Nella Larsen’s Biography and Contributions to Literature

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Born Nellie Walker, Nella Larsen was born on April 13, 1891 in Chicago (Jarrett). She was biracial; her mother, Mary Hansen, was white Danish while her father, Peter Walker, was a black West Indian (Jarrett, Loeffelholz). After her father left, Nella’s mother married a white Danish man, Peter Larsen. They eventually had children together, and this made Nella the only “colored” girl in the home. Her family saw her as an embarrassment because she was the only “colored” girl in the family; she did not fit in. Her step dad found her presence strange (Loeffelholz). Nella and her siblings attended a private school in a white area, but Nella never  quite fit in because she was of mixed race, neither black nor white. Her family faced a lot of hatred and bitterness from others around them because of racism. Nella and her family didn’t stay long in this community, and moved back to a “mixed” vice district where Nella was originally from, and the girls went to a public school there. While growing up, Nella was perplexed by the dress restrictions on women (Jarrett). This issue is reflected in her story “Quicksand.” As an adult, she moved to Denmark, but eventually returned to the United States and attended nursing school. Eventually, Nella became head nurse at Tuskegee Institute hospital in Alabama, but didn’t like the things the school leaders stood for. She left, and met and married Dr. Elmer S. Imes.

            Nella Larsen lived through the Harlem Renaissance and made significant contributions to literature with her stories that carried the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance. I have read her story “Quicksand,” and found it very captivating. Another literary contribution is "Passing," which discussed the life of a mixed lady who passed (hence the name) as a white woman due to her family. Through her stories, Larsen wanted to capture the heartache and struggle that many biracial and African American people felt in her time period.  As stated by T. S. Stribling (another writer during the Harlem Renaissance) and agreed by Nella Larsen, Stribling quoted, “Here is an audience waiting to hear the truth about us. Let us, who are better qualified to present that truth than any white writer, try to do so (Wall).” Her fiction “Quicksand” really offers insight into the lives of middle class African American women in western society at the time. They face a struggle to define themselves. They never truly fit in, being neither fully black nor fully white (Wall).

Works Cited

Jarrett, Gene A. African American Literature beyond Race. New York: New York University Press, n.d. Print.

Loeffelholz, . The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7thth ed. New York: Norton & Company, 2007. Print.

Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Print. 

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Harlem Renaissance and “Quicksand”

            Nella Larsen’s works fit into the Harlem Renaissance movement. The Harlem Renaissance was the birth of new literature, education, movement, and music by African Americans. This took place in Harlem, which could be called the “capital of the black world (Wall).” Some people wanted to call the Harlem Renaissance the “New Negro” instead because it brought out that African Americans had more to them than just the color of their skin and were in fact educated and able to think and understand. This was a huge change because African American’s didn’t have anything before but slavery, and this was a coming of age for them. Something other than slavery could now unite the African Americans struggling to succeed in a society that doesn’t want them to. Black Americans came from all over to join this new “black capital” in Harlem. It was the “new thing,” and it allowed them (Black Americans) to come together and form a new identity (Wall).

            However, it wasn’t all glitter and gold. Many women struggled with self-identity. Nella Larsen’s work fits into this because her story “Quicksand” described a woman, Helga Crane, who was going through life in the Harlem Renaissance struggling to find identity. This story easily relates and describes black women’s struggles of that time. Helga Crane was an educated woman herself (Loeffelholz), and throughout most of the story was economically fairly comfortable. “Quicksand” captured the hardship in finding self-identity for this not-white-yet-not-black woman Helga Crane. Crane seemed to always be after something and never fully satisfied. Helga could fit into a mold society and people wanted for her, but doing so led her to be internally unsatisfied so she would find a way to leave and move on to another change in life (Loeffelholz, Wall). For instance, Helga Crane taught at Naxos. There, she fit into the same mold of hypocrisy that the administrators and teachers had. But, she was unhappy with it and couldn’t tolerate it, therefore she left, and leaving included leaving her fiancé. This is a major change in life (Bloom). This story fits into the Harlem Renaissance because many women at that time faced the same struggles as Helga Crane. The story reflects to the reader the hardships they had to overcome.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. Black American Prose Writers Of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, n.d. Print.

Loeffelholz, . The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7thth ed. New York: Norton & Company, 2007. Print.

Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Print.

“Quicksand” discussed

http://www.postbourgie.com/2009/09/25/book-of-the-month-quicksand-by-nella-larsen/

            “Quicksand” by Nella Larsen is a very praiseworthy read. Personally, I do judge books by their cover, and if I hadn't had to read this book for class I probably would not have on my own. But I'm fortunate that I did. I found that I could relate to it, as I'm sure many other women my age could. It also enlightened me and gave me insight on a topic I never thought much about.

