Through my drawing of Clare Kendry, I tried to capture the outward beauty and enigmatic depth that characterize Clare throughout Passing. Larsen uses Irene’s superficial readings of Clare as a vehicle to express the underlying tensions in their relationship, which is why an appreciation of Clare’s physical appearance is so important. Whenever I read novels that have such powerful and vivid descriptions of characters as Passing, I always feel moved to draw them, to put the striking and meaningful image in my mind onto paper. However, my deficient drawing skills usually leave me unsatisfied, which was the case with this drawing. I was happy though that I captured some of the key traits which Larsen draws the most attention to, which together create the image of Clare as having an alluring superficial beauty with an underlying hidden depth. The importance of this contrast is that Irene is drawn in by Clare’s ‘caressing’ beauty, but she is frustratingly unable to access Clare’s depths, which Clare herself seems to be aware of. While I tried to use color pencils to portray Clare’s glow and to use vibrant colors to draw my readers in, I was unsatisfied with how this image scanned, so I just included my original pencil drawing because it conveys the features I tried to emphasize in Clare’s appearance.
I used Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer as inspiration for Clare’s pose as well as the depth of her expression. I did not exactly mirror the pose and expression of the model in Vermeer’s painting because I wanted to convey the nuances of Clare’s personality. However, I tried maintain the same elusive depth of Vermeer’s painting while making these changes. The girl in the painting’s superficial beauty draws the viewer in, but Vermeer creates the sense of hidden depths through her turned posture, her pronounced dark eyes, and her parted mouth. It is unclear whether she is turning away or towards the viewer, leaving us caught in a moment of uncertainty. Moreover, her gaze and smile give us the sense of an indiscernible meaning behind her expression which, for all our trying, we will never be able to determine because she ultimately is, to us, a painting. I argue that viewing Clare as a painting like Girl with a Pearl Earring is very valuable to understanding Irene’s perspective of Clare and her inability to see past the depths behind the superficiality. Irene’s inability to access the inner depths of Clare’s personality makes her feel a loss of security. She prizes her ability to know Brian’s thoughts and soul, which is why she panics when she recognizes that he has the same inaccessible depth to his wants and needs. In her relationship with Clare, she is never able to see past Clare’s surface, but she is so drawn in by Clare’s outward appearance and mannerisms that she is unable to relinquish her desire to understand her. Clare’s beauty elicits a “sudden inexplicable onrush of affection” (46) in Irene, even though she recognizes the pain and confusion that accompanies their relationship. For this reason, she describes Clare’s beauty as a “whole torturing loveliness” (80), because Clare’s appearance is a source of anxiety for Irene. Her conclusion that Clare and Brian are having an affair is directly connected to her common feelings of insecurity in her relationships with them, since she sees a commonality between them that she cannot understand and lacks herself.
In trying to portray Clare with depth as well as with superficial allure, I focused on creating depth in her eyes, emphasizing her lips, and portraying her with a subtly mocking expression. Clare’s eyes are described as “arresting eyes, slow and mesmeric, and with, for all their warmth, something withdrawn and secret about them” (21). I tried to capture this image in my drawing by giving Clare big, soft, dark eyes that look directly at the viewer, which is reminiscent of the scene where Clare locked eyes with Irene before their reunion. I tried to convey depth in her eyes by making them more deeply set in her face, which I thought lent more wisdom to her expression. I also tried to portray Clare’s “tempting mouth” (21) by giving her full lips upturned in a soft smile, which compounded with her lifted eyebrow gives an appearance of “mockery” (15), one of the few things Irene is able to interpret from Clare’s facial expressions. It is this mockery that creates the impression that Clare knows Irene cannot see past her superficiality, creating a power dynamic in which Irene feels helpless. Through my portrayal of Clare, I tried to emphasize her simultaneous sweetness and protected depths to make Irene’s struggle visually understandable to my viewers.