Nella Larsen's Passing and Toni Morrison's Recitatif: Racial Identity and Female Friendships

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Nella Larsen’s Passing and Toni Morrison’s Recitatif portray female friendship as a contract that binds two individuals together based on their struggle to establish a racial identity. In both novels, racial identity raises tensions in the relationship through the difficulties the women experience in trying to reconcile their independent desires and feelings with their loyalty to the other woman. To foster loyalty, the contract draws its influence from the past, particularly in Recitatif. The reader’s inability to discern which woman in the Twyla-Roberta friendship is black and which is white ultimately serves as a trope for the frustration each woman associates with Maggie, the old woman from St.

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Bonny’s. Somehow, Maggie represents both the price of disloyalty within the friendship contract as well as identity tension; at the end of the novel both women are emotional and Roberta, crying, asks “What the hell happened to Maggie?” (Morrison 20), which is akin to asking “who are we?” Racial and identity tensions also arise in Passing, likely because there are at least two contracts at play when Irene and Clare engage; their shared ability to pass for white women draws them together, however, Irene disdains Clare’s decision to base her entire livelihood on her ability to pass.

Thus, Irene’s conflictions arise from the obligation she feels to protect Clare’s secret and her frustration with Clare’s rejection of black society. Both novels illustrate the intricate ties of loyalty rooted in racial identity and the struggle each character faces as they try to define themselves independently of their friends and environment.

Female friendship in Nella Larsen’s Passing illustrates the delicate balance those who are able to “pass” must consciously find and walk. Informally defined as an African American having the ability to pass for a white person, “passing” defines the tiers of social hierarchy in Irene Redfield’s affluent New York neighborhood. “They always took her for an Italian, a Spaniard, a Mexican, or a gipsy. Never, when she was alone, had they even remotely seemed to suspect that she was a Negro” (Larsen 150). As Larsen’s listed ethnicities indicate, Irene’s ability to pass rests on her faintly exotic look. This exotic appearance contributes to Irene’s stability within African American society as much as it does her confidence to transcend the black-white boundary and sip an iced tea in the Drayton. However, the status afforded by the lightness of her skin within black society is contingent upon how she exercises her ability to pass; any decision to pass automatically acknowledges her blackness, but she must consciously employ it to undermine white power. These racial tensions in passing are illustrated by Irene’s relationship with Clare Kendry; Clare’s rejection of black society in favor of passing within the white social sphere complicates Irene’s loyalty to her as a fellow woman passer, and portrays Irene as the pinnacle of black achievement while casting Clare as the greedy over-reacher.

When Irene is sitting in the Drayton, Larsen makes the reader is privy to Irene’s objective observations before we learn the woman is Clare. “An attractive-looking woman…with those dark, almost black, eyes and that wide mouth like a scarlet flower against the ivory of her skin. Nice clothes too, just right for the weather…” (Larsen 148). The scope of these observations indicates Irene’s stereotypical bias as a woman appraising another woman (she notes first her attractiveness and physical features before attending to her apparel), but also indicates the confidence Irene has in her ability to properly categorize other women. In this scene, her ability to pass at the Drayton serves as a license for her to appraise Clare; she is not looking at Clare through a black woman’s eyes, but a white woman’s. It does not once occur to Irene that the woman she is looking at might be passing, too. In fact, her initial discomfort with Clare was caused by a moment of temporary panic that she herself was somehow not passing. However, her choice to boldly meet Clare’s eyes reflects her deep-seated loyalty to her race; on behalf of all of the black women who cannot pass, Irene coolly meets the perceived white woman’s probing gaze.

However, we soon learn that not only has Irene misjudged the situation, she has socially erred by failing to recognize a long-time acquaintance. It is only at the sound of Clare’s laugh that Irene recognizes her (Larsen 151) and her reaction to Clare’s bubbly enthusiasm reflects her discomfort. “‘It’s awfully surprising,’” Irene told her, and, seeing the change in Clare’s smile, knew that she had revealed a corner of her own thoughts” (Larsen 152). As Larsen takes us through Irene’s understanding of Clare’s history, the change in Clare’s smile acquires significance. Clare is very much in control of the situation from the moment Irene sits down; she is the one who recognizes Irene and initiates conversation despite Irene’s wary confusion. Thus, the change in Clare’s smile suggests a self-satisfaction in causing Irene to disbelievingly scramble for a past-to-present comparison as much as a desire to be recognized for rising above the circumstances of her volatile childhood. Further, Larsen’s ambiguity with regard to which woman’s thoughts have been partially revealed suggests a mutual connection, if not understanding, between the two women that not only exists in the present, but has sustained throughout the twelve years since Irene had seen Clare.

