“Always she had wanted, not money, but the things which money could give, leisure, attention, beautiful surroundings. Things. Things. Things.” (p. 63). Kindle Edition.
This book’s title does not refer to literal quicksand. Rather, Helga Crane, the protagonist, is figuratively entrapped and frustrated as though she is in quicksand. The story begins as Helga, a biracial woman, is teaching at Naxos, a southern school for American Blacks, in the 1920s. Helga believed that the school promulgated the superiority of Caucasians, and she thought it was disgraceful to her people to pretend to educate them in such a place. So when she abruptly quit, she uttered these words to Dr. Robert Anderson, the Black principal:
“Well, for one thing, I hate hypocrisy. I hate cruelty to students, and to teachers who can’t fight back. I hate backbiting, and sneaking, and petty jealousy. Naxos? It’s hardly a place at all. It’s more like some loathsome, venomous disease. Ugh! Everybody spending his time in a malicious hunting for the weaknesses of others, spying, grudging, scratching.” (p. 18).
Dr. Anderson shows up again in the novel, and it is apparent that Helga is attracted to him. However, as Helga begins the next part of her life’s journey by taking a train to Chicago, the reader soon realizes how discontent and restless Helga is. Naxos represented the Anglo-Saxon world. However, when she begins to encounter other people, white, black and biracial, they seem charming and alluring at first but continually remind her of the hypocrisy of society, especially when it comes to racial discrimination.
She hopes at first to receive assistance from her Uncle Peter, who had funded her schooling. But, when that doesn’t work out, she ends up relying on the resources of a YWCA in Chicago, where she eventually meets Mrs. Hayes-Rore, who hires Helga to travel from Chicago to New York with her and help her prepare speeches. Mrs. Hayes-Rore is also mixed race and has the social prestige that Helga seeks. Mrs. Hayes-Rore introduces her to Anne Grey, a socialite widow who shares her home with her in New York until she has the opportunity to visit her aunt and uncle in Denmark. In Denmark, she has the chance to marry an artist, but she returns to New York with uncertain goals and eventually marries, but she never loses her impulsive nature.
In many ways, Helga is an unlikeable character. Still, Nella Larson has created her to force readers to consider the plight of biracial people and people of color in multiple geographic locations: The South, Chicago, New York, and Europe. Helga is cynical and discontent. She flees every time she approaches intimacy with another human being. She feels confined and powerless, yet she seeks higher social status. Hela is uncomfortable in her skin, identifies with neither the Whites nor Blacks and continually strives to reinvent herself.
