requested to pass in a 18

Larsen. Passing, 157. Ginsberg, Elaine. “Introduction: The Politics of Passing.” Passing and the Fictions of Identity. ed. Ginsberg, Elaine. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 2. 20 Sollors, 248. 19

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

metaphysical but also in a geographical way. By assuming a new identity, the passer has to abandon her environment, including family and legal status, and move to a place where her identity is unknown and where she can construct a new one. On this account, the issue of travel, whether mentally or physically, proves to be inextricable from the African-American landscape. Ginsberg even asserts that passing is also “applied discursively to disguises of other elements of an individual’s presumed ‘natural’ or ‘essential’ identity, including class, ethnicity, and sexuality.”21 This implies that passing is not a phenomenon exclusive to race, which, however, will stay the focus in this work.

DuBois concept of the veiled double consciousness

On their journey along the colour line, the passing figure has to face all kinds of issues that are connected with it, in particular the dilemma of a black and white identity within a single body. Therefore, W.E.B. DuBois’ study of “the problem of the color line”22 appears to be appropriate and instructive for the examination of the passing theme in Larsen’s and Johnson’s novels. The book The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, establishes the idea of an African-American double consciousness to characterize veiled issues of race. Even though DuBois does not mention the

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passing figure directly, he stresses a “twoness” of being and feeling as “an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”23 This 21

Ginsberg, 3. DuBois, LIII. 23 DuBois, 2. 22

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

quote epitomises the strength and vigour of the mulatto, I identified earlier. Moreover, the concept of double consciousness operates as trope within the African-American passing figure. The theory of DuBois provides the reader with two definitions of the term double consciousness; on the one hand, it encompasses the concept of the “third self” and on the other hand, it employs the implication of “a life behind the veil.” The concept of the “third self” originated from the transcendalism, employed by R. W. Emerson and the findings of William James. Emerson used the term double consciousness to refer to the transcendental perspective of the division between the world and the spirit, the “understanding” and the “soul”, “the downward pull of life in society” and “the upward pull of communion with the divine”24. If this concept is applied in DuBois’s term then the African-American double consciousness consists of the positive notion of the “soul”, the African spirituality, and the negative conception of “understanding”, the American materialism, whereas, the former is privileged to the latter.25 The more scientific and psychological approach, in comparison to the above-mentioned sociological approach, sees the reason for the “third self” in the “split personality”. The psychologist William James, DuBois’ Harvard lecturer, refers to double consciousness as an opposition between two autonomous consciousnesses which are incorporated in one single body. This proved, for Du Bois, that “double consciousness allowed for a sense of distinctiveness that really did entail equality, a

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sense of distinctiveness that did not imply inferiority.”26 As a consequence, Du Bois

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Bruce, Dickson. “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness”. The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B Du Bois. – A Norton Critical Edition. Gates, Henry Louis and Terri Hume Oliver (eds). (New York: Norton & Company.1999), 238. 25 Bruce, 237-238. 26 Bruce, 243. 12

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

concluded that the combination of two autonomous selves in a single entity gives the African-American the opportunity to create a better and truer self, a third self. However, DuBois also considers effects the social reality of the time had on the African-American individual. A consequence of the colour line was that the AfricanAmerican, “born with a veil,”27 was not able to create a true self-consciousness because he was only able to perceive and measure himself through the eyes of others, the white society, “that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” The veil can thus be comprehended as a figure of oppression. By accepting the distorted image that is imposed on him, the African-American is left with no other life than a life in double consciousness, a life “with double thoughts, double duties, and double social classes.”28 However, this double life provokes the dilemma that the “seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals” makes the African-American “wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and has ever seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.”29 These characteristics are also incorporated in and experienced by the passing figure who is always conscious of their appearance and how others perceive them. The effects of double consciousness do not only have an impact on the individual but also on those who live outside the veil. The veil camouflages the view of people on either side of the veil. This prevents white people from seeing those people who are in another racial situation and hinders them from perceiving its effects.

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The social, political, historical and cultural tensions within race, which came to a climax in the New Negro Movement and Du Bois’ perception of double consciousness, became employed in the realistic literary text of the passing narrative.

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DuBois, 2. DuBois, 108. 29 DuBois, 3. 28

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

Passing narratives consequently display the intertwined relationship between the experience, history and double consciousness of African-Americans. Bernard Bell substantiates this assertion when he claims that

the Afro-American novel has been concerned with illuminating the meaning of the black American experience and the complex doubleconsciousness, socialized ambivalence, and double vision which is the special burden and blessing of Afro-American identity.30

Although (the themes of) passing novels are very intertwined and complex, these narratives all utilize one uniting principle: their quest for the completion of individual

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potential and identity.

30

Bell, Bernard. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. (Armherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), 35. 14

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

3. Passing- The Instability of the African-American Identity

The act of passing can be understood as a strategy to become, or as Clare says “to be [,] a person”31- a person which is not denied a liberating life as a human being by the enclosures of society- and implies the prospect of a stable African-American identity. This new identity is neither black nor white, neither African nor American but deduced from both. In order to analyse this new identity, the identity of the passing figure, and the act of passing in detail, the reasons and motives for the need of a new and stable identity have to be explored. Therefore, this chapter will examine which external and internal factors disequilibrate the African-American identity.

External factors

The American culture is racially prejudiced to people with a mixed, in particular black descent. Its dominant cultural assumption of a true identity is that it should be pure and not impurified by “a drop too much.”32 This provides a problematic ground for the African-American identity, shatters and weakens it, leaving African-Americans with a feeling of alienation.

