Passing develops many issues that converge on the novel’s larger theme of the consequences and nuances of racial passing in the 1920’s. Larsen extends her understanding of passing to more than its obvious racial considerations. In her extended coverage of the phenomenon of passing, her focus is on those who do not live authentically. To Larsen, living inauthentically is a human tragedy. This idea is advanced most directly in her scrutiny of the Redfields, particularly Irene.

Larsen critiques racial passing from the position that racial uniqueness, which in the United States includes a historical and cultural African American tradition, is not something that one should dismiss. Even as she details Clare’s reasons for passing, which include economic and social opportunity and sometimes peace of mind, Larsen suggests that these do not take the place of one’s racial culture. Clare’s reasons for wanting to reenter the black experience make the point. In spite of the wealth and leisure she has in her marriage to John Bellew, Clare misses her people. Although she is not always sincere in her determination to be a part of black people’s lives, Clare is sincere when she tells Irene how much she misses black people.

The price individuals pay when they choose to pass racially is high. Many remain trapped in their new white world, forever geographically and socially separated from their people, but always spiritually connected in some way. If, as in Clare’s case, they choose to return to their people, dire consequences threaten, as evinced by John Bellew’s reaction to the knowledge that Clare is black and more poignantly by Clare’s mysterious death.

Larsen’s critique of the other kinds of passing is no less severe. In her close attention to Irene’s psychology, Larsen emphasizes that living inauthentically by adhering to cultural scripts of conventionality and material possession, even within one’s race, is dangerous and damaging to the human spirit. Irene is a shell of a woman. She is intelligent and creative, but those traits are wasted in maintaining a marriage to a husband she does not love. She persists in the marriage only because she wants the upper-class life-style that it affords.

Wanting to believe that Clare’s intrusion into her life is a threat to her marriage, Irene does all she can to destroy a friendship that provides her only real living. Irene’s change from doing whatever Clare says to finding ways to sever their friendship accompanies her recognition that her marriage to Brian, indeed her entire adult life, is a fraud. Rather than accept this growing understanding, Irene denies it. She thinks that if only Clare were out of the way, all else would return to normal.

At the novel’s end, Larsen makes it clear that Irene’s relief at Clare’s death is temporary. At Clare’s death, Irene is faced with the knowledge that her life is empty. Her passing, like Clare’s passing, has come to naught.