The Epistolary Form in Passing Narratives Wiki

Dear Reader,
Anxieties about individuals “passing” over the color line have existed since the birth of racist ideology in the United States. Passing, which refers to a member of one racial community disguising as another, threatens the sanctity of this so-called color line and its ability to separate these constructed races. Because the United States, built on racist ideals, has long harbored those anxieties, its literature often directly engages with passing. Throughout these narratives of passing, letters often appear during the plot’s crucial turning point. In this project, we explore the climactic letter as a recurring trope in narratives of passing. We will navigate three prominent passing novels: Charles W. Chesnutt’s The House Behind the Cedars (1900), Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929), and Philip Roth’s The Human Stain (2000). Within these texts, letters act as important plot devices, driving the narrative forward in parallel ways. For instance, Rena, a woman passing in The House Behind the Cedars, relies on the delivery of letters to ensure her white suitor does not discover her identity, a task made more difficult because of her mother, Molly’s, illiteracy. In Passing, Clare writes two letters to Irene, both demonstrating Clare’s desire to reunite with her estranged childhood friend. In The Human Stain, Roth includes a variety of letters and emails that all relate to Coleman Silk, a professor passing as Jewish.

Beyond their importance to plot, these letters also often reflect passing in their materiality. The letter’s envelope, a method of containing and concealing private information, is reminiscent of the material and societal conditions required to pass (such as appropriate fashion and dialect). Furthermore, in their material or embodied form, letters and the act of passing both hide essential information. In the case of the letter, the envelope hides the private content; in the case of passing, a performative veil hides the perceived truth of someone’s race.

Although many critics have acknowledged the importance of letters in narratives of passing, none of them have explored it to the depths of our liking. In discussing The Human Stain and Passing, for example, Donavan Ramon claims “passing and writing are inextricably linked with each other,” where anxieties about passing are “articulated in the form of the anonymous letter” (53). He acknowledges and explores the connection between passing and letters, but he focuses his analysis primarily on the stealth associated with anonymous letters, while we hope to explore their broader meaning, anonymity be damned. Meanwhile, in reference to Clare’s first letter to Irene, Gabrielle McIntire ruminates on how “the unusual ink color--neither black nor blue, as one might expect, but ‘Purple,’ something in between, or mixed--gives an early hint about Clare’s hybrid status on the color line” (780). While McIntire begins to critique how the physical elements of Clare’s letter reflect her passing, she fails to recognize how the object of a letter itself reflects Clare’s concealed status. Instead, she focuses on specific small details like the ink color and foreign paper. Although Daniel Worden does note how letters echo the racial themes present in The House Behind the Cedars, he only devotes a small portion of his argument to the motif. Worden, in reference to Frank Fowler writing letters to John Warwick on behalf of the illiterate Molly, makes the important point that black voices, whether passing or not, are “always already enveloped within a white form” (9). These critics all emphasize letters in the texts they analyze, but they fail to address the cultural significance of letter writing—its materiality, its value as a mode of communication, and the institutional processes and procedures that enable and ensure the integrity of that communication. This is the gap we venture to fill. Additionally, guided by Liz Stanley and Simeon Yates’ investigations into the shifting cultural significance of letter writing as newer communication methods—specifically the email—emerge, we will investigate how these technologies influence how characters and readers perceive physical letters.

So, you may ask, why are letters so prominent in these narratives? They operate as more than just a plot device. Letters record secrets and actualize dialogue, turning communication into an object unto itself. Through this process, letter writing serves to commodify knowledge and conversation. Marx defines commodification as the process of making a product of labor an independent object, defined by its exchange value in relation with other commodities instead of its use value to those who produce it (Marx). When letters are viewed as independent commercial objects within a postal economy, the content of the letter also becomes commodified. In this project, we aim to analyze the letter as a metaphor for passing. We will investigate how in their breaching of physical and metaphysical borders, letters reflect the character of passing  as a means of moving between racialized spaces. As the characters pass through boundaries, traversing the public/private and exterior/interior binaries, the letters mirror the secrecy and concealment passing requires.

''So seal your envelopes, strap in, buckle up, grab some popcorn, and prepare to learn. Welcome to our wiki.''