Brandon Qi

Eng 300
1060 Words
Kane
Margery in Passing

While Judith Butler’s psychoanalysis provides an effective method of reading Nella

Larsen’s Passing which unifies much of previous perspectives, it fails to regard the crucial role
of children in her theory of Bellew’s sexuality, which focuses on “the reproductive aspirations of
white racial purity” (434, Butler). The process of reproduction cannot be examined without also
looking at the product of it, and thus the role of Margery, missing from Butler’s essay, causes an
incompleteness in her reading.
Margery’s presence in Passing is auspiciously indeterminate. There is sure importance
to the character — Clare’s rooftop invitation towards Irene first mentions Margery, with Jack only
added as an afterthought, but throughout the novel Margery is nowhere to be seen. Specially,
Margery is absent from tea because “she wanted to stay with the children, [] especially since it’s
so hot in town” (24). Here the child, the method through which white hegemony would be
practiced, is contained within childhood, absent from the conflicts of the social sphere. If,
according to McDowell, the “fire imagery” (374, McDowell) is a conspicuous set of erotic
symbols, Margery’s distance from the heat also separates her from sexuality. Later on, her
physical distance is further highlighted as she is separated completely from her parents in
Switzerland.
Margery also is able to naturally belong with the children of “Jack’s people”, to the
degree that it “seemed a shame not to let her” (24). Margery’s birth is also described as having
“turned out all right” (26). The concept of Margery’s skin as “all right” reenforces the white
normative. To Clare, Margery remains the ultimate figure that would be exempt from the “white
male gaze” (434, Butler) of Bellew, since she seems to embody the standard — she has never
had to “pass” like her mother.
Then, Margery’s comfort under this “gaze” as well as distance from conflict is called to
question by Irene, who learns to eventually use Margery as a “weapon” (48). The force of this
weapon is, at first glance, based off of motherly love, but Irene attributes responsibility to it: “We
mothers are all responsible for the security and happiness of our children.” (48) In that sense,
the “security” of Margery herself, free from social conflicts, is the part of the duty of Clare. Clare
is not scared by her being found out by Bellew (“It can’t make all the difference in the
world” (48)), but the topic of the child is extremely effective. If the “success of a certain symbolic
ordering of gender, sexuality and race” from Bellew’s finding clare “wanting” (433, Butler)
causes psychic death within Clare, then the same situation imposed upon Margery, who is more
“white” and has not had to “pass”, should signal further failure for Clare socially, a surrender to a
even more severe “phallicism” (434, Butler).
A change then occurs in the novel which alters Clare’s response to the same “weapon”.
After the Negro Wellfare League dance, which Irene (or the narrator) deems “nevertheless
important”, a “new friendship” (56) arises. Clare comes to Irene “frequently after that” (56), her
visits “dependent on the presence or absence of John Bellew.” (58) Here, she begins to be
physically separated from John’s white gaze, and subsequently makes the claim of “children
aren’t everything” (58). She says: “I’m not safe” (58), and not only does the challenge to safety
both refer back to her “catlike” (6) nature but also the responsibility for the security of her child. A
lack of safety relinquishes the social duty that Clare has for Margery, and this realization comes
from her absence from Bellew. This responsibility, then, is part of the imposing superego. The
existence of the child herself relies on the assumptions of heterosexual norm, and her social
status on monogamy. If the hegemony is secured through reproduction, and the child is the
method, then the role of the parent to ensure the social survival of the child is also part of the
“pursuit” (418, Butler).
Clare herself is first presented in the image of a child, and she as a child was free from
the “white gaze”. Bob Kendry’s “bellowing curses”, with the participle especially noted, are noted
as “ineffectual” (5). At his death, Clare was the one “staring down at the familiar pasty-white
face” (6). In fact, Clare was the dominant end when examined through various domains of
power. Her stare overwhelmed the “bellow”, and she also held the advantage in class-related
height. The “bellow” which correlates to the “white gaze” was overwhelmed by its own method.
Clare, as a child, notably suffered the early death of her mother. The mother figure, who
is supposed to offer the security and guarantee the absence of the child, was then absent
herself in her own childhood, and results in an instance of overpowering that Butler does not
mention. If one difficulty in “prohibition against miscegenation” lies in the “tenuous borders that
purity requires”, with manipulation of which “Clare betrays Bellow” (434, Butler), then the
children (with Clare and Margery both being mixed) is the literal example of miscegenation, one
tenuous border that has the power to overturn the “white gaze”. Here in the text lies an example
of Butler’s “potential resistance” (433, Butler) that is realized — through the disassociation of
motherhood, or rather the maternal responsibility that Bellew and Bob Kendry relies upon for
their power.
The suicide of Clare, then, can be read in a way that not only “marks [] the sites” (433,
Butler) of potential resistance — it is direct action. Clare stares at everyone at her father’s
death, and is here stared at by everyone, but she is defined through negations: “as if everyone
were not staring at her [], as if the whole structure of her life were not lying in fragments.” (79)
Here she chooses the “not”. The structure of her life, equivalent to the gaze formulated under
the superego, is denied. She actively chooses what her mother has done in her own childhood
— absence, which seems to be an inevitable process (“Her mother [] would have run away if
she hadn’t died” (14)). In this way, then, the absence of Margery in Clare’s life of Passing is
equivalent to the absence of Clare in Margery’s — but the novel again prefers differential
narration. In the end, things need to be defined by what they are not to escape the structure, the
“white gaze”.

 Citations

Larsen, Nella, and Carla Kaplan. Passing: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts,
Criticism. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.

McDowell, Deborah. “Black Female Sexuality in Passing” Passing: Authoritative Text,

Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 363-379.

Butler, Judith. “Passing, Queering: Nella Larsen’s Psychoanalytic Challenge” Passing:

Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. New York, W.W. Norton & Company,
2007. 417-435.

Acknowledgements:


I thank my classmates, friends, and roommate.