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Furthermore, the Racial Integrity Act (1924), connected racial oppression as well as the very powerful social taboos deprive Larsen’s and Johnson’s protagonists of the ties to their identity. Due to the fact that interracial marriage is forbidden or at least gibed devastatingly by society, most mulattoes get disassociated from at least

31 32

Larsen. Passing, 159. Larsen. Passing, 159. 15

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

one of their parents. Parents, however, signify a common cultural and racial heritage, a tie to a history, which would provide them with an identity. The absence of the mulatto parents destabilizes the complete identity of African-Americans. In addition, the era of the Great Migration posed questions of identity. African-Americans moved from the South, which build, even though they were oppressed, a home to their families for years, to the North. In the North they were free but they felt alienated in the big, anonymous cities and therefore questioned their identity. The African-American’s search for identity has its origins in the history of slavery, when the absence of a motherland made them feel estranged, however, during the era of the Harlem Renaissance the main reason for their search lies, especially for the mulatto character, in complexities of parentage. The ‘ex-coloured man’, in The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, for example, becomes an orphan when he is still a young adolescent and even before the death of his mother, he was living apart from his father. His father is a southern gentleman from a well-to-do family, who truthfully loves the narrator’s mother, but as interracial marriage is forbidden at that time in the South, he marries a white woman and sends the ex-coloured man and his mother in the North, where they would be safer from segregation. “On the day after the coin was put around my neck my mother and I started on what seemed to me an endless journey.”33 The coin is the only keepsake of his father and his white identity. The ex-coloured

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man grows up in the north of the U.S. with his light-skinned black mother and ignorant of his black ancestry. Only through an incident in school does he find out about his black descent. Due to the fact that the narrator grew up with the consciousness of being white, he fails to recognize himself as black, when he looks in 33

Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man. (New York: Dover Publications, 1995), 2. 16

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

a mirror after coming back home from school. He “noticed the ivory whiteness of [his] skin” and “the softness and glossiness of [his] dark hair that fell in waves over my temples, making my forehead appear whiter than it really was”34, but he is not able to distinguish the (coloured) features of his second racial heritage. This failure in perception symbolizes the ex-coloured man’s distinctive inability to acknowledge his racial identity.35 His mother, supported by the money of the father, tries to raise him in a different environment than most other blacks. By exposing him only to upperclass blacks and benevolent whites, she aims to give him the best opportunities for life. However, after his mother’s death, his poor orphan status subjects him to a part of black life unknown to him while living a sheltered and unknowingly veiled life with his mother. The status as an orphan also creates in the character a sense of displacement and thereby a desire to find a stable and complete identity. Nevertheless, not only the ex-coloured man but also Clare, in Passing, grows up in an environment which hardly provides her with knowledge about her black origin. After the death of her black mother and later of her white drunkard father, she is given “a home of sorts”36 at her aunts’ house. They are two nice, white and very religious old ladies but also very “queer.”37 As Clare points out to Irene “For all their Bibles and praying and ranting about honesty, they didn’t want anyone to know that their darling brother has seduced- ruined, they called it- a Negro girl. […] They forbade me to mention Negroes to the neighbours, or even to mention the South

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side.”38 Not only is Clare denied the knowledge of her origin but she is also forbidden any contact with black society and thus, her roots in identity. Without any tie to her 34

Johnson, 8. Smith, Valerie, Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative.(Cambridge: Harvard Universtiy Press, 1991), 57. 36 Larsen. Passing, 158. 37 Larsen. Passing, 159. 38 Larsen. Passing, 159. 35

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

origin, Clare becomes alienated and feels estranged as well as isolated from her identity. This can clearly be observed in the last letter she writes to Irene, who is living in the black society of Harlem. Already “the long envelope of thin Italian paper with its almost illegible scrawl seemed out of place and alien” (Emphasis mine).39 This appearance also alludes to Clare’s feelings which she expresses in the words: “For I am lonely, so lonely…cannot help longing to be with you again, as I have never longed for anything before.”40 The letters and in particular this one have immense symbolic significance in the novel. Pfeiffer explains, “their symbolic import is the fact that Clare’s last letter appears first, and her first letter last.”41 Just as Clare and the ex-coloured man are deprived of their roots so also is Helga in Quicksand. Helga, who does not know whether her parents were actually married, is left by her (black) father when she is a baby. This can be seen as the first abandonment she experiences and can be assigned to a racial division in her family. The second time, she is abandoned, is when her uncle in the U.S. disowns her in order to evade any inconveniences with his wife. Another form of Helga’s separation and alienation from her origin can be seen in the renunciation of her own (white) mother. When Helga first enters the black society she is introduced to Anne Grey as “Miss Crane, a little friend of mine whose mother’s died….”42 In her alienation, she is also estranged from her white origin and claims that the whites, this “sinister folk [,…] had

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stolen her birthright. Their past contribution to her, which had been but shame and

39

Larsen. Passing, 143. Larsen. Passing, 145. 41 Pfeiffer, Kathleen. Race Passing and the American Individualism. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 140. 42 Larsen. Quicksand, 42. 40

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

grief, she had hidden away from brown folk in a locked closet, ‘never,’ she told herself ‘to be reopened’.”43 What becomes apparent when looking at the characters’ estrangement from their descent, in particular Helga Cane’s, is that people with mixed heritage have it twice as hard to identify with an origin, as they seem to be torn between their physical origins and thus, pulled from one side of the colour line to the other. They cannot meet the American ideal of a singular heritage and their exposure to racism deprives them of their roots and origins. Roots, however, are very important to one’s identity as they mean to have a firm ground, either physical or cultural, to which one is strongly anchored. Subsequently, African-Americans are dispossessed of their original identity and therefore, they feel alienated and displaced.

