Quicksand: Analysis of Major Characters
"Quicksand" explores the complexities of identity and belonging through its major characters, primarily focusing on Helga Crane, a young woman of mixed heritage. Helga, characterized by her beauty and intelligence, experiences profound alienation as she navigates various social environments, including an elite black school in Naxos and the artistic circles of Copenhagen. Each setting reveals her internal struggles with race, class, and personal fulfillment. Dr. Robert Anderson, the principal of the school, is a pivotal figure in Helga’s life, representing unacknowledged love and emotional restraint. In contrast, Anne Grey, a wealthy Harlem widow, embodies the contradictions of social advocacy while living in privilege, complicating Helga’s social interactions. Helga's eventual marriage to the Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green marks a significant decline in her mental and emotional well-being, highlighting the consequences of her misguided choices. Supporting characters, like her uncle Peter and her aunt in Denmark, further illustrate the stark contrasts in societal expectations and personal aspirations. Through these interconnected lives, "Quicksand" vividly portrays the search for identity in a world rife with cultural and social tensions.
Quicksand: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Nella Larsen
First published: 1928
Genre: Novel
Locale: The United States and Copenhagen, Denmark
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: The 1920's
Helga Crane, a twenty-three-year-old teacher of mixed heritage. Born of a Danish mother and a West Indian father, she is educated by her mother's brother after the death of her mother. She is an exotically beautiful, sensuously contradictory, intelligent, sensitive lover of exquisitely beautiful clothes and things. She also is a lost, lonely, dissatisfied, alienated, dichotomous, indecisive, and spiritually and psychologically ambivalent young woman who is never at home in the world, neither in Naxos, where she teaches in an elite black school and falls in love unwittingly with the very proper and reticent Dr. Robert Anderson, nor in Harlem, where she mingles with the black bourgeoisie, attends the correct social functions and meets the correct people, and is proposed to by eligible bachelors. She does not fit into Copenhagen society, where she lives with her very proper European aunt and uncle, mingles with the artistic set, and is proposed to by a very eligible Danish artist, Axel Olsen. Ultimately, she lives in Alabama, where she is married to a most unsuitable, unlettered black minister. She sinks deeper into depression and exhaustion with the birth of each of her children.
Dr. Robert Anderson, the principal of the elite black school in Naxos where Helga first teaches. He is a tall, handsome thirty-five-year-old with gray eyes. He is a cool, reticent, controlled, and detached man, and Helga falls very passionately, though unadmittedly, in love with him. Although he is in love with Helga, he refuses to define and to act on his emotions, either in Naxos or later in New York, where he also goes to escape the provincial Naxos. It is clearly his engagement to Helga's friend, Anne, that terminates Helga's extended stay in Denmark, and it undoubtedly is his later marriage to Anne that propels Helga into the unsuitable marriage with the Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green.
Anne Grey, a socialite Harlem widow. She is an extremely beautiful, black-haired, black-eyed, madonna-like thirty-year-old. Fastidiously dressed, self-assured, selfish but gentle, and well bred, she is a hypocritically liberal, independently wealthy, well-connected, bourgeois Harlemite who has an exquisitely beautiful home filled with antiques and books that are an index to her personality. Obsessed with the race problem, she says the right thing, attends the proper social functions, and does the proper charity work for black people. Full of ambivalence and inconsistencies, she advocates social equality while living a life of social inequality. Introduced to Helga by Mrs. Hayes-Rore, her aunt-in-law, she becomes Helga's nemesis and friend; she later marries Helga's one love, Dr. Robert Anderson.
The Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green, a minister of a small black church in Alabama. He is a rather heavyset, unattractive, yellow, fattish, dirty-nailed, unlettered, uncouth, self-satisfied, dull, mild-mannered man. Helga marries him in a misguided daze to seek revenge on Dr. Anderson for marrying Anne, and with him she produces four children in rapid succession (three in twenty months) and lives in a quagmire of lost hope and disillusionment. He is an amorous man who ignites Helga's buried sexual desires. He puts his sexual desires and pleasures over his wife's needs and her health. Helga recognizes too late his character traits of selfishness, hypocrisy, and sexual self-gratification.
Mrs. Hayes-Rore, an independently wealthy, intellectually deficient, socially conscious and influential, plump, middle-aged, “lemon-colored,” matronly, Chicago widow with “badly straightened hair.” Although she has a false sense of her importance and gives pretentious speeches on race relations at conventions and other functions, she is a kind woman. She rescues a destitute Helga in Chicago after Uncle Peter's wife refuses her admittance, takes her to New York, and finds her both a place to stay (with Anne Grey) and a job with an insurance company. She advises Helga to conceal her white background.
Margaret Creighton, a teacher, Helga's young, attractive, unimaginative friend and colleague at the black school in Naxos. She knows how to abide by the rules and is quite at home in Naxos.
Axel Olsen, a painter. Slightly older than Helga, he has a “leonine head, broad nose, bushy eyebrows.” He is brilliant, elegant, and arrogant; somewhat cynical and selfish; and rather pompous. A socially prominent Danish artist, he paints Helga's portrait and proposes marriage after failing to initiate a more informal relationship with her. He is enamored not so much with Helga as with his own portrait of her and with his conception of her exotic looks. He leaves town after Helga's refusal of his marriage offer. He provides entrée into the artistic world of Denmark for Helga's Aunt Katrina.
Peter Nilssen, Helga's kindhearted and gentle uncle, brother of her mother. He is Helga's benefactor after her mother's death. He finances her education and befriends her until he marries a woman who hates black people and refuses Helga access to him. Forced to relinquish his ties to Helga, he gives her five thousand dollars and suggests that she visit her Aunt Katrina in Denmark.
Clementine Richards, a parishioner of the Reverend Mr. Green's church in Alabama and in love with him. She is a tall black beauty of great proportions. She has an obvious and open dislike for the gentle Helga.
Miss Hartley, a kindly, understanding midwife and nurse who cares for Helga during her mental and physical collapse after the birth and death of her fourth child in Alabama.
Helga's mother, a fair Scandinavian woman who is in love with life. She risks everything by marrying a black West Indian man who leaves her before Helga is born. Estranged from her family, except for her brother Pete, she remarries to a white man, who dislikes Helga but dies when Helga is very young.
James Vayle, a weak, dull, snobbish young man from the proper social stratum in Atlanta. He acquiesces to his parents' and others' ideas of what is proper. He is Helga's fiancé and fellow teacher in Naxos. He dislikes Helga for not being able to fit into the dull, smug Naxos society and dislikes himself for finding Helga attractive and desirable enough to become engaged.
Poul and Katrina Dahl, Helga's scrupulously proper and correct, rather wealthy, and pretentious aunt and uncle in Copenhagen. In their own limited manner, they love and admire Helga because she is different and exotic and can bring them the kind of attention and acceptance they desire in the artistic world. They buy Helga beautiful and exotic clothes and set her up as an objet d'art to be admired and to be bought by the highest bidder.