Internal Conflict in Nella Larsen’s “quicksand” - Racial Tension and Personal Anomie

Internal Conflict in Nella Larsen’s “Quicksand”

In “Quicksand,” a semi-autobiographical novel by Nella Larsen, the biracial protagonist, Helga Crane, finds perpetual disillusionment in all of her activities. To a very large extent then, “Quicksand” is a coming-of-age novel that lasts well past the protagonist’s typical formative period. With Crane rejecting race as both a legitimate basis for social classification and as a cause for her own plight, the reader of the novel bears witness to her suffering through a wide bevy of self-inflicted social and emotional wounds. Thus, although Helga Crane's skin color defied social classification and she faced many hardships, her biggest conflict was internal rather than external. While Crane certainly suffers from significant bigotry, for example when she is treated as an exoticism in Denmark; her most salient difficulties lie in terms of her inability to find happiness in her roles as a wife and mother. With this, the crux of the novel is one of internal struggle wherein its protagonist seeks to find a place for herself in the world and fails because of her own significant neuroses.

RACIAL TENSION AND PERSONAL ANOMIE

To begin, it is clear that a significant portion of Crane’s misery and despondence lies in the racial oppression, which she encounters throughout the novel as a biracial woman. For one, when she is living in Chicago, she suffers discrimination for her white uncle’s wife. Similarly, when she lives in Copenhagen, she is treated as an exotic creature, both sexually and in terms of her race. In this vein, Larsen writes that:

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. And after a little while she gave herself up wholly to the fascinating business of being seen, gaped at, desired. (1130)

Thus, while she lived in Copenhagen, Crane was not treated as a person but rather as an object of curiosity and incitement. Yet, despite the salient ontological difficulties associated with such a tokenistic life, it does not appear that race itself laid at the core of Crane’s misery. Ambivalent towards the way in which Black folks expressed racial pride, Crane was first torn between her Black and White identities, feeling as she belonged in neither group. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, her refusal to allow herself to be categorized as a person of color refutes the notion that the mass of her conflicts were racially engendered, and serves to promote the thesis that they were the result of salient internal conflicts.

MARRIAGE AND INTERNAL CONFLICT

Furthermore, one of the most important internal conflicts, which Crane faced was