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Nella Larsen's first novel tells the story of Helga Crane, a fictional character loosely based on Larsen's own early life. Crane is the lovely and refined daughter of a Danish mother and a West Indian black father who abandons Helga and her mother soon after Helga is born. Unable to feel comfortable with any of her white-skinned relatives, Helga lives in various places in America and visits Denmark in search of people among whom she feels at home. The work is a superb psychological study of a complicated and appealing woman, Helga Crane, who, like Larsen herself, is the product of a liaison between a black man and a white woman. In one sense, Quicksand might be called an odyssey; however, instead of overcoming a series of obstacles and finally arriving at her native land, Larsen's protagonist has a series of adventures, each of which ends in disappointment.… (more)
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The first think that caught my attention - I was looking for full-length texts, not those useless chopped up texts the Nortons are full of - was Nella Larsen's "Quicksand". So I read the biography of the author first, to prolong the time I didn't have to hear all about Orin and Lavinia, and then proceeded to read the text. I had read about half of it before the teacher dismissed us and the girl asked me for her book back, and then I went home and read the rest of it. The novella, at only 80 (small-print) pages offers much more food for thought than its size would suggest. Larsen touches upon questions of racial and sexual identity, and discusses sensuality, love, religious belief, discrimination, the desirability of uniformity or diversity, belonging, motherhood, marriage, happiness, womanhood, money - discusses them in earnest, using her own experiences to make the novel and its protagonist as real as possible. Our heroine Helga Crane shares a lot with her creator, Larsen. They both had a white mother and a coloured father, they both lived in Denmark for some years, they both worked at rich black schools and ended up very disappointed in the education provided for coloured people, they both had to deal with marital and economical issues. They both struggled to find a place in the American society of the 1920s and 1930s. And neither of them, it seems, ever found it. After her divorce was completed, Nella Larsen stopped writing completely, turned her back on the critics who acclaimed her work and the literary circles where she was admired, and was reported as being depressed and possibly on drugs. She never wrote another word again and spent the rest of her life avoiding contact with friends and acquaintances. As for Helga Crane... her "ending" is not quite as conclusive - it is perhaps more subtle. But it is no less heartbreaking.
My favourite parts of the book were not, in the end, the ones that dealt with racial identity - although one could argue that the issue of racial identity is such an intrinsic part of the novel that you cannot separate it from the text. What I loved most was, on the one hand, the descriptions of the stages of Helga's relationship with religion; and on the other hand her attempts, through whatever means she had at hand, to capture that elusive thing called "happiness", attempts that never quite succeeded.
So: short novella, and definitely worth a read.
Helga was born to a Danish mother and West
Helga is educated. She teaches at a southern African-American school. She's got job security and people who love her. But she's restless. Not happy with the current state of affairs of the school. She must move on but needs to hurt the feelings of a couple of men first.
Chicago. Woe is her. No money, no job. But she networks, gets a job and moves to New York's Harlem district where she lives with the high society in a Harlem Mansion. But she's restless. Not happy with the current state of affairs. She must move on but needs to hurt the feelings of a few people first.
Denmark. Her Aunty and Uncle welcome her with open arms. She lives in luxury. Dresses to the nines. Goes to concerts and high society artsy parties. She's proposed to by a prominent artist. But she's restless. Not happy with the current state of affairs. She must move on but needs to hurt the feelings of a few people first.
New York City. Rich. Mingling with the best of Harlem. Lovers past and present. But she's restless. Not happy with the current state of affairs. She must move on but needs to hurt the feelings of a few people first.
Alabama. A preacher's wife. Poor. Birthing like a rabbit. Playing Martha Stewart to the local ladies. But she's restless...
Now I understand that not being fully African-American and not being fully Anglo Saxon at the turn of the century was a precarious position to be in. But it seems she was generally accepted into each place she ran off to. She was just never satisfied. Aside from being materialistic she was also an egoist. She scorned her African-American culture and disdained the Anglo Saxons. Her problem didn't seem to be a racial problem. It appeared to be a personal issue of not 'counting your blessings'.
In my life I've run away from places I didn't like and like Helga was happy for the first couple of years then grew dissatisfied with each locale. But I learned to appreciate the good things about each place I lived. Made new friends. Looked at the world in wide-eyed wonder. But damn Helga, you had friends, wealth, acceptance and still groaned about how hard your life was. You were blind to your blessings. Belittled the friends you had and ruined your life in the process. You have no one to blame but yourself...
