Helga Crane: The Tragic Heroine
Under Victoria Lynn Schmidtt’s template of the heroine’s journey, the Death and Rebirth stage is supposed to be the peak of a character's journey. After many failures, the heroine has finally come to the understanding she has been seeking. Typically, she is able to use this newfound understanding to better her life. But what happens when she cannot? This is the case for Nella Larsen's protagonist in the book Quicksand . Despite coming to her definitive and final conclusion about the world around her, and what her role in it should be, Helga Crane cannot do anything to chase this goal. Helga’s situation by the end of the book is a message by Larson, that a fulfilling journey of development was often not possible for many women of color during the 1920’s. By examining Helga’s life before her epiphany, we can see the many social factors that Larson implies lead Helga down this path. The pressure for marriage is one such example. In Helga’s social circle, many o...