I read Nella Larsen’s novel, Passing, some years ago, and found it both moving and thought-provoking. I have been meaning to read Quicksand, the first of Larsen’s novels to be published during her lifetime, ever since, but as ever, it has taken me quite a while to get around to doing so.
A classic of the Harlem Renaissance genre, Quicksand begins in the 1920s, and follows protagonist Helga Crane, who teaches at an all-Black school in the Southern USA, in the fictional town of Naxos. Helga has always been treated poorly because of the colour of her skin, and ‘has long had to fend for herself’. Following a disagreement in her workplace, she moves, first to Harlem, New York, and then to Copenhagen, Denmark, to stay with a kindly aunt. Here, ‘she attempts to carve out a comfortable life and place for herself, but ends up back where she started, choosing emotional freedom that quickly translates into a narrow existence.’ Passing also incorporates the story of a second woman; she and Helga meet one another in later life, after losing track following a childhood friendship. Her friend is ‘passing’ as a white person, living in an all-white community, and keeping this enormous secret from her family.
I found the novel’s opening extremely evocative: ‘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.’ I appreciate the rich detail which Larsen weaves through Quicksand; it adds another layer to the story in itself.
Larsen pays so much attention to the scenes and settings which her characters inhabit. She also expertly builds up Helga’s character, so that she appears as a wholly three-dimensional being. Early in the novel, Larsen goes on, for example, to describe the following: ‘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.’ Helga is introduced as ‘a slight girl of twenty-two years, with narrow, sloping shoulders and delicate but well-turned arms and legs,’ and ‘with skin like yellow satin’. She goes on to demonstrate Helga’s steadfastness and determination, as well as the difficulty of fitting in with those around her which she constantly feels.
There are some happier moments in Helga’s life: ‘New York she had found not so unkind, not so unfriendly, not so indifferent. There she had been happy, and secured work, had made acquaintances and another friend. Again she had that strange transforming experience, this time not so fleetingly, that magic sense of having come home. Harlem, teeming black Harlem, had welcomed her and lulled her into something that was, she was certain, peace and contentment.’
I loved the way in which Helga’s relationship to the city changes from one season to the next; this was a really effective part of the narrative. Larsen writes: ‘As the days became hotter and the streets more swarming, a kind of repulsion came upon her. She recoiled in aversion from the sight of the grinning faces and from the sound of the easy laughter of all these people who strolled, aimlessly now, it seemed, up and down the avenues.’ Larsen goes on: ‘She was drugged, lifted, sustained, by the extraordinary music, blown out, ripped out, beaten out, by the joyous, wild, murky orchestra. The essence of life seemed bodily motion.’
The character progression here is excellent, and Larsen was rather clever in moving Helga to Copenhagen. The ‘othering’ which she experiences here is quite different; she is seen, in the upper class society in which her white aunt and her husband move, as: ‘… attractive, unusual, in an exotic, almost savage way, but she wasn’t one of them. She didn’t at all count.’ Her aunt convinces her not to hide away; she implores Helga to wear bright colours, and show off her figure, which she is so used to disguising from attention in the USA. Larsen goes on: ‘Incited. That was it, the guiding principle of her life in Copenhagen. She was incited to make an impression, a voluptuous impression. She was incited to inflame attention and admiration. She was dressed for it, subtly schooled for it.’
Quicksand, first published in 1928, includes such interesting explorations of self and identity. It feels rather ahead of its time in many respects. Larsen is not shy about probing the depths of her protagonist, mining a complex range of emotions and feelings. There is a real immediacy to the story, and I found myself really caught up in Helga’s life. I can’t say I particularly liked Helga, but I did find her a well-constructed, realistic character, with a lot of depth to her.
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