66 pages • 2 hours read
Nella LarsenQuicksand
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1928A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Helga Crane is an attractive, twenty-two-year-old woman who has taught for two years at Naxos, a southern boarding school for African-American children. Born to a mother of Norwegian descent and a West Indian father who disappeared shortly after her birth, Helga is described as having “skin like yellow satin” and lips described as having a “slight…petulance and a tiny dissatisfied droop” (2). The chapter opens as Helga, who enjoys beautiful things, is sitting in her room with a “blue Chinese carpet …and books” (1) and resting after a day of ungratifying teaching. Dissatisfied with her lot on many levels, Helga reflects that “she gave…unsparingly of herself with no apparent return” as a teacher; she has tried to be a friend to the “happy, singing children, whose charm the school was ready to destroy” (11).
The specific incident upsetting Helga occurred that afternoon, during mandatory Chapel attendance, when the Naxos population heard the “banal, patronizing…insulting remarks of a white preacher of the state” (4-5). The sermon extolled the treatment of the “Negro” at Naxos; and stated that the “good taste” of the Naxos Negroes was demonstrated by the fact that “they knew enough to stay in their places” (5). Hours later, Helga remains angry at the speaker, and at the applause given to him by his listeners. She hates the Southern mentality toward race and Negro education, and impulsively starts to create an escape plan. She realizes she may have to ask for a loan from her somewhat racist maternal uncle, Peter, and break her engagement to James Vayle, who “fitted in the niche” at Naxos. Helga can “neither conform, nor be happy in her inconformity” (7).
Chapter 2 Summary
Helga briefly considers finishing out the school year; however, she concludes that she feels too rebellious about Naxos to do so. She considers a quality in herself that “kept her from getting what she wanted” (11). She does not attend the faculty breakfast, but overhears the matron, Miss MacGooden, accusing her young charges of acting “like savages from the backwoods” (12). Helga holds the woman in contempt; she recalls a conversation in which Miss MacGooden implied that she had never married because she was too ladylike to submit to a sexual relationship.
Helga’s single friend, Margaret Creighton, arrives to check on Helga, noting that “Jim (Vayle) is worried” (12); Helga responds that she is not ill, but she is leaving Naxos that day. Margaret begs Helga to reconsider the benefits of remaining at Naxos, “…good salaries, decent rooms, plenty of men…” (14). Far from being convinced by this argument, Helga wonders what caused Margaret to turn her “nice lively crinkly hair” into a “dead straight, greasy, ugly mass” (14). The only thing that stands in the way of Helga’s leaving the South, and Naxos, is money.
Chapter 3 Summary
Helga is annoyed by the short period granted her with the Naxos principal, noting that “she was as unimportant as that” (16).Helga both likes and pities Dr. Anderson, “…the remote silent man with the tired gray eyes” (17), but is annoyed at the thought that her abrupt resignation may be unkind. Torn between rage and anxiety upon reaching his office, Helga observes the Negro women clerical workers with contempt. Their dress adheres to recommendations made by the dean of women, who encouraged “colored people” to wear black, grey or brown (17). Helga interprets this as yet another form of racism and hypocrisy at Naxos: talk of racial pride juxtaposed with “…its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion…” (18).
She advises Anderson that she is leaving immediately, stating that she hates the school due to its hypocrisy and cruelty to the students. Dr. Anderson asks whether “…it might help to cure us, to have someone who doesn’t approve of these things stay with us?” (19). She replies that she feels unhappy, and senses that she is disliked by her colleagues. He retorts that she is an asset, noting that Helga is a lady. This compliment only serves to enrage Helga, who advises him that she was born in a Chicago slum to afather who gambled and deserted her white, immigrant mother. Although he retorts that lack of money “can’t destroy tendencies inherited from good stock” (21), Helga repeats her intention to leave the school that afternoon.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Quicksand takes place in the 1920’s and 1930’s and the introductory chapters provide a picture of race relations in the American South during that time. The protagonist of the novel, Helga Crane, is the product of a union between a white mother and a black father andcharacterized as a “mulatto”. She feels shunned by both races and is an isolated and embittered character who has spent a lifetime feeling that she is not accepted anywhere. Helga mirrors the author of the work, Nella Larsen, who was born to a Danish mother and a West Indian father who died when she was a young child. Larsen was a novelist during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural explosion of literature, music and art by African Americans in the northern area of New York City during the 1920s. Langston Hughes, the author of the poem pertaining to “being neither white nor black” that precedes the first chapter of the book, was also a member of the Harlem Renaissance.
Naxos, the boarding school for Negro children where Helga teaches quite unhappily for two years, comes to represent her hatred of acquiescence to racism and hypocrisy. The name is an anagram of the term “Saxon,” and it can be noted the school worships all that is Anglo-Saxon and nothing that Helga equates with the vivaciousness and joy associated with African-American culture. Helga’s decision-making is impulsive, (e.g., her sudden choice to break her engagement to James Vayle is clinical and emotionless) and her moods shift constantly and abruptly. Essentially nonconformist but unhappy in her isolation, she feels superior to most people. She is enamored of order, beautiful possessions and colorful clothes; the chaotic state in which she leaves her room on the night prior to her resignation from the school parallels the turbulent emotional state that will follow. She is aware that her personality is characterized by a restlessness and a sense of dissatisfaction. Helga’s conversation with Dr. Anderson at the time of her resignation verges on being uncharacteristically honest. When asked about Naxos, she advises him that, “I hate it!” (19), and that the school makes her feel unhappy and dissatisfied.
The concept of color is emphasized throughout these chapters. Helga reflects upon the skin color of those around her, and she disdains the conservative colors worn by the female clerical workers in the principal’s office. While her own choice of clothing is vividly colorful, it is incongruous with her somewhat intolerant and pessimistic worldview.
