Mixed-Race Identity Theme Analysis

Quicksand tracks the life of Helga Crane, a young biracial woman searching for belonging in early 20th-century American and European societies. Her character embodies the “tragic mulatta” trope common in 19th-century abolitionist literature: a half-white, half-black woman who is raised in an affluent setting, struggles to find her place in society, and meets a tragic end. Typically, the “tragic mulatta” is sold into slavery. Helga Crane’s life represents a failed attempt to escape the “tragic mulatta’s” fate. Throughout the novel, Helga is constantly searching for a place where she’ll feel at home as a mixed-race person. Helga’s restlessness takes hold whenever she realizes a part of her racial identity has been suppressed by her surroundings. Despite moving five times in the story, her lifelong search for a community where she feels she belongs is repeatedly thwarted. Although she refuses to be “sold” into a marriage with a white man, Helga never finds a community in which she feels at ease, and this ultimately breaks her. Leveraging Helga’s life story, the author, Nella Larsen, argues that despite the abolition of slavery, mixed-race women still meet “tragic” ends in the segregated world of her time. The ever-present pressure to suppress part of their identity is what “breaks” them.

At Naxos, the boarding school for black students where Helga teaches, she feels that the belief in white cultural values as superior stifles her blackness. The dean of women requires people of color to wear muted colors at work, because she finds bright colors “vulgar” on dark skin tones. Helga’s frustration at the dean’s policy is captured in her internal retort about people like the dean, who “yapped loudly of race consciousness, of race pride, yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naïve, spontaneous laughter.” It bothers Helga that Naxos is supposed to empower black women, yet many of its staff members reveal an undercurrent of racism in the way they talk about black people.

In Chicago, Helga finds that there is a mismatch between her background as a teacher and the work opportunities available to her, as most jobs available to women of color are in domestic labor. When Helga explains that she has teaching experience at the employment office, the disinterested clerk repeatedly interjects with statements like, “Our kind of work wouldn’t do for you” because it’s “Domestic mostly.” Because Helga’s individual experience doesn’t match racist societal norms, she’s excluded from multiple groups: she can’t teach because she’s a person of color, but she can’t work a domestic job because she’s too educated.

In Harlem, Helga is disturbed by her roommate, Anne’s, vehement belief in segregation, since it implies that Helga’s very existence as a mixed-race person is somehow immoral. Anne is disgusted by Audrey Denney “because she goes about with white people,” and “gives parties for colored people together,” which Anne finds “obscene.” Failing to remember that Helga is half-white herself, Anne is annoyed when Helga defends Audrey’s behavior. Helga is seized with anger but ignores her sudden impulse to leave Harlem forever, despite finding Anne’s comments “revolting.” Helga realizes that in order to fit in, she has no choice but to deny certain aspects of her essential identity.

In Copenhagen, Helga refuses to marry her Danish suitor, Axel Olsen, an artist who views her as an exotic curiosity. In this action, Larsen shows that Helga is resistant to ending up like the “tragic mulatta.” Even though Axel Olsen is rich and well connected, Helga doesn’t want to be “sold” into a marriage with a white man who thinks of her as some “decoration.” Helga is repelled when Herr Olsen describes his objectifying portrait of her as a true likeness because it captures her “tragedy.” Although Herr Olsen could offer Helga a life of luxury, she refuses him because she doesn’t want to limit the daily freedom of her life in Denmark. Helga explicitly says, “But you see Herr Olsen, I’m not for sale. Not to you. Not to any white man. I don’t care at all to be owned. Not even by you.” Helga’s experiences make her realize that even though she is part Danish, she will never be treated as an insider in this community. She feels more like an exotic “pet,”—or “peacock”—and will not accept the “tragic” fate of having her experience limited like that.

After leaving Denmark and returning to Harlem, Helga marries a man named Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green on a spontaneous whim, and moves to rural Alabama with him, thinking she will finally find a home where she fits in. She tries to adjust to the impoverished community where he lives, but finds that her affluent upbringing has rendered her unable to fit in with other women in this community, and unfit to handle a hard life of childrearing and poverty. Inspired by her experiences with wealthy white culture in Europe and wealthy black culture in Harlem, Helga attempts to share advice on clothing and home decoration with the women in her town, but most of them find her “uppity” and “meddling.”  Despite finding temporary meaning in her life of homemaking, Helga ultimately struggles to keep up with the labor of housekeeping and having children. In the end, ill and worn down as she begins to give birth to yet another child, Helga simply feels broken. Although Helga didn’t fit in with her wealthy white relatives in Copenhagen, or the wealthy black community in Harlem, she also feels like an outsider in this poor black community. Her whiteness comes off as snobbish, and her affluence leaves her feeling ill-equipped to handle a life of poverty.

Larsen thus shows that although slavery has been abolished in Europe and the U.S., the plight of the “mulatta” is still “tragic.” Mixed-race American women living in this time can still be broken by the perpetual social pressure to suppress some aspect of their identity.