Quicksand
By Nella Larsen
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Nella Larsen
Nella Larsen was born in Chicago in 1891 to a white Danish mother and a black West Indian father. She studied in America and Denmark and throughout her writing career she worked as a children’s librarian and primarily as a nurse. In 1928 her first novel Quicksand was published to great critical acclaim. Passing was published a year later. Her marriage to Dr Elmer Imes brought her into contact with the upper echelons of New York’s black society and she became an important female voice of the Harlem Renaissance. She was the first black woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing. Divorced in 1933, she spent the rest of her life working as nurse. Nella Larsen died in 1964.
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Reviews for Quicksand
113 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A deeply affecting story, Larsen's first novel is remarkable for its prose and its themes. Protagonist Helga Crane, armed with her own standards of morality and reason, faces stiff opposition--herself--in her quest to become an autonomous individual.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Quicksand by Nella Larsen made me think of better versions of the genre: Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Fredric, or Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy, The Drowning Room by Michael Pye, even Jane Eyre (though I'm not fond of Jane Eyre).The young, bi-racial orphan wakes up one morning entirely unhappy with her life- she's a teacher, but she doesn't love it. She sets off to call on what little family she has. She is rebuffed by her white relatives, then settles into a nice life in Harlem. After a year or so she pulls up her roots again to visit her mother's family in the Netherlands. She is very well received there, but she feels her African American heritage makes her more of a curiosity than a part of society. So she heads home for America, where she married a preacher for no good reason, pops out a few kids and is thoroughly disgusted by her life.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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sometime during the past week I happened to be sitting in a very stuffy classroom - first heatwave of the summer lurking outside the air-conditioned building - listening to a very boring lecture on Eugene O'Neil's "Mourning Becomes Electra". ("Yes, you seeee children, Orin feels verrry verrry geeltee beecoz hee thinks hee eez reesponseebell for...") Ten minutes into the class, I'm ready to die my hair black, cut my veins and re-read Bell Jar. Fortunately I notice that the girl sitting next to me has a copy of of one of those huge Norton Anthologies - possibly to use in another class. So I think "surely, there must be something better than this to read in there!" and beg her to lent me that book in the same tone I would beg an axe-carrying mass-murderer to spare my life.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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 2 page introduction written by T.N.R. Rogers nearly drove me to tears with the description of the life of Nella Larsen. And then I moved on to the book and got a little pissed-off with Helga Crane, the main protagonist and the alter-ego of Nella Larsen.Helga was born to a Danish mother and West Indies father. The father split when Helga was just a young girl and the mother remarried to a white man. They had another daughter and the dark little Helga was basically abandoned. Now you have to admit that is a pretty sad affair.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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Written in the 20's by one of the Black Renaissance writers. Story is about a woman with a white mother and a black father and her search for belonging in America and overseas with white relatives. Well written and an easy and entertaining read. I think many of the characters issues are still relevant today.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Does not get off to a great start; the writing is pretty wince-y in the early going:
"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. You can almost watch her learning to write over the course of the book. By the end, she's a little overfond of awkward sentence structures:
"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. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I just finished Quicksand, and it's a great read. All Helga Crane's choices are impetuous, and I think Nella Larsen sacrifices the character for the opportunity to describe the many ways a mixed race woman could live in 1920's United States. There's the "squeeze all the native out of them" school where all attempts as self expression are squashed. After reading a little about the Indians under British rule, I think this is the sort of school she was after where the Indians end up more British than the British. She takes just a little time to explore the lack of opportunities for a black woman in a northern city where the only jobs open to her are menial. Helga Crane, well educated and proper, loves to read and thinks she can therefore get a job as a librarian without further education. In fact, Larsen was a librarian, but she must have found a way to get the proper credentials.