Characters Discussed
Irene (’Rene) Westover Redfield
Irene (’Rene) Westover Redfield, the protagonist, in her early thirties, foremost among a cast of unlikable characters. She is a complacent member of the moneyed black elite of Harlem with a craving for safety. Olive-skinned, she “passes” for white when she wants a taxi, a theater ticket, or entrée into a classy café, but her erstwhile friend Clare Kendry’s wholesale betrayal of her race provokes her scorn and a sense of unease. Jealous and frightened of Clare’s attraction for her husband, she is nevertheless bound to her by the ties of race. As the novel’s center of consciousness, from the first she focuses the reader’s own sense of unease, and at the novel’s close the reader wonders whether ’Rene has deliberately pushed Clare to her death from a sixth-floor window.
Clare Kendry
Clare Kendry, also referred to as Mrs. John Bellew, ’Rene’s Chicago childhood friend. Blonde, pale-skinned Clare grew up as the orphaned poor relation of whites whom it suited to obscure her racial origins. She is now married to a wealthy black-hating bigot (he nicknames her “Nig” because her skin is darkening with age). There is reckless daring in her life of deception and something tragic in the loss of selfhood that drives her to reestablish dangerous contact with the blackness whose burden ’Rene has been privileged to bear so lightly. An elusive and flowerlike beauty with a caressing smile and concealing black eyes, she is a creature apart, a pariah, yet capable of heights and depths of feeling that ’Rene has never known. When she is finally confronted by Bellew, the reader is left to wonder whether she committed suicide or was pushed to her death.
Brian Redfield
Brian Redfield, ’Rene’s husband, a successful doctor. Urbane and handsome, Redfield is openly dissatisfied with his small world, covertly bored by his wife, and sexually fascinated by Clare Kendry. His marriage to ’Rene contrasts unfavorably with Bellew’s to Clare—one more twist in the novel’s complex web of race, sex, and class.
John (Jack) Bellew
John (Jack) Bellew, an honest and jolly racist of the old school who ignorantly adores his wife.
Gertrude Martin
Gertrude Martin, one of Clare’s few “friends,” a coarse and overweight matron, another black “goat” who can pass for a “sheep,” but one whose white husband knows the truth.
Zulena
Zulena and
Liza
Liza, ’Rene’s mahogany and ebony-colored servants.
Hugh Wentworth
Hugh Wentworth, ’Rene’s white high-society friend who “goes in” for her pet charity, the Negro Welfare League. He and ’Rene discuss contemporary themes of race and culture, especially the phenomenon of “passing.”
The Characters
Larsen uses a third-person omniscient narrator who is always close to Irene Redfield’s thoughts and feelings. Most of the novel’s meaning depends on Irene’s character. Irene, Clare, and Brian are the most fully realized of the characters, though several relatively undeveloped characters are present, including Gertrude Martin, John Bellew, Zulena, Hugh Wentworth, and Felise Freeland.
Irene is a complicated character whose exterior conventionality masks a woman who wants adventure and excitement and whose reinvolvement with Clare gives her vicarious outlets for feelings she has denied. Irene is an inauthentic woman. By disclosing her thoughts, feelings, and life choices, Larsen highlights not only the extent of this inauthenticity but also how it creates a woman more dangerous in her denial of self than Clare is in her overt risk-taking.
Irene has groomed herself to be a model of black middle-class respectability. She marries a physician, has two sons, lives in a respectable Harlem brownstone, associates with the...
(This entire section contains 715 words.)
Unlock this Study Guide Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
right people, and supports the right social causes, such as the Negro Welfare League. On the surface, she has it all. Beneath the surface, Larsen shows the price Irene pays to live a fraudulent life.
When Irene reflects on her relationship with Brian and the constant tension she has to quell to keep him from moving to Brazil and disrupting her life, she understands that she does not love him and never has. She thinks that if he were to die, she would only look askance at his photograph. She and Brian even sleep in separate bedrooms. She remains in her marriage for the financial security and social standing it provides. When Clare poses a risk to her security, Irene decides to do something about it. Most of her activity is relegated to an ever-increasing series of thoughts, first centering on how nice it would be if Clare disappeared from their circle of friends and then proceeding to visions of Clare’s death.
Irene is also inauthentic in her role of mother. She makes sure that her sons are dressed, are fed well, and are doing their homework, but she takes no real interest in their lives other than wanting them not to be hurt by racism. She will not discuss racism or human sexuality with them because she thinks that if these topics are not discussed, then they do not exist.
In other words, Irene “passes” as a wife and mother. Both guises make her angry and irritable just beneath the surface. Another Irene lurks deeper inside, one craving the very danger she objects to in Clare’s life. Larsen presents this part of Irene’s character through a detailing of Irene’s oscillating thoughts and feelings about Clare. In her thoughts, Irene often hates Clare, seeing her as a despicable black woman and mother, but in her actions she always lets Clare have her way, at least until the final pages of the novel. Psychologically, Irene is fascinated with Clare, with her vitality, her risk-taking, her doing what she wants to do. Irene is always preoccupied with Clare.
Clare Kendry is not so preoccupied with Irene. From the beginning of the novel, Clare is presented as someone who has always taken risks to get what she wants. Her decision to pass and then to marry a white man is her most significant risk, for she can have no control over the color of any children she might have. When she meets Irene in Chicago and invites Irene and Gertrude to meet her husband, John, she is again taking risks. He might suspect not only that her friends are black but also that she is too. Reentering the black experience through Irene’s contacts is yet one more risk Clare takes. Her risks are taken with little thought as to how negative consequences might affect others, for example her child and her black friends. In this sense, Clare is willful, selfish, and daring. More important, unlike Irene, Clare makes the choices to live as she wants to, not as others might expect her to. Her decision to rejoin black people is not presented in any noble way. She does not seem to want to reidentify with black people. Her intention is to have experiences that satisfy her. The price for her choices is her death.