50 Fun Facts About Passing (Nella Larsen Novel)

In Passing, what does Clare Kendry say is the only thing stopping her from leaving John Bellew?

Her daughter is all that holds her back, Clare says on her last night; if Bellew ever learned the truth, she adds, she would move uptown and do as she pleased.

Clare Kendry dies at a crowded party on the last pages of Passing after falling from where?

An open window on the sixth floor is where Clare is standing when her husband bursts in; a moment later she is gone, and Larsen never says exactly how.

John Bellew explains his racist pet name for Clare in Passing by joking that what is happening?

Her skin is getting darker, Bellew says with a grin, though she was as white as a lily when they married; he has no idea that he is joking about the truth.

Which actor made her feature directing debut with the 2021 film adaptation of Nella Larsen's Passing?

Rebecca Hall wrote and directed it after reflecting on her own family: her mother was of mixed race, and some of her relatives had passed as white.

To which country does Irene's restless husband Brian long to move in Nella Larsen's Passing?

Brazil is Brian's old dream of escape from America; Irene once fought the idea so hard that she hinted she would end the marriage.

On the roof of which Chicago hotel does Irene Redfield run into Clare Kendry in Passing?

The Drayton has a rooftop tea room where Irene, sheltering from the August heat, is herself passing for white when Clare recognises her.

In the final part of Passing, what does Irene become convinced is going on between Brian and Clare?

A love affair is what Irene suspects after Brian invites Clare to a party she had left her out of; she never finds proof, and the reader sees only her fear.

Nella Larsen's Passing is a landmark novel of which African-American cultural movement of the 1920s?

The Harlem Renaissance made Larsen's name, and she has been called its premier novelist, though she published only two novels before falling silent.

At Clare's tea in Passing, what do Clare and Gertrude both say they dreaded throughout pregnancy?

A dark-skinned baby would have exposed Clare to her husband; Irene, listening, answers coolly that one of her own boys is dark.

The 2021 film adaptation of Nella Larsen's Passing was shot in which distinctive visual style?

Black and white photography, framed in a nearly square 4:3 ratio, was chosen to evoke the texture of the 1920s, one of the film's stars said.

What is the profession of Brian Redfield, a job he privately says he has come to hate, in Passing?

Doctor is Brian's calling in name only: he complains of sick people and their meddling families, and it was Irene who insisted he keep his New York practice.

In Passing, which job did Clare Kendry's father Bob do in the Chicago building where they lived?

Janitor was a puzzling job for Bob Kendry, who had been in college with the fathers of Irene's friends; drink, the novel hints, brought him down.

Orphaned at fifteen in Passing, which relatives take in Clare Kendry and work her like a servant?

Her father's aunts, white, pious and poor, hide Clare's ancestry from the neighbours, which later makes it easy for her to pass.

Which of these does Irene Redfield decide is the most important and desired thing in life in Passing?

Security matters more to Irene than anything else, she admits on the final night, which is why Clare's presence feels like a threat to her whole life.

Where is young Margery Bellew at school while her parents spend the winter in New York in Passing?

Switzerland keeps Margery far from her mother's risky visits uptown; Clare dreads sailing back in the spring, though it will reunite them.

On the hotel roof in Passing, what finally makes Irene recognise the staring stranger as Clare Kendry?

Her laugh, a trill like a small bell, gives Clare away after twelve years; until then Irene had taken her for a white stranger.

Clare invites herself to which organisation's annual dance in Passing, where Irene runs the tickets?

Negro Welfare League tickets cost a dollar, and Irene warns that anyone can buy one; Clare goes anyway and dances again and again with Brian.

What does Irene Redfield let slip and shatter at the party she hosts for Hugh Wentworth in Passing?

A teacup slips from her hand as rage at Clare and Brian boils up; she then jokes to Hugh that she broke the ugly heirloom on purpose.

Which friend, unmistakably Black, is arm in arm with Irene when she collides with John Bellew in Passing?

Felise Freeland is visibly Black, so Bellew grasps in a glance that Irene, and therefore his own wife, may not be what he assumed.

When John Bellew greets Irene on a Manhattan street late in Passing, how does she respond?

She pretends not to know him, giving the cool stare she keeps for mashers, yet later regrets it: one word of introduction would have exposed Clare.

Which subject does Brian raise at dinner in front of his sons, against Irene's wishes, late in Passing?

A lynching he has read about in the evening paper leads Brian to tell young Ted why such things happen; Irene wants the boys shielded for a few more years.

Which real 1920s lawsuit crosses Irene's mind in Passing as she wonders if Bellew could divorce Clare?

The Rhinelander case of 1925 saw a wealthy white New Yorker sue to annul his marriage, claiming his wife had hidden her colour; the jury sided with her.

Nella Larsen divides Passing into three parts titled Encounter, Re-Encounter and which third word?

Finale is a musical word for the closing section, which runs from a mild December through Christmas to the night of the last party.

Passing begins with an epigraph asking what Africa means to the speaker, written by which poet?

Countee Cullen's verse pictures a speaker generations removed from the land his ancestors knew, a distance from origins that shadows Clare too.

To which white novelist and photographer, with his wife Fania Marinoff, did Nella Larsen dedicate Passing?