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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nella Larsen is quite a discovery; a lost writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Only two novellas of hers were published, and then she was unjustly accused of plagiarism of a story and stopped writing. What a waste! Quicksand is the tragic story of a half Danish, half black woman (as was Larsen) who cannot find happiness in Harlem or in Denmark. In America she becomes filled with self loathing and race hatred both as a teacher at a HBC and a Harlem resident. Helga Crane flees to Denmark, where for a time she enjoys her status as an exotic but is insulted by propositions from men who see her as their own personal Josephine Baker. She then returns to Harlem and is happy for a time with her friends but once again becomes miserable and ends up in an even worse state due to a nervous collapse. There is no happiness for someone who is so divided. How awful. I hope that this is no longer the case but I don't know. So beautifully written, with language we no longer use these days. Somewhat anachronistic but with such elegant flow. Spoiler alert: the end is very jarring.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The writing in this book was somewhat unclear and sometime difficult, but the ideas came through. The protagonist felt very uncomfortable in her biracial skin, as she was treated as an "other." She travelled through her life very angrily, which can easily be understood. This book was written in 1922, and though there has been some improvement, sadly so much was relevant today. The fact that it was very much based on the author is tragic.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Heartbreaking, delicate rendition of emotion.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There is a lot packed into this slim novel and juxtaposition in every chapter. Helga Crane was born in the early 1900s to a white mother and an absent black father. At a young age Helga needs to fend for herself and she doesn’t fit in with the black or white communities she is a part of. The novel starts with her teaching at an all-black school in the South; she is not only upset by the subservient attitude taught there but finds she doesn’t have the pedigree to fit in the high society of which she is covetous. Her search for acceptance takes her to Chicago, Harlem, Copenhagen, Harlem again, and then back to the South.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.
Book preview
Quicksand - Nella Larsen
One
Helga Crane sat alone in her room, which at that hour, eight in the evening, was in soft gloom. Only a single reading lamp, dimmed by a great black and red shade, made a pool of light on the blue Chinese carpet, on the bright covers of the books which she had taken down from their long shelves, on the white pages of the opened one selected, on the shining brass bowl crowded with many-colored nasturtiums beside her on the low table, and on the oriental silk which covered the stool at her slim feet. It was a comfortable room, furnished with rare and intensely personal taste, flooded with Southern sun in the day, but shadowy just then with the drawn curtains and single shaded light. Large, too. So large that the spot where Helga sat was a small oasis in a desert of darkness. And eerily quiet. But that was what she liked after her taxing day’s work, after the hard classes, in which she gave willingly and unsparingly of herself with no apparent return. She loved this tranquility, this quiet, following the fret and strain of the long hours spent among fellow members of a carelessly unkind and gossiping faculty, following the strenuous rigidity of conduct required in this huge educational community of which she was an insignificant part. This was her rest, this intentional isolation for a short while in the evening, this little time in her own attractive room with her own books. To the rapping of other teachers, bearing fresh scandals, or seeking information, or other more concrete favors, or merely talk, at that hour Helga Crane never opened her door.
An observer would have thought her well fitted to that framing of light and shade. A slight girl of twenty-two years, with narrow, sloping shoulders and delicate but well-turned arms and legs, she had, none the less, an air of radiant, careless health. In vivid green and gold negligee and glistening brocaded mules, deep sunk in the big high-backed chair, against whose dark tapestry her sharply cut face, with skin like yellow satin, was distinctly outlined, she was—to use a hackneyed word—attractive. Black, very broad brows over soft yet penetrating dark eyes, and a pretty mouth, whose sensitive and sensuous lips had a slight questioning petulance and a tiny dissatisfied droop, were the features on which the observer’s attention would fasten; though her nose was good, her ears delicately chiseled, and her curly blue-black hair plentiful and always straying in a little wayward, delightful way. Just then it was tumbled, falling unrestrained about her face and onto her shoulders.
Helga Crane tried not to think of her work and the school as she sat there. Ever since her arrival in Naxos she had striven to keep these ends of the days from the intrusion of irritating thoughts and worries. Usually she was successful. But not this evening. Of the books which she had taken from their places she had decided on Marmaduke Pickthall’s Said the Fisherman. She wanted forgetfulness, complete mental relaxation, rest from thought of any kind. For the day had been more than usually crowded with distasteful encounters and stupid perversities. The sultry hot Southern spring had left her strangely tired, and a little unnerved. And annoying beyond all other happenings had been that affair of the noon period, now again thrusting itself on her already irritated mind.
