Joseph Kuperschmidt Kuperschmidt 1

Prof. Karen Shaup

Literary Modernisms

1 May 2014

Two Colors, One Skin: Loneliness in (Not of) the City in Quicksand
While bustling cities served as breeding grounds for modernist artists and philosophers,
many of these thinkers reflected on the metropoliss ability to maximize feelings of loneliness.
Georg Simmel points to the the bodily closeness and lack of space [which] make intellectual
distance really perceivable for the first time (16). Because of these factors that hinder
independence and freedom, Simmel claims that one never feels as lonely and as deserted as in
this metropolitan crush of persons (16). Echoing Simmels notions, Marshall Berman,
interpreting the work of Charles Baudelaire, refers to the archetypal modern figure as a man
alone contending against an agglomeration of mass and energy that is heavy, fast and lethal
(159). Despite these claims, Nella Larsens Quicksand depicts continuity in the social
organization of rural and urban settings, weakening the assertion of city lifes role in the
causation of alienation.
Helga Crane, the protagonist of Quicksand, persistently seeks escape. Her journey begins
at Naxos, a cutting-edge school for African Americans where she works as a teacher. Unlike
anyone else at this southern school, Helga comes from a mixed racial background of
Scandinavian and African American. Helga sees the school as a vile proponent of oppression
and conformity, and she soon decides to leave. Helgas travels lead her to three cities: Chicago,
New York, and Copenhagen. At each one of these places, Helga quickly becomes detached and
soon decides to relocate herself. While it might seem reasonable to name city life as the reason
for Helgas loneliness and subsequent behavior, well-defined communities exist in Quicksands
metropolitan settings that combat the idea that city dwellers face continual isolation. Personal
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factors affect Helgas condition and inform her decision-making. Her understanding of herself
remains constantly in crisis due to her mixed race, and neither white nor black communities
make her feel complete. She deserts her surroundings in search of a place compatible with her
racial identity, but in each instance, she only finds seclusion. In addition to barriers that arise
from her race, Helga, at times, alienates herself in situations, even subconsciously, as a means of
defending against eventual rejection. Helgas chronic feelings of separation and her resulting
habit of leaving can therefore be seen as a product not of an inherent hostility in the cities she
visits but, instead, of the divided racial communities of the 1920s that alienate mixed raced
individuals.
Before looking at Helgas reclusive behavior, it is important to investigate her perception
of herself as an outsider. Helga was born to an immigrant woman and an African American man
who frequently gambled. Thinking about her parents relationship, Helga believes her mother
had forgotten, or had perhaps never known, that some things the world never forgives (21).
Helga considers herself a product of a union that requires forgiveness, not only because of the
differing races of her parents but also due to the fact that the two were most likely never married.
After her fathers desertion, her mother married a white man, which made her an unloved little
Negro girl in an entirely Caucasian family (22). Her mothers brother, who sent her to a Negro
school at fifteen, supports her, but he does so to satisfy his idea that because of her Negro blood
she [will] never amount to anything (7). Helga endures all of this mistreatment, and more than
this, she empathizes with those who reject her, understanding herself as an obscene sore in all of
their lives, at all costs to be hidden (27). Even in environments with other African American,
she feels isolated from those around her. At the Negro school she attended, she had felt more
accepted, but the other girls had families that looked like them and defined identities as African
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Americans. In his 1918 book The Mulatto in the United States, leading American sociologist
Edward Bryon Reuter claimed that mixed race Americans at the time had not, as yet, found
themselves nor their place in the general social life of the [African American] community (381).
In line with Reuters assertions, Helgas identity and position in black communities, and white
communities as well, remain unclear.
In another uniformly black environment, Naxos, Helga again feels isolated, but she
embraces her loneliness. During her time at the school, she finds herself at peace only when she
is separated from others. The novel opens with Helga sitting alone in her room, avoiding her
fellow faculty members socializing in the hallway. Larsen describes, The spot where Helga
[sits is] a small oasis in a desert of darkness. And eerily quiet. But that [is] what she like[s] (1).
Rather than wallow in sadness, Helga appears to enjoy her time of intentional isolation (1).
Helga reflects on a series criticisms of Naxos that cause her to wish to leave, all of which seem
