Quicksand by Nella Larsen
"Quicksand" by Nella Larsen is a poignant exploration of racial identity and the struggles for acceptance faced by its protagonist, Helga Crane. Orphaned and caught between her black heritage and white relatives, Helga embarks on a tumultuous journey through various cultural landscapes, including a Southern black college and cities like Chicago and New York. Each environment highlights her profound sense of alienation and the complexities of racial dynamics.
Helga’s experiences extend to Denmark, where she grapples with being viewed as a cultural artifact rather than an individual. Her return to America leads to unfulfilled relationships and disillusionment, culminating in a troubled marriage that exacerbates her feelings of entrapment. Throughout her journey, Helga's search for purpose and belonging reveals the emotional depths of mixed-race identity, showcasing her struggles against societal expectations and personal desires. Larsen skillfully portrays Helga not just as a tragic figure but as a multifaceted character, reflecting broader themes of identity, race, and gender in the early 20th century.
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Subject Terms
Quicksand by Nella Larsen
First published: 1928
The Work
Quicksand, Nella Larsen’s masterpiece, is the story of Helga Crane’s quest, through a series of excursions in black and white society, for racial identity and acceptance. Her rejection by her black father and by her white stepfather and her mother’s early death leave Helga an orphan subject to the charity of white relatives, who pay for her education.
Helga’s search begins with her brief tenure at Naxos, a Southern black college, where she fails to assimilate the racial attitudes of middle-class educated blacks there who expound the philosophy of racial uplift. She escapes to Chicago and then New York. Despite associations with middle-class blacks there, she still feels detached from the culture. A monetary gift from her uncle and his advice to visit her mother’s sister in Denmark take Helga abroad. In Denmark, Helga rejects becoming her relatives’ social showpiece of primitivism and a marriage proposal from an artist who sees in Helga “the warm, impulsive nature of the women of Africa” and “the soul of a prostitute.”
Hearing a Negro spiritual at a symphony concert, Helga can no longer resist returning to America. When she returns, she finds that Robert Anderson, her only love interest, has married her mentor. Anderson underscores Helga’s alienation when, despite his clandestine sexual advances, he rejects her. Devastated, Helga finds herself at a storefront revival, where she experiences a spiritual conversion. The intensity of emotion and her weak health occasion her meeting the Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green, a scurrilous “jack-leg” preacher who takes advantage of this opportunity to gain a wife and sexual partner. Transplanted to the South and drowning in the domestic hell of babies and marriage, Helga bids an angry and bitter farewell to her dreams and resigns herself to “the quagmire in which she had engulfed herself.” She resolves to get out of her predicament, but she understands “that this wasn’t new. . . . something like it she had experienced before.” Life offers no healing balm for Helga, as her journey ends in the squalor of a filthy house, the revulsion she feels for her slovenly, lecherous husband, and her ultimate failure to find any redeeming purpose or value for her life.
Larsen’s character is more than the archetypal tragic mulatto. Helga’s restlessness and predictable flights from her cultural surroundings portray a woman uncomfortable with and deeply confused about her identity. Larsen was among the first to render depth and dimension to the emotional and physical motivations for her mixed-race characters’ actions.
Bibliography
Ahlin, Lena. The “New Negro” in the Old World: Culture and Performance in James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, and Nella Larsen. Stockholm, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2006. Compares Quicksand to Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) and Fauset’s There Is Confusion (1924).
Ammons, Elizabeth. Conflicting Stories: American Women Writers at the Turn into the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Claims the ideas in Quicksand “declare their author’s rebellion as an artist.” Notes that, in Helga, Larsen creates a character who refuses to act out the white fantasies she would be expected to perform. Also compares Larsen with her contemporary Zora Neale Hurston.
Carby, Hazel V. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Treats Larsen’s use of the mulatto figure as a “narrative device of mediation.” Explores the interconnections of sexual, racial, and class identity and makes the claim that Larsen offers no resolutions to the contradictions she raises in the novel.
Christian, Barbara. Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980. Presents an analysis of Helga as a mulatto and discusses Larsen’s attempted innovations in the depictions of women characters.
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Sees Helga as struggling against her sensuality, but surrendering to it in the frustrating experiences she undergoes. Her final surrender to sensuality, in the marriage to Reverend Green, results in her death.
Lackey, Michael. African American Atheists and Political Liberation: A Study of the Sociocultural Dynamics of Faith. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. Includes a chapter reading the conversion narrative in Quicksand as a scene of rape.
McDowell, Deborah E. Introduction to “Quicksand” and “Passing,” by Nella Larsen. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986. Extensive analysis of Quicksand. Deals with Larsen’s exploration of female sexual fulfillment and studies the novel’s narrative strategy, which reflects the tension between sexual expression and repression.