Nella Larsen’s Passing confronts the internal conflict the main character Irene Redfield encounters while experiencing survival as a physically “passing” woman in 1920s America. The reality of Irene’s insecurities towards her true identity ultimately lead to her internal conflict with her and Clare’s relationship. This becomes a challenge of quintessential standards of beauty, romantic love, and sexual expression. However, the glamourization of pain is used as a means to validate Irene’s place in the world when Clare reemerges as a seemingly powerful force into Irene’s world. Larsen controls the language that relates to Clare who becomes a symbol of caution and familiarity.

As Clare reemerges as an omen into Irene’s life, this reawakening of taboo feelings of race and womanhood emerges into Irene’s thoughts as well. The Drayton, where Irene meets Clare again after years of disconnect, enables their discussion about Clare’s life as a “passing” woman and triggers Irene’s self-reassurance. “Clare, it gave Irene a little prick of satisfaction to recall, hadn’t got that by passing herself off as white. She herself had always had it.” (190) Clare actively wants to be identified as white while Irene utilizes “passing” as a way to access a segregated area without the questioning of her race. This language of pain as pleasure sparks Irene’s beginning of the comparisons she makes between Clare and herself. The lines between seduction and animosity create Irene’s search towards being able to feel something as strong and vivid as pain. Essentially, this pain becomes more widespread turning the sensation of a prick to a body and mind numbing defense mechanism in order to feel like she is not being erased from the world.

Irene also equates the absence of pain with the absence of character.  Even when Irene is alone, she is consumed with thoughts about Clare and how Clare is a physically ideal woman but lacks the depth of knowing how it feels to suffer. “But Clare-she had remained almost what she had always been, an attractive, somewhat lonely child-selfish, willful, and disturbing.” (233) Irene’s projection of her feelings about “passing” into whiteness subject Clare to the Irene’s perception that Clare’s goal was to achieve the peak of white privilege. Clare is able to leave behind the pain of having to deal with accepting herself as a whole but also leaves part of her identity and spirit behind. Since Irene chose the freedom to accept her identity, she sees the pain as needed to cultivate her personality.

Irene’s comparisons between Clare and her also coincide with the attraction to Clare that she cannot see herself. However, she can pass it as a reason to question her husband Brian’s relationship to Clare. When she puts the thought of an affair between Brian and Clare into her mind, this finally allows her to solidify the warrant against her femininity. The unconventionality of her feelings has to be filtered through heteronormative archetypes. Her perception of lost self-worth is left causing the pain in knowing that worth has gone to Clare. This fuels Irene’s reality and gives her an incentive for vengeance.

Once Irene is set to believe the questionable relationship between her husband and Clare, she feels the urge to act upon it vindictively. “She wanted, suddenly, to shock people, to hurt them, to make them notice her, to be aware of her suffering.” (252) While at the tea party, her presence is no longer about socializing with others but a temptation to manifest her pain to others. Irene’s internalization of the pain turns to the need for externalization. This is rooted in her insecurities of fading into an apparition. The language used is meant to inflict the pain onto everyone and the readers subconsciously. Irene’s knowing of her pain makes the reader feel that her pain is real too and in turn, she is real.

When Irene has fully convinced herself of the affair, she expects pain of accepting this knowledge. Yet “...this absence of acute, unbearable pain seemed to her unjust, as if she had been denied some exquisite solace of suffering which the full acknowledgement should have been given her.” (267) She feels like this absence has purposefully targeted her and she then craves it more. The prick from before has transcended into the lack of the sensation of a prick. With the consequent devastation of this disappearance, Irene is now seeking the fulfillment of pain and anger that she once felt when she first considered the possibility of her husband’s unfaithfulness. She has the yearning for this pain just as she is mourning the loss of her past attraction to Clare. The sensationalized negative emotions cause her constant need for recognition by others to substantiate her existence.

The motifs of time and suffering become ambiguous as “Passing” nears Clare’s death. As the final party ends with Clare’s death, portrayed with rapid, omitted, and vague information through Irene’s memory, she reconciles her want for pain with promise of normalcy in her life. When Clare has fallen out the window, she leaves Irene’s physical presence and frees Irene’s physical pain at once. However, the consequence of her death results in Irene’s loss of complete body. “If only she could be as free of mental as she was of bodily vigor; could only put from her memory the vision of her hand on Clare’s arm!” (272) Clare’s passing away and “passing”-ness has leapt out with her bringing Irene to a state of grounding where the weight of this death holds her down physically but relieves her mentally. This is the importance of Irene’s life and freedom from her decision not to “pass” over compared to Clare’s demise. The pain of knowing Clare has chosen death unleashes the normalcy that will follow into Irene’s life. By having Clare feel the pain, Irene can absorb it without direct action and use it to remember that there is still meaning to life.

“Passing” has become a nostalgic defense mechanism for Irene herself. She is introduced in the story when she rereads Clare’s letter after two years following her death. The whole story is situated on Irene’s memory of the pain. “Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance.” (233) This reflects on her need as a person to deal with her access to the pleasure and pain that she wants to feel but often is restricted by norms on race, gender, and sexuality. The pain is imperfect and Irene is indecisive about wanting to feel it. However, she always refers back to experiencing pain as the first sign of humanity. Clare represents permanent destruction that follows her social mobility. Irene’s reconnection with Clare enables the vicarious transfer of these forbidden ideals. Their symbiotic relationship is the uncovering of Irene’s idealized perspective on pain and suffering. This romanticized internalization responds as a survival tactic to situational and societal forces on being a woman of color.