Helga reminded me of Anna Karenina. I didn't like Ms Anna but in the end felt pity for her. In Quicksand, I didn't like Ms Helga and in the end still didn't like her. But I enjoyed the book.
Then there's the wonderful stay in Harlem. I love this description:
For the hundredth time she marveled at the gradations within this oppressed race of hers. A dozen shades slid by. There was sooty black, shiny black, taupe, mahogany, bronze, copper, gold orange, yellow, peach, ivory, pinky white, pastry white. There was yellow hair, brown hair, black hair, straight hair, straightened hair, curly hair, crinkly hair, woolly hair. She saw black eyes in white faces, brown eyes in yellow faces, gray eyes in brown faces, blue eyes in tan faces. Africa, Europe, perhaps with a pinch of Asia, in a fantastic motley of ugliness and beauty, semibarbaric, sophisticated, exotic, were here.
This would seem to be the exact right place for Helga Crane, but she never seemed to be able to comfortably intermingle the Helga and the Crane parts of herself. Unlike the ideal Audrey Denney who fit with both races, Helga Crane never felt she fit with either. In Harlem she was "passing" as black. In Denmark she was surrounded by whites but valued only for her exotic otherness. Her job was to tantalize with her sensuality. She longed to have "that blessed sense of belonging to herself alone and not to a race."
Then Larsen adds the religious sharecropper to the mix, lest we forget what the African Americans were migrating away from.
This is such a wonderful work. What a loss that for whatever reason Larsen was not able to continue with her art.
The book is a sad tale of a woman with limited options trying to find love and identity. It was an interesting view of the “race question”; Helga wasn’t black enough to be comfortable in Harlem, but in Copenhagen, where race supposedly wasn’t an issue, she is sought after because she is an exotic creature, making her even more uncomfortable and longing for her people.
[Quicksand] is largely autobiographical and explores Helga's search for identity. When the novel opens, Helga is teaching at a black college in the South. She quickly becomes disillusioned, though, and wonders what this closed community is really achieving or even trying to achieve. This disillusionment will follow Helga through all of the different communities she subsequently belongs to. She first goes back to Chicago, where she was raised, thinking she will get aid from her white Uncle who has helped her in the past. But he has a new wife who won't acknowledge Helga at all. Helga is helped by a wealthy black woman who gives her some connections in Harlem and Helga moves to New York. There she is happy at first, living among educated and creative black society, but she again becomes disillusioned, partially with their isolation from wider American culture. She travels to Denmark to live with her Aunt. There she is fully welcomed, but realizes that she is treated mainly like a novelty. At first she appreciates the freedom she has to fully participate in Danish society, unlike in America, but again she becomes disillusioned. So she returns to New York.
At the end she falls into the most common and expected trap of religion, marriage, and childbearing. A sad and disappointing ending for this bright and yearning young woman.
I found the writing beautiful and mature and the themes of race and belonging explored deeply and subtly. This was a really excellent surprise and I look forward to reading [[Nella Larsen]]'s other novel, [Passing].
"Helga ducked her head under the covers in a vain attempt to shut out what she knew would fill the pregnant silence - the sharp sarcastic voice of the dormitory matron. It came."
But she gets over it pretty quick.
"Here, she had found, she was sure, the intangible thing for which, indefinitely, always she had craved."
But her prose has more or less stopped getting in her way.
The story itself is excellent. Helga feels sortof akin to antiheroines like Madame Bovary and Lily Bart (both, I know, arguable). It's a dark story and she does a good job of getting into Helga's head and showing us how she can't escape from her restless depression. It's not my favorite book of the year, but I dug it.
The young, bi-racial orphan
I can grapple with the feeling of isolation that the protagonist's identity causes her, but the stark cause and effect of Larsen's writing leaves me cold. I can imagine how powerful any of the scenes in this slight volume could have been in the hands of a more gifted craftsman. George Eliot or Toni Morrison or Margaret Atwood or Chimamanda Adiche could have burrowed into any one of those great situations and illuminated, rather than merely cataloging, the racial struggle of the Harlem Renaissance.
Not a terrible book, and a quick read (which can be its own merit). But not the first I'd recommend.