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| 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.
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