Internal factors

Moreover, another reason for an unstable identity of the passing figure is that the characters of the novels are torn between a culturally black and a culturally white identity and thus, live a double-conscious life (in a DuBoisian sense). The impact of Du Bois’ thoughts and the idea of two souls in one body are particularly evident in The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man but can also be perceived in the novels by

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Larsen. “After that fateful day in school”, where the ex-coloured man finds out about his black blood, he “looked out through other eyes” 44, “as though a veil had been drawn aside”45 and remembers: 43

Larsen. Quicksand, 45. Johnson, 9. 45 Johnson, vii. 44

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

my thoughts were colored, my words dictated, my actions limited by one dominating, all-pervading idea which constantly increased in force and weight until I finally realized […]each coloured man […] is forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, nor even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a colored man. 46

Johnson clearly alludes here to DuBois’ ideas but he also shows that the ex-coloured man is in conflict with his “human” and “colored” identity. Bell confirms “As a result of this traumatic awakening to socialized ambivalence, the narrator fluctuates between feelings of shame and pride in his racial identity.”47 Moreover, the narrator is divided by his passion for music, what DuBois calls African spirituality and feeling for rhythm, and his aspiration for success and money, the American materialism. Clare in Passing is bisected into American materialism and African spirituality as well. On the one hand, she has always “wanted things” and was “determined to get […] more”48 but on the other hand, she wants “to see Negroes, to be with them again, to talk with them, to hear them laugh”49 and thus, is pulled to the spirits of Harlem. Furthermore, Helga in Quicksand is divided by the two forces and therefore missing a stable identity like the other characters. “All her life Helga had loved and longed for nice things,”50 because she sees in them means of safety and stability. Additionally, it can

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be suggested, her need for materialistic possessions is symptomatic of her desire to assimilate to white culture. However, her restlessness shows, these materialistic items 46

Johnson, 9. Stepto, Robert. From Behind the Veil- A Study of Afro-American Narrative. 2. ed.. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 88. 48 Larsen, Passing, 159. 49 Larsen, Passing, 200. 50 Larsen, Quicksand, 6. 47

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do not give her this longed for stability. She yearns for “ties which bound her forever to these mysterious, these terrible, these fascinating, these lovable dark hordes. Ties that are of the spirit. Ties […] entangled with […] features or color of skin.”51 Since, the protagonists of the novels live during a time where the one-drop rule is on its highest point and Jim Crow segregation a dominant issue, they are not able to live out the strivings of an American and African at the same time. In view of the absence of their roots and origins as well as the ambiguities and conflicts in identity, which they have to face every day, the act of passing proposes the chance to adopt an identity, in which both, the African and the American self find their

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autonomous place, and in this way a strategy to become a person.

51

Larsen, Quicksand, 95. 21

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

4. Passing- The Journey for an African-American Identity

Passing appears to be a pragmatic solution for African-Americans to escape racial restrictions and categorisation of the society and to evade a double-conscious life behind the veil. Accomplishing the act, the passing figure adopts different roles, which promise a completion of their identity but also depend on a variety of motives. In order to successfully adopt these roles the passer needs to travel. Subsequently, this chapter will explore the different roles the passing figures in the novels adopt and will examine whether travelling helps them in the provision of a sufficient and fulfilling identity.

Social roles

Due to the fact that the gravity of the aspirations can vary from one person to the other and that each African-American lives in different economic circumstances, two main types of roles, which the passing figure might adopt, become identifiable: full-time and part-time. Sollors’ remark suitably summarizes that passing might be undertaken part-time “for job purposes on a daily basis […] or for avoiding

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segregation in transportation, hotels, restaurants, theatres, clubs, and other places of entertainment” or full-time “for the duration of an individual’s life; or it may be temporary or sporadic (though full-time) for a shorter or longer period in a person’s life, for a single purpose or temporary scheme, such as escaping from slavery, finding

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

and holding a job, completing a program of education, or simply while waiting for an advantage moment to ‘come out.’”52 Larsen’s Passing constitutes a very explanatory example as it describes the relationship between Irene, who passes only occasionally for white, and Clare, who has permanently crossed the colour line. In the beginning of the novel, the reader can observe how Irene, “edge[ing] her way out of the increasing crowd, feeling disagreeably damp and sticky and soiled from the contact with so many sweating bodies” and entering Drayton Hotel (a whites-only zone), is “being wafted upward on a magic carpet to another world, pleasant, quite, and strangely remote from the sizzling one that she had left below”53 and thus, passes into her role as a white. Irene, however, does not only adopt a social role to pass for her temporary personal benefit but also due to her “need for immediate safety.”54 Brody sees this as an “evidence of her distaste for the working class.”55 Clare, in contrast to Irene, passes permanently into the role of a white person and it could be suggested that she, driven by the previously discussed force of the American materialism, passes to escape the lower class. The image the reader is given of Clare as “pale small girl” describes her “sitting on a ragged blue sofa, sewing pieces of bright red cloth together, while her drunken father […] raged threateningly up and down the shabby room, bellowing curses and making spasmodic lunges at her.”56 This designation shows that Clare grew up in a

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poor working class environment. In order to escape this life and to get “all the things

52

Sollors, 251. Larsen. Passing, 147. 54 Larsen. Passing, 147. 55 Brody, Jennifer DeVere. "Clare Kendry's 'True' Colors: Race and Class Conflict in Nella Larsen's Passing.” Callaloo: A Journal of African American and African Arts and Letters 15.4 (1992), 1057. 56 Larsen. Passing, 143-144. 53

