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 of her friends are getting married. Additionally, her family in Denmark repeatedly tries to push her towards marriage. Although she initially rejects proposals, and does not want to be married yet, this pressure grows on Helga. She starts to feel as though she is running out of time. This push towards marriage does not just come from her friends and family, however, it is also reinforced by the men who she interacts with. There are very few men in all of Quicksand who do not see Helga as an object to gain social status. The man who uses her the most perhaps is Dr. Anderson. He constantly treats Helga like an object, demonstrating just enough interest to keep her hopeful that he actually has feelings for her. For instance, he kisses her at a party, only to apologize and say it was a mistake later, when Helga thought, he was going to try and pursue a relationship with her. Additionally, he tries to blame everything on alcohol and does not take responsibility for his actions. This can be seen on page 100 where he says, "It was, it must have been, Tavener's rotten cocktails." This objectification and lack of commitment from Dr. Anderson is crucial in pushing Helga into her spontaneous marriage. It is this marriage, which ultimately traps Helga, and prevents her from completing her journey. Through marriage, Helga, and presumably many women in the real world were bound from pursuing personal happiness.

The second thing which Larson says leads Helga and other black people to this unfavorable circumstance is religion. After nearly dying from her illness, Helga comes to the belief that religion was another of the major causes of her situation. She claims that religion gives a reason for oppressed people to stay content with oppression, that the false promise of heaven after death is what is stopping people from fighting for change now. On page 121 Helga's thoughts are described by Larson. Helga believes that life, for black people at least was only a "... great disappointment. Something to be got through with as best one could. No one was interested in them or helped them. God! Bah!". This is one of the few sections in the book where Larson directly asserts her views through Helga, as opposed to representing her opinion through Helga’s circumstance. It makes her views on this topic seem very strong and implies that Larson views religion as the most destructive thing in the fight for equality, perhaps more so than the culture around marriage. And that for Helga, the comfort of religion has allowed her to slip into her predicament.

By the end of her rebirth, Helga has realized that most of the institutions and cultural practices that she has played into so far have contributed to the oppression of black women. She is constantly tired from looking after children and has little freedom in what to do with her life. She has given up on religion and has nothing to hope for or look forward to. She views her husband as a shackle, which she cannot even pray to God to get rid of, because she believes he does not exist. She is too deep in to do anything. Leaving in order to pursue her personal happiness would mean abandoning her children. Additionally, she is completely financially dependent on her husband. The only thing Helga can do with her newfound clarity is cast it aside. By the end of the book she is pregnant with her 5th child, showing that her spirit has been crushed. Rather than being a moment of triumph, Helga's Death and Rebirth phase is a tragedy. A tragedy, which according to Larson, was entirely preventable.