Quicksand - Nella Larsen - Textual Analysis & Secondary Source Analysis/Quotations PDF

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Lectures were given by Dr. Baker, these notes contain both the notes taken from the lecture and are substantiated by seminar discussion and secondary sources/analysis....

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Quicksand by Nella Larsen Lecture 1 – A Chosen Exile: the cost of knowledge in Larsen’s writing  Reading texts to see both similarities and differences between two experiences (of the reader and of the character)  Also read to learn about experiences/stories that we haven’t and won’t be able to engage with, outside of the literature  Read texts in relation to the perceived importance/significance  Larsen produces a character who is read in relation to various categories: race, class, belief, nationality, gender etc. - Learning what it means to speak as these different ‘characters’  1928, height of black migration from the rural south to the urban north - Led to an explosion of culture (Harlem renaissance) - Read as an exploration of double consciousness and as ‘the tragic mulato’  Plessey v. Ferguson – separate but equal laws  Race and nationality don’t cohere in African American lives  Tension between the self that observes the world and the world that looks back at a person that is defining that self – W. E. B. Du Bois  America was defined by its inability to incorporate the black ideals and culture into what it was mean to be American - Therefore, many felt that they were not fully American, but they were also not fully African either  You observe yourself through the eyes of others  The colour-line was a problem not only for those it was imposed upon, but also for those who impose it (Du Bois) - Both the ideals of blacks and the ideals of the white need to change in order to have syncopated growth  Du Bois enlightens the difficulty and complicity of racial prejudice, that there needs to be an allencompassing change of society in order to help African-Americans feel placed, whereas during the Harlem Renaissance there was a divide between the two which led to the distressing emotions that Larsen produces through Helga – by making her mixed race, she is an emphasised image of the continuous divide between black and whites and therefore the inner divide between blacks feeling African or American  Significance of being a black woman who has nowhere to turn for the sense of community  Tries to place herself in so many places that inherently have a community, however at no point does she feel like she is meant to be - Helga’s life is a search for community  Du Bois believes that there is a form of community that is based on common experience  Community of getting by, not getting better - Access to education, according to Du Bois, is a step towards solving the colour-line (however, Helga never found her community despite going to college and throwing herself into education by becoming a teacher, this she then grew to resent and despise as an institution) - Education is a path into the world, both collectively and individually  Naxos was based on Fisk university, 12th of the exclusively black colleges - Gives it a sense of purpose through the minister - Preacher poisons the college by restricting its inhabitants to just that college, restricts those who study there to only being able to prosper through their time at Naxos and through what Naxos will later allow them to do  Helga has found solace in isolation  Education has shut her off from the world, reduced the importance of it  Helga doesn’t want to belong to any sort of knowledge  Ta-Nehisi Coates presents a community, a life that is formed and revolved around the importance and significance of his community

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It leads one to question whether this sense of community is what helped/helps many to battle against prejudices and racism as they find commonality with others, therefore they don’t suffer the kind of solace that Helga finds herself doing - Universal experience; Gilroy’s double consciousness Education deprived the individual (Helga) of any sense of who she is as the minister degrades it, his praise of the school in fact does the opposite as it depraves her and other students of being their true self, or at least to discover who that true self is – she is told what she is to be, she is defined by her school and her education as a combination with her skin and the politics of the day Quicksand literalises the ‘neither/nor’ attitude to not having a place or community, however it also resists this act of showing, Helga Crane cannot be reduced to something like racial prejudice Harlem is crucially important because it is not known as being a black community, it is a selfdefining city of its own, therefore Helga should be at her happiest here

Lecture 2 – Sister Outsider: Quicksand and Black Women’s Sexuality  Acceptance of her distance from others is what prompts her to travel to Copenhagen - She is happy in Copenhagen because she hasn’t found a community - Copenhagen could leave Helga isolated since she is so obviously different - However, this environment allows her to develop and identify in any way she wishes – there is no expectation placed upon her by society in which she must fulfil - Helga can be seen as lucky as she had an ability to choose the route her life should take  Exile requires a constant comparison between two states of being that are simultaneously kept alive  Helga revels in her difference from others, learns a life where she can embrace her difference from others, yet she continues to pine for America  Argues against mixed race marriages, against having black children - These thoughts come from a mind bound in the societal means of America, rather than of the body that is situated in Copenhagen – she suffers the pains of being an exile, she continues to support the lives of two beings within herself  “The themes of nationality, exile, and cultural affiliation accentuate the inescapable fragmentation and differentiation of the black subject. This fragmentation has recently been compounded further by the questions of gender, sexuality, and male domination”1  Helga is always defined by the people around her  “she didn’t, in spite of her racial markings, belong to these dark segregated people. She was different. She felt it. It wasn’t merely a matter of colour. It was something broader, deeper, that made folk kin.” (Larsen, pg. 55) - Racial identity is situated within the subject, the core of their being - Uses this to reject identity, the deepness of personal experience is what leaves Helga in this confused state of both identifying and misidentifying with others - “Though the reference to a depth beyond the mere superficialities of colour is used, in one pair of sentences, to assert and celebrate blackness, and in the other, to repudiate or disavow blackness, the two pairs are virtually interchangeable”2  Helga is looking to the world to give her the spiritual and physical freedom that she already holds within herself - She is seeking a movement away from the prejudice that she finds herself in, one that does not allow her, or at least aims to prevent her, from developing her mind/culture/beliefs outside the realms of being black  Helga doesn’t know any more about herself when she returns from Copenhagen, or when she leaves Harlem etc.  Both Helga and the novel are alienated from the discussion on how one should discuss or represent the Harlem Renaissance 1 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993) p.35 2 Slanne Ngal, Ugly Feelings (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University press, 2005) p. 197

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Hazel V. Carby argues that the reader is troubled throughout the novel as they are aware of the political dimension out with the novel Quicksand, according to critics is the first literary depiction of black women’s sexuality in all American literature - Female sexuality is presented as both dangerous and necessary - Women were often punished for their sexuality Olsen, in his portrait of Helga, depicts the sexuality that she denies From that point on she becomes much more sexual - From repressed desire The discourse of race and sex do not often engage with each other “By emphasising the power of self-definition and the necessity of a free mind, Black feminist thought speaks to the importance that African-American women thinkers place on consciousness as a sphere of freedom.”3 - Not monolithic experiences, they are all approached differently and have a different effect on every person that is found in that situation - Every identity that we think we understand is much more complex than first thought on the surface

3 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (New York: Routledge, 2009) p. 304...