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

[she] wanted and never had had,”57 she passes permanently for white and thus, in her “Gatsbyesque ascendance”58, she even outclasses Irene concerning class and material affluence. As Clare herself reveals, passing is the only way to be no “charity or a problem, or even a daughter of the indiscreet Ham”, but “to be a person.”59 Johnson’s ex-coloured man also passes into the role of a white but as he passes in different settings and different stages in his life, his motives are very miscellaneous. On the one hand, his conscious pass for white as an adult can be assigned to financial reasons and the out of it resulting uplift in (racial) class or on the other hand, to an escape from discrimination. Prevalently, the ex-coloured man is very money and class conscious. He accounts for money repeatedly throughout the novel and also categorizes the society into three classes “in respect to their relations with the whites.”60 There is the “desperate class”61 of common labours, the class of “servants”62 and the upper class, “the well-to-do and educated”63, who have “money, education and culture” and who “live in a little world on their own.”64 This awareness and that “the unkempt appearance, the shambling, slouching gait and loud talk and laughter of these people aroused in [the narrator] a feeling of almost repulsion”65 indicate that he passes for a higher and more advantageous class. The money, which is implied by a better class, can be seen as “a symbol of mobility.”66 Therefore, it can be suggested, it also enables the protagonists to travel, thus enfolding their identity, and to be socially mobile. Carby reviews this in relation to Quicksand, where “this

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57

Larsen. Passing, 159. Brody identifies this phrase in a different context. (Brody, 1056.) 59 Larsen. Passing, 159. 60 Johnson, 35. 61 Johnson, 35. 62 Johnson, 35. 63 Johnson, 36. 64 Johnson, 37. 65 Johnson, 25. 66 Sollors, 268. 58

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

money allowed [Helga] her social movement; she bought her way out of a Jim Crow car and eventually out of Harlem.”67 Moreover, the ascendance to an upper class, it could be suggested, implies, for the ex-coloured man and the characters of Larsen’s Passing, the ability to completely unfold their identity. In addition, their Gatsbyesque ascendance epitomizes a part of the American dream; the ability to leave behind an old identity and to define a new identity, different from the one a person was born with. Paradoxically, this cult coexists and contradicts the dominant moral condemnation of the racial passer at that time. The passing figure, here, reveals what is behind the veil and in this way “the veil offers the opportunity to see and to report to America the truth of a divided nation.”68 Nevertheless, the main reason that Johnson’s ex-coloured man decides to pass permanently for white is to escape racial segregation. The initiative for this conscious decision is his witness of the appalling lynching of a black man for some unknown cause. The ex-coloured man passes voluntarily into this role because he neither wants to be identified with a people who could treat other humans in this way nor with “a race that could be so dealt with.”69 His latter motivation suggests a feeling of “shame”70 but also frustration with other African-Americans for being so passive and not trying to escape this situation by any means. In order to attain an undefiled and coherent identity, he declares “I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name,

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raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would.”71 By making this

67

Carby, Hazel. “The Quicksands of Representation- Rethinking Black Cultural Politics” Reading Black, Reading Feminist- A Critical Anthology. ed. Gates, Henry Louis. (New York: Meridian Book, 1990), 85. 68 Gates, xxvi. 69 Johnson, 88. 70 Johnson, 88. 71 Johnson, 90. 25

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

decision, the narrator also seems to refrain himself from race and racial classification, an aspects which will be taken in closer inspection later. However, the ex-coloured man does not only pass voluntarily in his life, he also passes involuntarily as white. In the first place, he passes unintentionally, as the quotation supposes, by being “mistaken” for white, and in the second place, he passes involuntarily as white when he is a child and concealed the truth of his black descent. Consequently, he is brought up by his mother (unconsciously) with a white identity and then decides consciously to take this identity in order to live free of segregation. Therefore, it can be summarized that passing may be undertaken voluntarily, either part- or full-time, or involuntarily. However, there is another type of voluntary passing that has not been mentioned yet and which signifies a special form of passing. In Quicksand, Helga cannot pass physically for white because of “the color of [her] lovely brown skin”72 and her “black, very broad brows over soft […] dark eyes” and “her curly blue-black hair”73. Nevertheless, she experiences the same division and alienation like the characters in the other novels and therefore, instead of passing physically, she adopts values, attitudes and manners of the white culture in order to find and create her true identity. In her search for identity, she passes for instance into the role of a teacher in Naxos, an exotic other and object of art in Europe and as a Christian mother in the South of the U.S.. Mar claims that Helga’s “desire for material possessions is

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[…][her] main motivation,”74 but since her first image does not show her like Clare in a working-class environment but in a situation where she is able to spend “most of her earnings […on] clothes, [on] books, [on] the furnishings,” this claim cannot prove to 72

Larsen. Quicksand, 68. Larsen. Quicksand, 2. 74 Gallego, Mar. Passing Novels in the Harlem Renaissance: Identity Politics and Textual Strategies (FORECAAST). (Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2003), 125. 73

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

be Helga’s main reason. It seems more appropriate to discern Stepto’s “confining social structure”75 or more precisely McLendon’s assimilation of the term to “institutionalized racism”76 as a reason for the Helga’s passing into different social roles. On reflection, it becomes apparent that the protagonists perceive the roles, which they adopt, as means to escape the categorisation by appearance, specifically by the “epidermal schema”77, as well as the consequences that result from it. Although the motifs and typologies of passing vary, all passing figures aim for a completion of their desires and ideals in order to live out their identities, without any restrictions that may be imposed on them by society. They aspire to a complete and stable identity and, as suggested earlier from Larsen’s Passing, they pass as a strategy “to be a person”. It can be concluded that with the act of passing, the passer does not only transcend barriers inflicted by race and colour, but also puts the admissibility of these boundaries into question.