Carl Van Vechten, a white champion of Black writers, had helped Larsen find a publisher for her early work, and the two were close friends.

Nella Larsen tells Passing in which narrative mode, filtered throughout by Irene Redfield's point of view?

Third person narration stays so close to Irene's thoughts that readers never see Clare except through her jealous, unreliable eyes.

What position does Zulena, small and mahogany-coloured, hold in the Redfields' house in Passing?

Maid to the Redfields, Zulena lets critics such as Mary Wilson show how Irene, for all her race loyalty, is at ease being waited on by another Black woman.

What weather sets in over New York on the day of the fatal party that ends Passing?

A snowstorm lasts all day, leaving the courtyard below the party white and untouched; the story had begun, by contrast, in the blaze of a Chicago August.

What colour is the shining gown Clare Kendry wears to the party on the last night of her life in Passing?

Red makes Clare a flame in Irene's eyes that night; she had worn green at the hotel, blue at her tea and black taffeta to the dance.

Gertrude Martin's white husband Fred, who knows she is Black, follows which trade in Passing?

Butcher is the family trade: Fred Martin took over his father's Chicago meat market, and Irene thinks unkindly that Gertrude now looks the part.

What line of work takes John Bellew, Clare's husband in Passing, on trips between cities and continents?

Banking, as some sort of international agent, keeps Bellew travelling, and his absences are what let Clare slip away to see Irene.

Riding the train home to New York in Passing, what does Irene do with Clare's letter of apology?

Irene tears it to pieces, tiny ragged squares that she scatters from the rear of the train, telling herself she will never see Clare again.

At the close of Passing, what does the official examining Clare's fall say he is inclined to believe?

Death by misadventure, meaning an accident, is the last judgement voiced in the book, yet he still wants another look upstairs, and the reader is left far less sure.

What does Irene tell the investigating official about John Bellew after Clare's fatal fall in Passing?

He did not push her, Irene insists, contradicting Brian; she never admits, even to herself, what her own hand on Clare's arm was doing.

What happens to Irene Redfield in the final moments of Passing, as an official questions the party guests?

She faints as her knees give way mid-sentence, leaving her account of Clare's last seconds unfinished.

Irene tells a friend in Passing that she has only ever passed as white for what purpose?

Convenience is her word for it: a restaurant table or theatre tickets, never a social life, which is how she sets herself apart from Clare.

Which domestic arrangement in Passing do critics cite as a sign of Irene and Brian's distant marriage?

Separate bedrooms, with Brian sleeping in the room next to hers, lead Deborah McDowell and others to read the Redfields as co-parents more than lovers.

Critic Deborah McDowell argues that Irene's suspicion of Brian in Passing masks which feeling of her own?

Desire for Clare, McDowell argues, awakens in Irene just as her distrust of Brian takes hold, as if the suspicion were a shield against her own feelings.

Clare Kendry's story in Passing echoes and resists which stock figure of early African-American fiction?

The tragic mulatto usually suffers for betraying her Black identity, but Clare refuses the expected anguish and seeks out Black company for excitement.

Which name is given to the principle, central to Passing, that any African ancestor made someone Black?

The one-drop rule hardened in the early twentieth century, turning a colour line that had once been more fluid into one a single ancestor could decide.

Which New York publishing house issued Passing in April 1929, a year after Nella Larsen's debut?

Knopf printed the novel in three small runs of under 2,000 copies each, and sales stayed modest despite friendly reviews.

In the Norton Anthology of American Literature, Passing replaced which 1928 debut by Nella Larsen?

Quicksand follows Helga Crane, a restless mixed-race teacher who never finds a place to belong.

Besides writing fiction, Nella Larsen, author of Passing, trained and worked in which two professions?

Nurse and librarian were both hard-won posts: she was the first Black woman to graduate from the New York Public Library's school, and she nursed again in later life.

Nella Larsen, author of Passing, became the first African-American woman to receive which award?

A Guggenheim Fellowship, worth about $2,500, took Larsen to Mallorca and Paris to write another novel, which she never published.

Nella Larsen, author of Passing, had a white mother who had emigrated from which Scandinavian country?

Denmark was also Larsen's home for stretches of her childhood and youth, and she later wrote up its children's games for American readers.

Elmer Imes, the husband Nella Larsen divorced in 1933, was a pioneering Black scientist in which field?

Physics was his field: Imes was only the second African American to earn a PhD in it.

Which 1930 short story brought Nella Larsen a plagiarism accusation near the end of her writing career?

Sanctuary was said to resemble an earlier story by the British writer Sheila Kaye-Smith; nothing was proved, but Larsen never published fiction again.

Which Black scholar and writer hailed Passing in 1929 as one of the finest novels of the year?

W. E. B. Du Bois blamed its small sales on a forbidden subject: a white man's marriage to a woman who had not revealed her ancestry.

Who plays Clare in the 2021 film of Passing, a role that earned Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG nominations?

Ruth Negga, an Oscar nominee for Loving, said she was astounded on first reading the novel and joined the effort to get the film made.

What did 1929 reviewers, including one in the New York Times, call the most serious fault of Passing?

Its abrupt ending struck the Times reviewer as utterly unconvincing, while Alice Dunbar-Nelson thought the close proved the book a masterpiece.