He spoke of his great admiration for the Negro race…but he had urgently besought them to know when and where to stop. The illusion of harmony and stillness is disrupted, as Helga, reflecting on the address of a white preacher visiting Naxos, is suddenly convulsed with rage: Hostetler argues, Helga’s illusion in the beginning is “that she can create herself through a careful arrangement and selection of artifacts…with which she surrounds herself” (Hostetler 36). She is presented as a motionless physical object and seems to fit perfectly into her environment.Īs Ann E.
WOMEN IN QUICKSAND SKIN
“Well fitted to that framing of light and shade” (2), with “well-turned” arms and legs, a “good” nose and “delicately chiseled” ears, she is sitting in a big chair “against whose dark tapestry her sharply cut face, with skin like yellow satin, was distinctly outlined”(3). Helga is described as if she were one of the objects exhibited in her room, as if she were part of a painting. Her taste not only seems to be expensive but highly individual, and thus might be interpreted as an effort to dissociate herself from the others at Naxos and to establish a sophisticated personal identity. Her “attractive room” (2), furnished with “a single reading lamp, dimmed by a great red and black shade… blue chinese carpet” numerous books, a “shining brass bowl crowded with many-colored nasturiums” and an “oriental silk” reflects Helga’s “rare and intensely personal taste” (1). After strenuous and unsatisfactory hours of work, the moments of rest in her room seem to be the best part of her day.įor Helga it is important to have a beautiful room since she defines herself through the objects that surround her. But Helga at this point enjoys her “intentional isolation” (2). Sitting alone in her dark room which is much too big for her, the spot where she sits gives the impression of “a small oasis in a desert of darkness” (1). Helga’s Journey: The Search for her Black Female Self 2.1 NaxosĪt the beginning of the novel, Helga Crane, who works as a teacher at a Southern black college named Naxos, is presented as an isolated figure, foreshadowing her situation in the world. It starts out in the South in Naxos where Helga works as a teacher, then moves on to Chicago and Harlem, from there it shifts to Copenhagen, returns back to Harlem and finally ends in the deep South, in a tiny Alabama town, where Helga’s search ends in tragedy. Further, my aim is to demonstrate how intimately connected race and gender oppressions are, since imposed definitions of blackness and womanhood complicate Helgas search for her personal identity as a black woman.Īs Quicksand has a geographical symmetry to it, I will follow this pattern in my analysis. In this seminar paper I will argue that Nella Larsen’s Quicksand is about Helga Crane’s search for a black female identity which she will fail to find. As she detests and completely denies these emotions she is incapable of developing an identity as a woman either. Internalized (white) stereotypes about black womens´ promiscuous, “primitive” and immoral sexuality lead Helga to fear and repress her sensuality and female desires. During her unhappy childhood she learns to regard her skin color with hatred and self- loathing, resulting in a deeply rooted sense of insecurity about her blackness and mixed heritage, which continues to be felt all her life. The child of a Danish mother and a black West Indian father, a so- called “mulatto”, Helga Crane finds herself outside of the black as well as the white world, fully comfortable in neither one nor the other. For that reason one should not be surprised that Quicksand focuses on the protagonist’s struggles toward selfhood, her attempts to find her place in the world as a woman who is considered neither white nor black. Larsen herself was of Danish-Carribean ancestry and was highly interested in issues of racial identity, especially as they relate to being female. Nella Larsen’s Quicksand was published to critical acclaim in 1928 and is said to be one of the key texts of the Harlem Renaissance era. Helga’s Journey: The Search for her Black Female Self
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