Travel Motif

Passing narratives are tales of movement, because geographical movement is requisite for a passer to adopt a role successfully. These movements are a part of the

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New Negro Movement but cannot simply be narrowed down to Harlem. The passing figure goes on the one hand, on a “psychological journey” along the colour line and

75

Stepto, 68. McLendon, Jaquelyn. The Politics of Color in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995), 75. 77 Fanon, 112. 76

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

on the other hand, on a “physical journey” 78 through America and Europe. Whereas the former’s objective is self-definition, the latter has self-location as its main destination. Both journeys are connected but these connections are more than a simple narrative coincidence. Moreover, the question emerges as to what extent travel provides the passing figure with a new identity. Neither Quicksand nor The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man take place in a fixed location and also Clare in Passing, just returning from Europe, moves between the different parts of New York. The ex-coloured man starts his “endless journey”79 of self-definition in Connecticut then plunges into the black world of Atlanta, goes to New York, performs in Europe, goes back to America and finally finds a sanctuary in New York. Helga, also in quest for a stable identity, travels from Naxos over Chicago to New York, then to Europe and after a short time in Harlem to the black American South. The protagonists hardly rest at one place as they are more often seen passing through. The simultaneous occurrence of racial passing and geographic mobility is not coincidental. Kawash explains “practically, if one is to pass, one must go somewhere else, where one’s identity is unknown.”80 This implies that travel is a prerequisite for a new identity and that the passer, as Irene explains, has to break “away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chances in a new environment.”81 The passing figure has to leave her family, friends and job, everything that could be connected

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with her history and her black blood, behind in order to build a new identity. As 78

Kawash, Samira. “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man: (Passing for) Black Passing for White.” Passing and the Fictions of Identity. ed. Ginsberg, Elaine. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 63. 79 Johnson, 2. 80 Kawash, Samira. “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man: (Passing for) Black Passing for White.” Passing and the Fictions of Identity. ed. Ginsberg, Elaine. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 63. 81 Larsen. Passing, 157. 28

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

passing is the only path to the self, “only one course,” according to Franz Fanon, “is left for the heroines: to go away.”82 For Clare, whose husband not only dislikes Negroes but “hate[s] them”83, the change of environment is her only chance to mask her blackness, to evade her husband’s racism and to successfully adopt a new, white identity. Furthermore, due to the fact that “Clare has no loving family” she would need to reject, “the risks she takes,”84 like the ex-coloured man, are, according to Clare herself, “worth the price.”85 In The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man, movement facilitates not only the narrators new chosen life as a white man, it also facilitates the protection of his children’s identity. Consequently, the geographic movement must not only be seen as a prerequisite but also a strategy to find and protect ones identity. Given the melancholic status of African-Americans in the great diaspora, it is resonant that so much of their literature should be about travel. Whereas at first, African-Americans travelled, as part of the Great Migration, to find freedom, they now travel, as passing figures, to find freedom in their minds. They travel to transcend double consciousness and to escape the socialized ambivalences of their AfricanAmerican identity. The travel motif can therefore be seen as an escape from an old, restricted and oppressed identity to a new identity that offers many opportunities. In Quicksand, Helga’s emotions epitomize this when she arrives in Chicago and tells the reader that she feels “the contrast between this freedom and the cage which Naxos

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had been to her.”86

82

Gray, Jeffrey. "Essence and the Mulatto Traveler: Europe as Embodiment in Nella Larsen's Quicksand.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 27.3 (1994), 259. 83 Larsen. Passing, 172. 84 Rottenberg, 447. 85 Larsen. Passing, 160. 86 Larsen. Quicksand, 27. 29

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

Typically, travel as a form of self-discovery is described for black people in America as a movement from the South to the North and as Gray explains, “for whites, as a movement to Europe.”87 As a consequence it can be suggested that the mulatto character, who has white and black blood, has to travel both, Europe and America, to discover their real identity. The journey to Europe should not only be seen as an escape from America and American people, it can also be perceived as a journey to a people with different perceptions. One motive for Helga’s journey to Europe are certainly her “day-dreams of a happy future in Copenhagen, where there were no Negroes, no problems, no prejudice”88 and thus, no racial oppression. A place where she is able to get all the things “she had wanted, not money, but the things money could give, leisure, attention, beautiful surroundings.”89 Another motive is her interest in the life of her white relatives, her white roots that build part of her identity. In Copenhagen, Helga lives under people with “no prejudice”90 and therefore believes that this is the environment where she can unfold her identity. She feels “like a released bird in her returned feeling of happiness and freedom, that blessed sense of belonging to herself alone and not to a race.”91 In Europe, the concept of race is not as prevalent as in America and does not seem to influence the construction of that identity category. When the African-American author Richard Wright was invited to France by the French government in 1945, he said, “For the first time in my life, I stepped on free

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soil. If you are not black you will never know how heavy weights seem to fall off

87

Gray, 259. Larsen. Quicksand, 55. 89 Larsen. Quicksand, 67. 90 Larsen. Quicksand, 55. 91 Larsen. Quicksand, 64. 88

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your body.”