          It is a story about the struggle of self-identity and conformity that African American women faced. It shows that a lot of women aren’t able to fit in and just place themselves in a mold provided and accepted by society. Helga Crane is a half black half white educated woman. She taught at Naxos. The story opens by Helga describing her dissatisfaction with the school and the conformity that was expected of the blacks there. She describes the degrading words of a white preacher that presented at her school. Helga recalls how the black students and teachers listened respectfully to the preacher as if he were saying anything worth of respected. The preacher stated that the Negros have come a long way, but they need to know when to stop. She recalls that she felt so angry when he was saying these demeaning statements, but he still received a loud applause upon his conclusion. I’m sure that this scenario wasn’t strange in the south and things like this most definitely occurred. Although we all know about slavery, it was still shocking to hear about it through Helga Crane knowing the author probably experienced this in her lifetime. It is shocking that this racism was openly accepted by society. Helga wanted to help make a change, but felt her presence at Naxos would not make a difference. So, she decided to leave Naxos. Leaving Naxos included leaving her fiancée as well, and this a major life change. Many black people at the time had to make big changes throughout their lives if they wanted to achieve self-fulfillment. It’s important to note that throughout the story, Helga speaks about not wanting to bring children into this world, a world of such separation and loss of identity. This shows that her dissatisfaction is so negative that she’d never want someone to experience it so much so that she doesn’t want to even have children. However, to leave Naxos, Helga needed money. She decided to ask her Uncle Peter, her mother’s brother, for financial support. She believed he was the only one of her distant family who would be willing to support her. But to her dismay, she found out he had remarried and now wanted nothing to do with her. So, she did not get financial support from him. She moves, and manages to get a job elsewhere. She wants to deal with something other than race, but she finds the blacks in the new town obsessed with the race issue, so she leaves there as well. Later, her uncle sends her an early inheritance from him and asks her to not come to him again. Helga then uses this money and is now able to fund her future movements. To escape it all, she moves to Denmark and meets with family on her mother’s side. There, Helga is not only accepted, but marveled at. She is beautiful, different from all other women there. There she gets lavish clothes and can dress extravagantly and in bright colors, something frowned upon in the US. This is also something author Nella Larsen was dissatisfied with in her lifetime (Wall). While in Denmark, Helga is proposed to by a Danish man, but will not marry him because she does not want to be with a white man. This was interesting because it showed that although she is also white, she didn’t feel like she fit in with white people. Eventually, she leaves Denmark and goes to Harlem. There, she meets a preacher. With her womanly beauty, she seduces the preacher and ends up marrying him. This should mark the end of Helga’s journey because now she is “settling down” due to marriage. Together they end up having five children. This is significant because she had never wanted children before. I believe that her having kids revealed that Helga, at that point in her life, had finally found peace and accepted the world. Although this was supposed to be the end of Helga’s searching, she ends up depressed and dissatisfied with her life, her children, and the situation she is in but she cannot escape it. I truly enjoyed reading this story because I felt a lot of people could relate to it, even now. Self-identity is a very hard thing to achieve when society has a mold everyone is expected to fit into. If not, they’re out-casted and not accepted, and Helga just wanted to overcome that and “find herself.” Many women at the time had to do. However, I wish the ending had given a little more insight into the life of Helga Crane, like how she felt at that point and what she planned on doing with her life now that she was married with children. I felt as though this wasn’t fully clear. But overall this was an excellent read that really gave me insight on a topic that I didn’t know much about.

Image Citation:

belleisa, . Book of the month: Quicksand by Nella Larsen. 2012. PostBourgie . Web. 25 Mar. 2012. 

http://www.postbourgie.com/2009/09/25/book-of-the-month-quicksand-by-nella-larsen/

African Americans, Women, and Current Events

http://far-above-rubies-and-pearls.blogspot.com/2011/12/interracial-couple-banned-from-kentucky.html

Nella Larson would laugh, and then she would cry if she knew some of the things that happened today, both with the struggles of women and the struggles of blacks. Media depicts people as they “should” be. Whenever there’s a movie with a gang banger or a violent act is committed, it’s always a big, black man playing the actors part. That’s because society today views black people as violent. Another example is that black people more frequently get pulled over by the cops. If Nella Larsen were alive today, she would want to make a difference in how African Americans are viewed. She would ne astounded by this and would like African Americans be portrayed in a more positive light.

Secondly, it is common knowledge that men make more money than women. If someone were to compare a man and a woman with equal experience and education, men generally make more money. Nella Larsen wouldn’t accept this, being an educated woman herself. Being a man doesn’t enable one to do a better job at something. Rather, it’s experience, education, and skills that do. Larsen is the perfect image of a woman who can stand up for herself because she has education. Knowledge is power, so I firmly believe that if Nella Larsen were alive today, she would work to enable women.

            However, though there may be a lot of negativity in the world regarding blacks, women, and black women, there’s still beauty. Interracial relationships are more accepted now than ever before. These relationships result in mixed children, so Nella Larsen would have not struggled with self identity as much because there are more people to relate to. I believe if Nella Larsen were to rewrite “Quicksand,” Helga Crane wouldn’t have experienced such dissatisfaction with the world. She would have “found herself,” sooner rather than later. Back in Nella Larsen’s time, interracial relationships were frowned upon. The children resulting from these relationships, like Helga and Nella, weren’t accepted in white societies and sometimes (like Nella) didn’t even fit in with their own families. Nella would have appreciated the growing acceptance of interracial relationships today.

Image Citation:

Interracial couples banned from Kentucky Church. By Alisha De Freitas. N.p.: Far Above Rubies, 2009. Web. 25 Mar. 2012.

http://far-above-rubies-and-pearls.blogspot.com/2011/12/interracial-couple-banned-from-kentucky.html