The challenge of distinguishing Irene and Clare’s relationship as based on a connection or understanding is consistent throughout the novel. Their shared ability to pass connects them regardless of their place in the social sphere, but the way they use passing complicates their relationship as females. For Irene, it is a fortunate advantage that she employs at her convenience. But for Clare it represents the basis of her livelihood, a stake that Irene herself would never be able to take. “The truth was, [Irene] was curious…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 certainly not entirely friendly” (Larsen 157). Here, Irene’s representation of “passing” denotes a desire to understand Clare’s present lifestyle more than Clare as a person. By recognizing passing as “hazardous” Irene acknowledges Clare’s boldness, but to claim that Clare broke away “from all that was familiar and friendly” reflects a fundamental difference in the two women’s relationship: Clare’s violent, unpredictable childhood starkly contrasts Irene’s placid, stable one, suggesting that the ability to pass connects the women, but does not necessarily precipitate understanding between them. Irene will never be able to understand the psychological consequences Clare lives with as a result of her childhood.

Following the death of her alcoholic father, Clare had to sneak out from under the supervision of her white aunts to socially engage other African Americans. Living with her guardians, she was made to earn her keep as “to their notion, hard labour was good for me. I had Negro blood…” (Larsen 158). Her aunts’ assumption that Clare was made for physical labor apparently ignores her ability to pass; they either didn’t care that they could have treated her as a white child or actively participated in reminding her that she wasn’t, in fact, white. Regardless of her aunts’ motives, it makes sense that Clare saw the best means of escape as marrying a white man; she likely sees no disloyalty to her mixed blood because she is just trying to do what all her black ancestors did before her: survive.

Interestingly, Irene’s observation with regard to Clare’s physical attractiveness suggests that it is her only subtly African feature—her eyes—that raises her to such an exquisite standard of beauty. “Yes, Clare Kendry’s loveliness was absolute, beyond challenge, thanks to those eyes which her grandmother and later her mother and father had given her” (Larsen 161). By representing Clare’s beauty through her eyes, Larsen enforces Irene’s loyalty to Clare because Irene isn’t just seeing Clare when she looks at her, she is seeing herself as well: a woman whose racial identity is physically indeterminable. Like Irene, Clare understands what it means to be fundamentally misunderstood by the world from the first impression. The difference between the women, though, is Clare wants to be misunderstood. In fact, the stability of her marriage, her life, depends on being mistaken for a white woman. Irene, on the other hand, corrects the world with quiet dignity through her marriage to a dark man and having two sons, one of whom is dark. The impossibility of Clare’s being able to accept a dark child is illustrated by her adamant refusal to have any more children (Larsen 168), which tests Irene’s composure as she is subsequently obliged to assert to Clare and company that her son is dark and she is, in fact, unashamed of it. The women’s fundamental difference as mothers erodes the loyalty they owe one another as racially ambiguous females.

Throughout the novel, Clare’s relationship with her daughter, Margery, is virtually nonexistent. We know that Margery is away at school, and that Clare suffered from extreme anxiety throughout the duration of her pregnancy with fear that Margery would be born dark, thus revealing Clare as passing. Irene, on the other hand, embraces motherhood with a fierce pride, attending to her sons as the centerpieces of her life. In both women’s case, their offspring define the success they’ve found in their social sphere; Margery preserves and furthers Clare’s passing with her pale-colored skin and Irene’s sons represent her ability to cultivate a respectful lineage. Yet, at the conclusion of the novel the women’s children become a symbolic representation of the difficulties the women experience trying to extrapolate a concrete identity from their racial appearance and the shared implications of their ability to pass; Margery, Ted, and Brian Jr. encompass the very black-white spectrum that their mothers worked their entire lives to navigate.

In Toni Morrison’s Recitatif, the black-white spectrum is bridged by St. Bonny’s, the shelter for orphaned children. Brought together by the fact that they’re not “real” orphans with “beautiful dead parents in the sky” (Morrison 2), Twyla and Roberta’s relationship begins in room 406. The reader’s inability to discern for certain which girl is black and which is white preserves a semblance of objectivity, though the story’s narration through Twyla’s perspective further complicates our understanding of the two girls (and later women). It’s clear that the basis for their loyalty to one another began when they were eight years old, running from the older girls together and abusing Maggie. However, even then their shared circumstances did not make them colorblind; it merely superseded the color line. Thus, it’s possible to read the women’s later tensions as stemming from a mutual desire to preserve the relationship of two little girls who were both “dumped,” despite the obviously negative implications of their racial differences as adults.