She had counted on a few spare minutes in which to indulge in the sweet pleasure of a bath and a fresh, cool change of clothing. And instead her luncheon time had been shortened, as had that of everyone else, and immediately after the hurried gulping down of a heavy hot meal the hundreds of students and teachers had been herded into the sun-baked chapel to listen to the banal, the patronizing, and even the insulting remarks of one of the renowned white preachers of the state.
Helga shuddered a little as she recalled some of the statements made by that holy white man of God to the black folk sitting so respectfully before him.
This was, he had told them with obvious sectional pride, the finest school for Negroes anywhere in the country, north or south; in fact, it was better even than a great many schools for white children. And he had dared any Northerner to come south and after looking upon this great institution to say that the Southerner mistreated the Negro. And he had said that if all Negroes would only take a leaf out of the book of Naxos and conduct themselves in the manner of the Naxos products there would be no race problem, because Naxos Negroes knew what was expected of them. They had good sense and they had good taste. They knew enough to stay in their places, and that, said the preacher, showed good taste. He spoke of his great admiration for the Negro race, no other race in so short a time had made so much progress, but he had urgently besought them to know when and where to stop. He hoped, he sincerely hoped, that they wouldn’t become avaricious and grasping, thinking only of adding to their earthly goods, for that would be a sin in the sight of Almighty God. And then he had spoken of contentment, embellishing his words with scriptural quotations and pointing out to them that it was their duty to be satisfied in the estate to which they had been called, hewers of wood and drawers of water. And then he had prayed.
Sitting there in her room, long hours after, Helga again felt a surge of hot anger and seething resentment. And again it subsided in amazement at the memory of the considerable applause which had greeted the speaker just before he had asked his God’s blessing upon them.
The South. Naxos. Negro education. Suddenly she hated them all. Strange, too, for this was the thing which she had ardently desired to share in, to be a part of this monument to one man’s genius and vision. She pinned a scrap of paper about the bulb under the lamp’s shade, for, having discarded her book in the certainty that in such a mood even Said and his audacious villainy could not charm her, she wanted an even more soothing darkness. She wished it were vacation, so that she might get away for a time.
No, forever!
she said aloud.
The minutes gathered into hours, but still she sat motionless, a disdainful smile or an angry frown passing now and then across her face. Somewhere in the room a little clock ticked time away. Somewhere outside a whippoorwill wailed. Evening died. A sweet smell of early Southern flowers rushed in on a newly risen breeze which suddenly parted the thin silk curtains at the opened windows. A slender, frail glass vase fell from the sill with a tingling crash, but Helga Crane did not shift her position. And the night grew cooler, and older.
At last she stirred, uncertainly, but with an overpowering desire for action of some sort. A second she hesitated, then rose abruptly and pressed the electric switch with determined firmness, flooding suddenly the shadowy room with a white glare of light. Next she made a quick nervous tour to the end of the long room, paused a moment before the old bowlegged secretary that held with almost articulate protest her schoolteacher paraphernalia of drab books and papers. Frantically Helga Crane clutched at the lot and then flung them violently, scornfully toward the wastebasket. It received a part, allowing the rest to spill untidily over the floor. The girl smiled ironically, seeing in the mess a simile of her own earnest endeavor to inculcate knowledge into her indifferent classes.
Yes, it was like that; a few of the ideas which she tried to put into the minds behind those baffling ebony, bronze, and gold faces reached their destination. The others were left scattered about. And, like the gay, indifferent wastebasket, it wasn’t their fault. No, it wasn’t the fault of those minds back of the diverse colored faces. It was, rather, the fault of the method, the general idea behind the system. Like her own hurried shot at the basket, the aim was bad, the material drab and badly prepared for its purpose.
This great community, she thought, was no longer a school. It had grown into a machine. It was now a showplace in the black belt, exemplification of the white man’s magnanimity, refutation of the black man’s inefficiency. Life had died out of it. It was, Helga decided, now only a big knife with cruelly sharp edges ruthlessly cutting all to a pattern, the white man’s pattern. Teachers as well as students were subjected to the paring process, for it tolerated no innovations, no individualisms. Ideas it rejected, and looked with open hostility on one and all who had the temerity to offer a suggestion or ever so mildly express a disapproval. Enthusiasm, spontaneity, if not actually suppressed, were at least openly regretted as unladylike or ungentlemanly qualities. The place was smug and fat with self-satisfaction.