92

However, in the same breath when he mentions, “they did not give a

damn about him,”93 he also remarks the contradiction that their stares were “friendly, open and curious.”94 This conflict can also be observed in Quicksand. Europeans look at Helga’s “dark, alien appearance” not with oppressive ideas but as if she was an object, “A decoration. A curio. A peacock.”95 Her relatives dress Helga up in “bright things to set off the color of [her] lovely brown skin”96 in order to exhibit her exotic appearance. In this way, they objectify her, similar to the ex-coloured man whose piano skills are exhibited by the millionaire to many different audiences in various cities around America and Europe. This objectification could imply that white people do not see mulatto people as whole people and thus, impeded their development of a complete identity. Helga fell into the fallacy of believing that, “if one had physical identity, the problem of self-identification would vanish.”97 When Helga realized that she was only an art object, a slave of visual arts, and would not be able to fulfil her identity, she realized she was “not for sale.”98 Europe proved for Helga to be an environment without direct racial prejudices but because it imposed other expectations and limits to her identity, this travel, even though it might bring her more understanding of herself, is not a journey to self-definition. An obvious feature that combines the protagonists of all novels additionally and probably most strikingly is their predictable return home. Helga feels “homesick

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[…] for Negroes,”99 Clare yearns “for [her] own people”100 and the ex-coloured man

92

Gray, 260. Gray, 259. 94 Gray, 259. 95 Larsen. Quicksand, 73. 96 Larsen. Quicksand, 68. 97 Gray, 264. 98 Larsen. Quicksand, 87. 99 Larsen. Quicksand, 92. 100 Larsen. Passing, 182. 93

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“made up [his] mind to go back into the very heart of the South […] and drink in [his] inspiration first-hand.”101 Whereas, normally, passing expresses a desire to distance themselves from the African-American community, their return home shows their desire to have a sense of collective identity and to reclaim that identity. Thereby, all protagonists are awake to the consequence that the return home does not imply any privileges. Quite the contrary actually takes place. “Clare knowingly courts danger and punishment when she shows up in Harlem; in many ways, she can be seen to be pulling her social existence into jeopardy.”102 Baldwin describes this magnetic pull in the descriptive feeling that “there begins to race within him, like the despised beat of the tom-tom, echoes of a past which he has not yet been able to utilize… .”103 This can be equated to DuBois’ notion of the “soul” or Bennett’s interpretation of the return home as “racial atavism.” 104

Nevertheless, probably the best instructive explanation of this return home gives

Irene’s husband:

‘They always come back. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.’ ‘But why?’ Irene wanted to know. ‘Why?’ ‘If I knew that, I’d know what race is.’ 105

This highly visibly questions the fact whether race as much as the travel home can

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provide African-Americans with an identity.

101

Johnson, 66. Rottenberg, 447. 103 Gray, 261. 104 Bennett, Juda. The Passing Figure – Racial Confusion in Modern American Literature Vol.6. (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 51. 105 Larsen, Passing, 185. 102

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Moreover, travelling does not only result in self-location but also in dislocation. Helga’s constant movement between geographic spaces indicates her alienation and restlessness. She sees in her repeating self-location a method of selfdefinition, but because she does not actively define her identity but rather lets herself impose a role by every new environment, Helga can neither self-define nor self-locate herself satisfactory. This interpretation also explains and elaborates Gray’s recognition that Helga, after coming back from Europe, “tries, in fact, to relinquish the very idea of herself as object but only to find herself objectified anew.”106 The more often Helga tries to self-define herself through self-location, the more restless she becomes and consequently, “the ‘transforming experience of any new place,”107 as McLendon calls it, fast alters into fright and increasing lonesomeness, which discloses “the elusiveness of her sense of belonging.”108 The overall picture shows that travelling is indeed essential for the protagonists of the passing narratives as it provides the basis for a new identity. However, the physical journey does not free them completely but also expose them to other facts and limits. Both travel the physical and the psychological one through the North and South of America and Europe enrich the passing figures’ minds. But because they mistake self-location for self-definition, a feeling of dislocation and alienation emerges. In conclusion, the passing figures are incapable of creating a new identity by means of travelling because they have their identity being constructed and

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imposed upon them by society rather than being created as an expression of their inner self.

106

Gray, 267. McLendon, 79. 108 McLendon, 79. 107

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

5. Critical Reflection & Conclusion: Passing and the Instability of Race

Having disentangled the complexities of the passing theme, including reasons, figures as well as the act itself with and in the narratives of Johnson and Larsen, it seems appropriate to return to Bell’s assertion and to explore whether the “black American experience and the complex double-consciousness, socialized ambivalence, and double vision” is “a special blessing or burden of the Afro-American identity”109. It has to be scrutinized what outcome passing has and whether it unshackles AfricanAmericans from social restrictions, thus providing the stable identity for which every passing figure aims. Moreover, this final chapter will examine whether concepts, such as DuBois’ theory of double consciousness are useful in the provision of a fulfilled identity. In conclusion, the ways in which passing challenges the essentialism of the concept of race will be critically reflected. The theme of passing is difficult to explore because if one passes, one has to conceal one’s identity and thus, is not likely to be heard from again. This, however, also implies that passing can be successful and thus, experienced as a blessing. In The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, the narrator, enjoys and uses his double conscious view through his mask and “laughed heartily over […] the capital joke [he]

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was playing.”110 As passing transfers the mulatto to the white side of the colour line the passing figure, while looking through a veil, gains a good insight into the white world. Passing thus may lead, according to Sollors “to an experience of revelation, to seeing while not being seen-learning about the freemasonry of whiteness, 109 110

Bell, 35. Johnson, 93. 34

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

surreptitiously joining an enemy camp for a while- like a Trojan horse.”111 What becomes additionally apparent here, especially when looking at Sollor’s metaphor of the Trojan horse, is the absurdity of the way in which information about white people is gained, an absurdity that only reflects the even greater ridiculousness of racial divisions. Furthermore, the ex-coloured man feels in his role of the secret spy, who must bear being muted when others talk about black people, as “a coward, a deserter”112 and thus, passing creates the feeling of a burden. Passing for white enables the mulatto protagonists in Larsen’s and Johnson’s novels to gain the status and privilege accompanying whiteness, thus living out the American side of their DuBoisian double-conscious life. In The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, Johnson refers often to DuBois and even refers to the metaphor of the veil at the beginning of his book in order to view the relationship. However, by having his narrator permanently changing his roles to the white or black side, Johnson questions DuBois’ third self in which African and American selves possess an autonomous part. The narrator can only fulfil one role at a time and cannot incorporate two simultaneously. Although, the mulatto passes into an advantageous role to escape double consciousness and thus, to have a stable identity, her inner conflict still persists after the act of passing. Mar explains that “because of social pressure, only one identity can prevail.”113 This implies, even though the passer escapes the direct restrictions that are imposed on him by society as a black person, he