reasonable. She sees the school as a reiteration of white dominance, a mechanical perpetuation
of the racial divide, and she refuses to conform to the system, as her fianc James Vayle has.
She does not feel a part of the Naxos community, specifically in the way she interprets her race.
The dean of Naxos and James Vayle value the complicated hierarchy of African American
society that labels Helga as a despised mulatto (16). The dean even regulates the color of
clothing worn by the schools women, restricting the harmony, radiance, and simplicity of race
that Helga admires (17). Helga is invigorated by her decision to leave the school, but she has
also simply fallen in love with the piquancy of leaving (14). Whether the point of departure is
Naxos or Nashville, Helga has begun to relish the feeling of running away, as it is more exciting
and more reliable than attempting to fit in with a group. This passion for flight makes the choice
to leave her job and break her engagement an easy decision.
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After fleeing Naxos, Helga heads to Chicago in an attempt to find a community, seeking
help from both white and black sources, but she finds herself rejected by both groups. She visits
her uncle to ask for financial help. However, his condescending magnanimity has reached its
limits. His new wife denies Helgas relationship to her husband, leaving Helga without a
familiar face in Chicago. As she leaves her uncles house, she impulsively barks, Youre not
my uncle, to a white man who approaches her (27). In doing this, she renounces her Caucasian
identity as a response to the humiliation and frustration of her uncles abandonment. She
struggles to gain employment, and in the meantime, she again seeks a group with which to
associate. Despite her typical distrust of religion, she attends the very high, very fashionable
services at the Negro Episcopal church on Michigan Avenue (31). The other members of the
congregation generally ignore her, in part as a continuation of the hierarchical system she
witnessed at Naxos, but her experience at this church reveals another example of her
subconscious tendency to avoid connection. She fails to realize that she emits a faint hint of
offishness which [hangs] about her and [repels] advances, and she neglects to admit her role in
her own lonesomeness (31). While the homogeneous groups within Chicago alienate Helga, the
masses of Chicago provide a sense of belonging for her. As she walks into a moving multi-
colored crowd, Helga feels that she [has] come home (28). Although she feels accepted in
this throng of people, it is comprised of people disengaging themselves to pursue their own
individual ways (27). This mixture of people of different races is not a true community which
Helga can join, and because of this, she remains a women who [has] no home (28).
When she at last finds employment, Helga finds another opportunity to flee and decides
to continue her search for acceptance in New York City. Mrs. Hayes-Rore, a prominent race
woman, hires Helga to accompany her on a trip to New York and revise some of her speeches
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(35). On the train to Newark, Helga describes to Mrs. Hayes-Rore her solitary life, and not much
later, she reveals to her employer that she has no plans of returning to Chicago, hoping to settle
in New York. Hayes-Rore warns that New York can be the lonesomest place if you dont know
anybody, but Helga cannot understand how it could be worse than Chicago (37). As Helga
explains, I havent any people. Theres only me (36). Since Helga remains completely alone,
no place can really be lonelier than another.
Upon arriving in New York, Helga establishes herself with a group of people in the city,
but she faces loneliness as a result of her partial whiteness. She befriends and lives with Anne
Grey, an independent African American widow who is almost too good to be true (41). Helga
finds work, and joins Anne in the social life of Harlem. Helgas happiness in the black belt
lasts only a year until a sensation of estrangement and isolation encompasses her (44). The
issue of race consumes the people of Harlem, including Anne who hates white people with a
deep and burning hatred (45). This onslaught of racial dialogue and affront to Caucasians
alienates Helga on two levels. As seen from her response to the people of Naxos, her interests lie
more with the spirituality of race than its politics. And in criticizing white people, Anne is
condemning Helga. In the harshest instance, Anne makes a little clicking noise with her tongue,
indicating an abhorrence too great for words at the idea of a white man dancing with a colored
woman a union not too different from the one that resulted in Helga (56). Langston Hughes, a
contemporary of Larsen, investigates the conflict of races in his discussion of the black artist.
Although he does not seem to detest white Americans as Anne does, he speaks out against the
rejection of Negro culture and the the urge within the race toward whiteness (692). Helga
cannot join the movement opposed to the white urge without denying half of her identity.
