Irene x Clare

Irene x Clare is the femslash ship between Irene and Clare from the Passing fandom.

Netflix adaptation
In the 1920s in New York, since it was extremely hot out to the point where people were passing out, Irene decides to stop at a fancy hotel for a bit. Everyone there at the hotel is white and she starts realizing that she is able to "pass" as a white person, because otherwise she would've been kicked out of the place just for being black. When she starts noticing a white woman staring intensely at her, Irene starts getting nervous, thinking that she will tell on her, but instead, the woman tells her she knows her. It turns out that the woman was Clare, Irene's childhood best friend, who Irene didn't recognize because she was trying to also pass as white. Enthusiastically, Clare invites Irene to her hotel room, where she starts undressing to change clothes, in front of Irene. As Irene was intensely staring at her now, Clare's husband suddenly enters the room and interrupts their moment. As soon as Clare's husband starts using racial slurs, Irene gets disgusted by his racism and goes back home.

Irene goes back to his husband and kids, as some time passes, but she finds herself really unhappy. Irene and her husband, Brian, have a strained marriage. The only time Irene shows affection and interest in her husband is immediately after seeing Clare. After all this time passes, Irene receives a letter from Clare, that her husband ends up reading. He reads Clare's feelings for Irene out loud: "I wouldn't feel this wild desire if I hadn't seen you."

Although Irene ignores the letter at first, she ends up rekindling her relationship with Calre and the two of them start hanging out, going to jazz clubs, and staring longingly at each other. As Irene and Clare get closer and closer to one another, Irene's marriage becomes even more rocky. And Irene starts getting jealous of Clare and Brian's closeness, although it's never confirmed who she's jealous of. Things get even more complicated when Clare's racist husband realizes that Irene is a passing black woman, because at that point, Clare was already thinking about leaving her husband and going to live with Irene and her family. During Irene’s party, she speaks with Hugh Wentworth about passing, revealing that Clare is black. But before that, Irene shares a tender moment with Clare before the latter is whisked away to dance with another man. Holding her hand, Irene looks at Clare fondly who returns the look, and the moment lasts for an extremely long time. So, Irene speaks to Hugh about passing, watching Clare dance, and responds by noting that “all of us are passing in one way or another.”

However, things turned completely wrong in the film's final act. Brian, Irene and Clare go to a friend’s party. However, Calre's husband shows up and in a very aggressive racist outburst, he lunges towards Clare. Irene reaches out to protect her. And in a moment of chaos, Clare falls from the balcony. The police arrive, gather statements, and rule her death as an accident. However, the film deliberately leaves the cause of Clare's fall as ambiguous.

Book
The book has several instances where Irene expresses her feelings for Clare. "An attractive-looking woman…with those dark, almost black, eyes and that wide mouth like a scarlet flower against the ivory of her skin."

- Passing, page 9

"One moment Clare had been there, a vital glowing thing, like a flame of red and gold. The next she was gone."

- Passing, page 79

"Clare exquisite, golden fragrant, flaunting, in a stately gown of shining black taffeta, whose long full skirt lay in graceful folds about her slim golden feet."

- Passing, page 53

"Clare who suddenly clouded all her days."

- Passing, page 65

"And all because Clare had a trick of sliding down ivory lids over astonishing black eyes and then lifting them suddenly and turning on a caressing smile."

- Passing, page 66

"What she felt was not so much resentment as a dull despair because she could not change herself in this respect, could not separate individuals from the race, herself from Clare Kendry."

- Passing, page 71

Fanon
is the most popular ship in the Passing fandom. Fans of the books were excited to hear the book was getting a movie adaptation, since they thought the film was going to be very "gay," due to the fact that Irene's crush on Clare is very noticeable in the book. However, when the film was realeased, fans of the ship were dissapointed to see there was not that much development of their relationship as the book has. It's understable due to the fact that movie adaptations often cut big chunks of books' plots due to runtime. But fans were upset about it nonetheless. On the other hand, the cinematography portraying their on-screen moments was so pretty, romantic and intimate that fans were happy about that aspect.

Fandom
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