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is caught again in restrictions which do not allow him to live out his black part. In the end, the ex-coloured man decides for a white identity and distances himself from the African-American community, which is also contradictory to DuBois’ proposed

111

Sollors, 253. Johnson, 99. 113 Gallego, 63. 112

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

strong racial bond. Although the narrator explains that he has “never really been a Negro, […] only a privileged spectator of their inner lives,”114 he still feels like a coward and deserter. It seems credible to claim that the secret act of passing for white leads consequently, due to strict social categorization, to an inner conflict and again to double consciousness. It appears as if double consciousness both erodes and cements the act of passing. Mar claims that “Johnson regards the idea of double consciousness in the same individual as impracticable,”115 but this is doubtful. Mar disregards that the ex-coloured man only ‘survives’ as a white by compromising to give up his beloved and completing piano playing. When comparing the ideal of the AfricanAmerican identity to his unsatisfactory life as “an ordinarily successful white man who has made a little money,”116 the narrator even condemns it “for a mess of pottage.”117 However, agreeing with Mar as well as many other critics118, the “series of mutations or altering personalities,” the ex-colored man adopts along the colour line, manifest “the impossibility of integrating both identities in one body, and hence, the impracticability of the DuBoisian third self.”119 Neither passing nor DuBois’ theory provide the mulatto with a “better and truer self.”120 Moreover, the ex-colored man’s repeated change from one role into the other demonstrates that he is not able to obtain a consistent racial identity. This reveals, using Pfeiffer’s explicitly cogent words, “the fundamental instability of race as a signifying category.”121 As it can be

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observed, the narrator even explicitly declares that he “had a strong aversion to being

114

Johnson, 99. Gallego, 63. 116 Johson, 99. 117 Johnson, 100. 118 See Kawash and Pfeiffer. 119 Gallego, 64. 120 DuBois, 2. 121 Pfeiffer, 60. 115

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

classed.”122 Furthermore, it can be suggested that by his decision of letting “the world take [him] for what it would,” he also refuses any racial categorization or classification. Since, between all these despotic categorisations and socially established canons there is no room for a third category or DuBois’ third self, Johnson might in this way even proclaim a solution for the plight of the African-American soul. A similar but stronger resolution of the plight of the African-American identity is proposed in Larsen’s novels Quicksand and Passing. Helga is, similar to the excoloured man, in a position which enables and allows her, according to Carby, “to be both inside and outside the race issue, observer and participant.”123 However, while taking Gray’s argument into account and developing it further, it becomes obvious that she cannot inhabit both positions. Even though her “indeterminacy”124 facilitates border crossings and implies an advantageous lifestyle, it neither enables the search for self nor does it lead to a more fulfilling identity. The act of passing does not provide Helga with a satisfying identity, a third self; it and in particular the involved essential travel, actually even exacerbate her situation. The more often she changes her roles, the more alienated she feels in her identity and the deeper she sinks into the quicksand. “Quicksand” is not merely a title, but a metaphor for an individual and isolated struggle, which is condemned to failure and contains the feelings of “suffocation” and “asphyxiation”125. Helga is trapped in her roles, caught in the sand

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and sucked into it until she dies. She cannot escape from her role as a mother and cannot abandon her children. Whereas her first four children symbolize her 122

Johnson, 10. Carby, Hazel. “The Quicksands of Representation- Rethinking Black Cultural Politics” Reading Black, Reading Feminist- A Critical Anthology. ed. Gates, Henry Louis. (New York: Meridian Book, 1990), 171. 124 Gray, 258. 125 Larsen. Quicksand, 134. 123

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

entrapment, her fifth child personifies her certain death. Larsen, DuBois concluded, “has done a fine, thoughtful and courageous piece of work” with her novel Quicksand, in which she “stressed the duality of the Afro-American experience, the psychic pull between the African (the surpassingly primitive and spiritually liberating folk experience) and American (the apparently refined and intellectually liberating urban experience).”126 Clare in Passing adopts the role of a white person successfully and gains all accompanied privileges. However, in her “having” way, she is not as much interested in a stable identity as she is in Duboisian third identity, which entails everything. “To have all she wants, Clare must maintain multiple identities-multiple subject positionsand pass back and forth between them.”127 By trying to maintain many identities at once, it could be argued, Clare challenges the idea of racial categorization. Additionally, Clare as well as Helga reject to be classified within a race. “Why, she demanded in fierce rebellion, should she be yoked to these despised black folk? […] She didn’t, in spite of her racial markings, belong to these dark segregated people.”128 Ignoring the society of the day and being pulled from one side of the colour line to the other, Clare repeatedly passes into different roles. At first, she only passes for a few privileges but later for racial loyalty, however, in this final act she fails.129 On the one hand, she cannot persist the pull to see her “own people”130 but on the other, she is also not able to uphold her secrecy, as normally one has to leave behind ones older

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self. Since Larsen is not saying who is responsible for Clare’s death- “the trapped and 126

Wall, Cheryl. Women in the Harlem Renaissance. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 117. 127 Cutter, Martha. “Sliding Significations: Passing as a Narrative and Textual Strategy in Nella Larsen’s Fiction.” Passing and the Fictions of Identity. ed. Ginsberg, Elaine. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 92. 128 Larsen. Quicksand, 55. 129 Bennett, 53. 130 Larsen. Passing, 182. 38

