Quicksand
Quicksand, novel by American writer Nella Larsen, published in 1928. A loosely autobiographical work, it was the first of two novels by the Harlem Renaissance author.
Helga Crane is Quicksand’s protagonist. Born of a white Danish mother and an absent West Indian father, she is a restless and rootless figure in search of sexual and social acceptance. The novel begins in the claustrophobic atmosphere of Naxos, an elite (and fictional) boarding school for Black students in Alabama where Helga teaches. She does not fit in there, and she feels that the school is demeaning to its students. She is especially bothered by a recent visit from a white preacher who praised the students for knowing “to stay in their places.” Helga decides to quit her job the next day. The head of school, Dr. Anderson, agrees with her and asks her to stay. He nearly persuades her, but his clumsy attempt to compliment her solidifies her in her plan.
She travels to Chicago, where she grew up and where she plans to get help from her maternal Uncle Peter, who has assisted her in the past. She finds that Uncle Peter has married, and his wife tells her to leave and never return. Distraught, Helga begins a fruitless search for work. Eventually she finds a temporary job as traveling companion and speech editor to a Mrs. Hays-Rore. They travel to Harlem in New York City, where Helga is befriended by Mrs. Hays-Rore’s niece Anne, finds work, and is initially welcomed by the emerging intellectual class there. However, she again becomes restless and starts to find Anne’s hatred of white people despite her espousal of white fashions and taste hypocritical. Also, she again meets Dr. Anderson, who has left Naxos and moved to Harlem.
Helga receives a large sum of money from Uncle Peter, who suggests that she visit her Aunt Katrina in Denmark. She is welcomed in Denmark and at first enjoys herself, but she is troubled by the fact that she is admired for what is deemed her exotic appearance. Helga is introduced to the painter Axel Olsen, who paints a disturbingly erotic portrait of her and asks her to marry him, insisting that his portrait shows that he truly understands her. After Helga receives a letter from Anne in which she learns that Anne is engaged to Dr. Anderson, Helga decides she must return to Harlem.
Later, at a party in Harlem, Helga finds herself alone with Dr. Anderson (now married to Anne), and they share a passionate kiss. When he later apologizes, it is the opposite of the reaction Helga was seeking, and in turmoil she goes out into a storm. Seeking shelter in a building, she finds a church meeting going on, and in short order she accepts the religion and marries the pastor. She and the pastor live in a small town in Alabama, where he is lionized and she is tolerated. She quickly has three children, including a set of twins, but when she gives birth to a fourth child, she sinks into despair and depression. The new baby dies within weeks. Helga determines to escape this life, but she finds that she is again pregnant.
Quicksand is an honest examination of the contradictory promises that the Western world in the early 20th century held out to women and to Black people. Helga Crane is socially vulnerable, yet she is also able to hesitatingly articulate a desire for pleasure and self-fulfillment. The novel makes clear the particular tribulations faced by a biracial woman for whom claiming membership in either race inevitably means excluding the other. The promise of the future is suggested by depictions of the pleasures of urban anonymity and of the relations between gender and desire. But it is this future’s utter failure to materialize, and Helga’s acceptance of a blind sacrifice in its place, that makes the ending so bitterly damning.