A peculiar characteristic trait, cold, slowly accumulated unreason in which all values were distorted or else ceased to exist, had with surprising ferociousness shaken the bulwarks of that self-restraint which was also, curiously, a part of her nature. And now that it had waned as quickly as it had risen, she smiled again, and this time the smile held a faint amusement, which wiped away the little hardness which had congealed her lovely face. Nevertheless she was soothed by the impetuous discharge of violence, and a sigh of relief came from her.
She said aloud, quietly, dispassionately: Well, I’m through with that,
and, shutting off the hard, bright blaze of the overhead lights, went back to her chair and settled down with an odd gesture of sudden soft collapse, like a person who had been for months fighting the devil and then unexpectedly had turned around and agreed to do his bidding.
Helga Crane had taught in Naxos for almost two years, at first with the keen joy and zest of those immature people who have dreamed dreams of doing good to their fellow men. But gradually this zest was blotted out, giving place to a deep hatred for the trivial hypocrisies and careless cruelties which were, unintentionally perhaps, a part of the Naxos policy of uplift. Yet she had continued to try not only to teach but to befriend those happy singing children, whose charm and distinctiveness the school was so surely ready to destroy. Instinctively Helga was aware that their smiling submissiveness covered many poignant heartaches and perhaps much secret contempt for their instructors. But she was powerless. In Naxos between teacher and student, between condescending authority and smoldering resentment, the gulf was too great, and too few had tried to cross it. It couldn’t be spanned by one sympathetic teacher. It was useless to offer her atom of friendship, which under the existing conditions was neither wanted nor understood.
Nor was the general atmosphere of Naxos, its air of self-rightness and intolerant dislike of difference, the best of mediums for a pretty, solitary girl with no family connections. Helga’s essentially likable and charming personality was smudged out. She had felt this for a long time. Now she faced with determination that other truth which she had refused to formulate in her thoughts: the fact that she was utterly unfitted for teaching, even for mere existence, in Naxos. She was a failure here. She had, she conceded now, been silly, obstinate, to persist for so long. A failure. Therefore, no need, no use, to stay longer. Suddenly she longed for immediate departure. How good, she thought, to go now, tonight!—and frowned to remember how impossible that would be. The dignitaries,
she said, are not in their offices, and there will be yards and yards of red tape to unwind, gigantic, impressive spools of it.
And there was James Vayle to be told, and much-needed money to be got. James, she decided, had better be told at once. She looked at the clock racing indifferently on. No, too late. It would have to be tomorrow.
She hated to admit that money was the most serious difficulty. Knowing full well that it was important, she nevertheless rebelled at the unalterable truth that it could influence her actions, block her desires. A sordid necessity to be grappled with. With Helga it was almost a superstition that to concede to money its importance magnified its power. Still, in spite of her reluctance and distaste, her financial situation would have to be faced, and plans made, if she were to get away from Naxos with anything like the haste which she now so ardently desired.
Most of her earnings had gone into clothes, into books, into the furnishings of the room which held her. All her life Helga Crane had loved and longed for nice things. Indeed, it was this craving, this urge for beauty, which had helped to bring her into disfavor in Naxos—pride
and vanity,
her detractors called it.
The sum owing to her by the school would just a little more than buy her ticket back to Chicago. It was too near the end of the school term to hope to get teaching work anywhere. If she couldn’t find something else, she would have to ask Uncle Peter for a loan. Uncle Peter was, she knew, the one relative who thought kindly, or even calmly, of her. Her stepfather, her stepbrothers and -sisters, and the numerous cousins, aunts, and other uncles could not be even remotely considered. She laughed a little, scornfully, reflecting that the antagonism was mutual, or, perhaps, just a trifle keener on her side than on theirs. They feared and hated her. She pitied and despised them. Uncle