Irene's love for Clare

On page 107 of Passing, Irene thinks, “strange, that she couldn’t now be sure that she had ever known love. Not even for Brian.” Despite this thought, it would seem that Irene has some level of love, or infatuation in the very least, with Clare Kendry. It is Clare who sparks the most emotional responses from Irene, regardless of context, far beyond the emotions Irene has for her husband. By her own admission, Irene does not love Brian. But Irene sees Clare as an enormous threat to her chosen manner of existing. This threat seems bigger to Irene when it comes from Clare, rather than other black folks who pass or mingle socially with white folks, as Irene does not fixate on Gertrude or the black folks at the dance who socialize with white folks, in the same way that she fixates constantly on Clare and Clare’s perceived selfishness. Irene herself maintains a friendship with Hugh Wentworth, a white man, and uses her own ability to pass to her advantage, sitting on the roof of the hotel that she could be thrown out of at any time, if someone were to realize her true identity. Irene also is not nearly as perturbed by Brian’s desire to move to Brazil and give up his career as a prominent doctor, although this directly threatens her way of life far beyond anything about Clare Kendry. To Irene, however, Brian is merely a matter of persuasion, and he will eventually come around, so she does not fixate on his unhappiness, until she suspects that he is having an affair with Clare. When Clare is entered into the equation, suddenly Irene realizes her lack of love for Brian, and becomes emotional at the thought of Brian and Clare together. She consoles herself again in regards to Brian, both with the admission that she doesn’t love him, and with the thought that he will stay for the children. She cannot seem to console herself in regards to Clare, however, and just waits for “March and the departure of Clare” (pg. 108). Irene has absolutely no idea what to do with her swirl of emotions towards Clare, because Clare makes Irene feel something she has never felt towards anyone else. There is something so unique about Clare, that Irene, stubborn and set in her ways, just wants Clare gone so she doesn’t have to face the reality that she loves Clare. When Clare dies, Irene describes her with words like “soft,” “bright,” “dreaming,” and “caressing,” that seem to suggest physical attraction, but also with “torturing lovliness” and “that beauty that had torn at Irene’s placid life,” (pg. 111), again suggesting that Irene’s attraction to Clare is what threatened Irene’s way of life, more than anything or anyone else.