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

troubled mulatto […or ] the intolerant white man, Bellew”131, she demonstrates the insecurity but also fortitude of addressing the problem of race during the Harlem Renaissance. Nevertheless, in the end, it always has to be kept in mind who constructed the norms which a whole society adopted. Both novels portray death, whether figurative or real, as the only escape of the mulatto’s double consciousness and thus, corroborate the impossibility of Dubois third self and passing as a strategy to obtain a stable and fulfilling identity. Robinson explains conclusively

For the ‘problem’ of identity, a problem to which passing owes the very possibility of its practice, is predicated on the false promise of the visible as an epistemological guarantee.132

In conclusion, Bell’s assertion proves correct; the African-American identity is a burden, as the mulatto cannot escape a double conscious life, and a blessing, since it enables her an insightful look behind the veil. To perceive passing as a pragmatic solution to escape racial categorization, restrictions and double consciousness, proves problematic. Since no protagonists are able to embody either role completely, an inner conflict and double consciousness still persists. Passing thus demonstrates the absurdity of the structure of racial identity, in which race operates as a form of incarnated identity. Furthermore, it

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questions the very concept on which passing is premised: race. When critically engaging in the motifs of passing and exploring the journey of double-conscious African Americans along the colour line in the narratives Passing, Quicksand

131

Bennett, 54. Robinson, Amy. “It Takes One to Know One: Passing and Communities of Common Interest.” Critical Inquiry. 20.4. (1994), 716. 132

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

and The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man a broader perspective shows that the crucial point is not so much whether the African-American identity is a blessing or a burden but the very concept of race, which creates this seeming opposition. The contradictions inherent in double consciousness are expressions of the contradictions in race. The journey of the passing protagonists of Larsen’s and Johnson’s narratives has revealed that on the one hand, race cannot be escaped but that it is, on the other hand, in itself full of instability and absurd as a signifying category. It is not possible to define an identity by the categorization of race or DuBois’ theory because the concept of race, which is incorporated in both, is in itself unstable and cannot characterize or explain an identity. Ginsberg explains cogently:

Passing challenges the essentialism that is often the foundation of identity politics, a challenge that may be seen as either threatening or liberating but in either instances discloses the truth that identities are not singularly true or false but multiple and contingent.133

Since every individual, no matter what colour or race, has their own history, culture, character and identity, the question of identity lies with the individual. Every one has to ask themselves the, maybe unanswerable, question “Who am I?” If one is exposed

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to social norms, then maybe indeed, the Ex-coloured man’s approach of letting “the world take me for what it would”134 is the most successful. Only a change in value of the society can desegregate the problem of identity along the colour line.

133 134

Ginsberg, 4. Johnson, 90. 40

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

6. Bibliography

Primary texts Du Bois, W.E.B.. The Souls of Black Folk W.E.B. Du Bois. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2004. Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man. 1st.ed. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. Larsen, Nella. Quicksand & Passing. London: Serpent’s Tail. 2001.

Secondary texts Bell, Bernard. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Armherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989. Bennett, Juda. The Passing Figure – Racial Confusion in Modern American Literature. Vol.6. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. Brody, Jennifer DeVere. "Clare Kendry's 'True' Colors: Race and Class Conflict in Nella Larsen's Passing.” Callaloo: A Journal of African American and African Arts and Letters 15.4 (1992), 1053-65.

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Davis, James. Who is Black – One Nation’s Definition. Pennslvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 1991. Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press. 1993. Gallego, Mar. Passing Novels in the Harlem Renaissance: Identity Politics and Textual Strategies (FORECAAST). Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2003.

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Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

Gates, Henry Louis (ed). Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology. New York: Meridian Book, 1990. Gates, Henry Louis and Terri Hume Oliver (eds). The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B Du Bois. – A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton & Company.1999. Ginsberg, Elaine. Passing and the Fictions of Identity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. Gray, Jeffrey. "Essence and the Mulatto Traveler: Europe as Embodiment in Nella Larsen's Quicksand.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 27.3 (1994), 257-70. Hill, Patricia Liggins (ed). “ ‘Bound No’th Blues.’ African American History and Culture 1915-1945. ‘What happens to a Dream Deferred?’” Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Kawash, Samira. Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hybridity, and Singularity in African-American Narrative. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. “Lois

Mailou

Jones.”

Howard

University

Washington.

D.C.

08/11/2001.

(22/03/2007). www.howard.edu/library/Art@Howard/LMJ/page4.htm. McLendon, Jaquelyn. The Politics of Color in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995.

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“Mulo.” Real Academia Española. 24/06/2004. (11/12/2006). http://rae.es. Pfeiffer, Kathleen. Race Passing and the American Individualism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003. Robinson, Amy. “It Takes One to Know One: Passing and Communities of Common Interest.” Critical Inquiry. 20.4. (1994), 715-736. 42

Wehnert, Kathleen. Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line : An Exploration of African-Americans on their Journey for an

Rottenberg, Catherine. “Passing: Race, Identification, and Desire.” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 45.4 (2003), 435-52. Smith, Valerie. Self-discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. Sollors, Werner. Neither Black Nor White Yet Both- Thematic Exploration of Interracial Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Stepto, Robert. From Behind the Veil- A Study of Afro-American Narrative. 2. ed.. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Wall, Cheryl. Women in the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. “William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.” Drop Me Off in Harlem- Exploring the Intersections. March 2003. (02/03/2007)

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http://artsedge.kennedycenter.org/exploring/harlem/faces/dubois_text.htm.

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