Rather than discuss the problem with Anne or move to a different part of New York, Helga
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makes plans to leave the country. An apologetic letter from her uncle in Chicago provides her
with five thousand dollars for the trip. To escape the isolation she feels in her Harlem
community, Helga chooses to embrace her Scandinavian identity. She goes to live with aunt and
uncle in Denmark, declaring, Theyre my own people (50).
In Denmark, Helga encounters a predicament very different from the one she faced in
New York; she is at first comfortable denying her African American identity in Copenhagen but
feels alone once she realizes she cannot avoid it. Helgas aunt and uncle show great pleasure in
hosting her, and they provide her with luxury. Unlike was expected at Naxos, Helga is
encouraged to wear glamorous clothes like an emerald-green velvet dress with gold and
mauve flowers (63). However, Helga does not become a respected woman of color in
Copenhagen. She wears clothing to decorate and accentuate her features rather than to express
her individuality, and she serves as a dark queer creature for people to gawk at Den Sorte
or the the black one (64, 67). Her aunt and uncle have seemingly good intentions, but they use
Helga as a tool to elevate themselves in the Copenhagen social world. They encourage her
relationship with Axel Olsen, a renowned painter who begins a portrait of her, a reaffirmation of
her purpose as a visual object. For the most part, Helga enjoys this life, although it does grow
tiresome. One night, Olsen takes her to a vaudeville show where two African Americans
perform a rendition of Everybody Gives Me Good Advice. The Danish audience loves this
act, but Helga feels shamed, betrayed, as if these pale pink and white people had been invited
to look on something in her which she had hidden away (77). This embarrassment grows to
resentment and the realization that the Danish did not understand her and her African American
roots. When Olsen finally proposes to her, Helga declines his offer, saying, I couldnt marry a
white man. I simply couldnt (82). While this could be read as another act of defensive
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aloofness, Helga appears to genuinely recognize a black part of herself that she cannot embrace
in Copenhagen.
Back in New York City, Helga gives herself up to the African American life to avoid
isolation, despite the fact that it means refusing her white self. Homesick, not for America, but
for Negros, Helga returns to Harlem for the wedding of Anne Grey and Robert Anderson but
does plan to make her way back to Denmark (86). While her relationship with Anne has
weakened, she declares herself to be a part of Harlems community. These [are] her people,
Larsen describes, with whom she shares ties of the spirit (89). She sees that she has something
of value in Denmark, physical freedom, but she prefers the spiritual freedom in America
(89). Her plans to return to Copenhagen become indefinitely delayed, and she at last rids herself
of that loneliness which had tormented her like a fury (89). Tragically, a humiliating fling
with Anderson pushes her away from New York, but for a brief moment, the city becomes an
inclusive and joyous haven for Helga.
Throughout Quicksand, Helga Crane yearns for an environment fit for her mixed racial
identity, but although the cities to which she travels hold promise for providing this, each
manages to alienate her. In an ideal world, Helga would be able to join a community with other
individuals of mixed black and white background or with Caucasian and African Americans
coexisting. No evidence of the former exists in the novel, and instances of the later are either
impermanent or criticized. This deficiency of diverse communities is not specific to the city, but
instead, it occurs across the country and the world. Helga encounters the question of whether
she is willing to abandon a part of herself to cure her loneliness, and when she finally does this in
New York City, a matter unrelated to race makes the city unlivable. Marrying Reverend
Pleasant Green and using the church as an attempt to restore her sense of community, she leaves
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the city for Alabama. Not before long, her passion for her married life, for the church, and for
God wanes, and it is sickness and pregnancy not any lack of desire that keep her from
escaping once more.




















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Works Cited
Berman, Marshall. "The Mire of the Macadam." All That Is Solid Melts into Air:
The Experience of Modernity. N.p.: Penguin, 1988. 155-64. Print.
Hughes, Langston. "The Negro Artist And The Racial Mountain." Nation 122.3181 (1926): 692-
694. The Nation Archive. Web. 1 May 2014.
Larsen, Nella. Quicksand. Mineola: Dover, 2006. Print.
Reuter, Edward Byron. The Mulatto in the United States: Including of the Role of Mixed-Race
Throughout the World. Boston: Gorham, 1918. PDF file.
Simmel, Georg. "The Metropolis and Mental Life." The Blackwell City Reader. Ed.
Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. Malden: Blackwell, 2002. 11-19. Print.