The Personal Librarian

“The Old North bell tolls the hour, and I realize that I’ll be late. I long to break into a sprint, my voluminous skirts lifted, my legs flying along the Princeton University pathways. But just as I gather the heavy material, I hear Mama’s voice: Belle, be a lady at all times. I sigh; a lady would never run. I release the fabric and slow down as I weave through Princeton’s leafy Gothic landscape, designed to look like Cambridge and Oxford. I know I must do nothing to draw any kind of extra attention. By the time I pass Blair Arch, my stride is quick but acceptable for a lady.”

This initial passage of the novel dramatizes one of the tensions Belle faces: balancing her desire to be free versus abiding by the expectations that come with being a respectable lady. Belle’s internalization of her mother’s dictums on behavior and the shift in her stride all show that at this point in her character arc, Belle is willing to accept these gender and class norms. In addition, Belle also accepts that she must present a picture of the perfect lady to avoid detection of her racial identity. Representation of the psychological strain of that performance is a convention of the narrative of passing.

“To be a Fleet was to be well educated (all of my aunts and uncles had gone to college) and hardworking (the women were all teachers and the men, all engineers). Fleets were understated in dress and presentation, connected to the community, mannerly in demeanor, and always dignified, no matter what treatment we encountered outside the bubble of our small world.”

Belle’s family is an elite one that exhibits Black respectability. Belle draws on the class and gender norms she learned about the Fleets via her mother, but the notion of this world as a bubble highlights that their freedom comes with boundaries due to the racist society in which they function.

“I would no longer be called Belle Marion Greener, proud daughter of Richard Greener, a lawyer, an advocate for equality, and a member of the talented tenth, and of Genevieve Fleet Greener, part of the elite Washington, DC, community of free people of color. No. Shortly thereafter, I accepted my mother’s decision as if it were my own and I became the white woman known as Belle da Costa Greene.”

With the departure of Richard Greener from her life, Genevieve transforms Belle from Black to white. The ease with which Belle slips from being Belle Greener to Belle da Costa Greene shows that the lines between Black and white can be breached by something as straightforward as a name change.