Despite Twyla’s initial reservations about rooming with Roberta, the other girl immediately recommends herself to Twyla.

“Is your mother sick too?”

“No,” I said. “She just likes to dance all night.”

“Oh,” she nodded her head and I liked the way she understood things so fast” (Morrison 1).

This understanding becomes a pattern that binds the two girls together, extending beyond their time at St. Bonny’s and influencing their adult interactions, likely more than either of them would like to admit. It’s likely that because of her sick mother, Roberta is more finely attuned to the subtleties of other people’s suffering, whereas Twyla’s upbringing led her to adopt a more forward, dismissive attitude with her personal struggles. This theme of past-to-present influence is reminiscent of that in Passing, wherein the women’s adult relationship is alternatively strengthened and weakened by the relationship they had as girls; Irene knows Clare’s history, but does not really know Clare. Unlike Passing, however, Recitatif emphasizes shared identities as a product of location, and posits race as the external factor working against their ability to cultivate a friendship as grown women.

Morrison’s race indicators throughout the short story are calculated and applied to each woman in such a way that it is impossible to definitively say which woman is which. The effect of this is to emphasize the significance of St. Bonny’s, as well as lead the reader to understand the complex layer of loyalties the place instilled in the women. As young girls, they were brought together by the shared absence of their mothers, however, as neither St. Bonny’s nor their mother’s absence was their choice, can we say that they had control over the bond they formed at the shelter? “We didn’t like each other all that much at first, but nobody else wanted to play with us…” (Morrison 2). Twyla’s statement implicates her relationship with Roberta as a friendship, suggesting instead that it was a relationship borne of a mutual need for the girls to survive a situation that both stripped them of their identity and refused to give them one; they effectively needed one another to create their respective identities at the orphanage.

Despite their mutual dependence, there is evidence to suggest that of the two of them, Roberta evolved an identity more independently than Twyla did. At their first chance encounter outside St. Bonny’s, Twyla fails to assess the situation properly and hails Roberta directly, calling her by her first and last name so there can be no confusion, and ultimately placing Roberta in the exceptionally uncomfortable position of having to acknowledge her past to two people with whom she is clearly trying to escape that same past with. “She squinted for a second and then said, “Wow.” (Morrison 7). Although Twyla interprets the following conversation indignantly and consciously moves to hurt Roberta by asking how her mother is, the entire interaction is an acknowledgement of their relationship, with Twyla subconsciously asking Roberta if it is indeed a friendship. Roberta’s clipped “Wow” reflects her surprise at being confronted by Twyla as much as it does her unwillingness—or inability—to answer the question inherent in Twyla’s presence.

The question of whether or not Twyla and Roberta are friends as adults depends on defining their relationship as children within the context of their relationship with St. Bonny’s, specifically the orchard and Maggie, the old woman who would cut through the orchard to catch her bus on time if her shift ran late. “I used to dream a lot and almost always the orchard was there…I don’t know why I dreamt about that orchard so much. Nothing really happened…Maggie fell down there once. The kitchen woman with legs like parentheses” (Morrison 2). Despite Twyla’s assertion that there was nothing extraordinary about the orchard, the fact that it featured so prominently in her dreams suggests that the orchard is the preservation ground for all of Twyla’s memories of St. Bonny’s. Further, she and Roberta’s acute disdain for Maggie reflects the deep-seated frustration of children who lack the ability to effectively communicate; Maggie’s very legs are bent into the very things that go unsaid. In effect, the old woman serves as a motif for Twyla and Roberta’s unwillingness to address the root of the tensions in their adult relationship; their inability to correctly remember whether Maggie was black or white particularly represents the impossibility of reaching a resolution within their relationship.

Relationship irresolution is a recurring theme in both Passing and Recitatif. For Irene and Clare, the incredibly dramatic climax of Clare’s death illustrates the impossibility of resolution between the two women. If we are to interpret Clare’s death as a deliberate action of Irene’s, the death becomes a necessary sacrifice for the preservation of Irene’s loyalty to Clare; she cannot allow her to live as an exposed passer because such an existence directly contradicts “passing.” Further, in order for Twyla and Roberta to remain friends, they must acknowledge the role that Maggie plays in their loyalty to one another while surmounting the shame that permeates their shared memories of harassing the (black?) woman. In effect, Clare’s death and Maggie’s racial ambiguity encapsulate the impermanence of friendship as a result of the divisive nature of shared loyalties.