choosing to identify with nonblack culture. More than this, the text does not evaluate the views, except by implication and indirection, through the characters and not through the omniscient voice of the author. The point of view in the text is limited to Irene Redfield, through whose (sometimes unreliable) vision the reader may discern ways in which the content of experience is determined by the power relationships around which mainstream society is organized.
Another important feature of Passing as a discourse of social critique, which is connected to the limited point of view but nevertheless distinct from it, is that the text remains true to its literary aesthetic and does not become overtly polemical. That does not mean the novel is not polemical; we have just said, after all, that it is engaged in social criticism, and Brian's repeated references to "this damned country" and the racism that defines it demonstrate the author's awareness of the realities of social experience for American blacks. But the present point is that whatever thematic polemic may be embedded in the production of the text is not foregrounded in a way that distracts from the focus on the characters' actions. Davis makes t
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