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 18-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary
Helga is increasingly popular at Harlem parties due to her “deliberate lure” (98) and extensive, bright wardrobe. She attends a function hosted by Helen Tavenor and sees Anne (Gray) Anderson, whom Helga feels treats her with an attitude of superiority and distrust. As she dresses for the party, Helga considers the fact that Anne disapproves of her having lived closely with white people in Copenhagen, and that Dr. Robert Anderson is a wedge in their friendship.
Audrey Denny, who had been Anderson’s date at a cabaret in the past, is introduced to Helga by the hostess, who notes that the woman is “Anne’s pet aversion” (99). Helga also sees James Vayle, to whom she had been engaged at while Helga was at Naxos. She puts him at ease and they discuss the differences between European and American treatment of black people. Vayle feels that people return to America, despite the problems of racism, in order to experience a sense of community. He dislikes Harlem, but asks to see Helga again and declares his intention to propose marriage. He also counsels her to have children, which Helga has vowed never to do, as she does not want to impose suffering upon innocents. Vayle counters that “if…people like usdon’t have children, the others will still have….We’re the ones who must have the children if the race is to get anywhere” (103). She pretends that his reference to a marriage proposal was a joke in order to spare his feelings.
Helga happens into Dr. Robert Anderson in the hallway. He kisses her and she kisses him back, then becomesembarrassed and angry as a result.
Chapter 19 Summary
Helga has uninhibited dreams on the night after she kisses Robert Anderson, thinking of the “ecstasy which had flooded her” (105). She considers the impact of the kiss on her relationship with Anne, and decides that nothing has changed; Helga does not wish to be married to Anderson. They meet at parties and dance together in silence, as she is afraid that conversation will lead to her expression of sexual desire toward him. They eventually find themselves alone in a room at a function, and he asks to see her alone. They agree to meet the following day.
Helga is elated and makes cosmetic preparations all day. While she is excited about the presumed start of a love affair, she also is uneasy about the possibility of being publicly identified as an adulteress. When Anderson arrives, it becomes apparent that he wishes to apologize to her about the unintended kiss at the Tavenors’ party, rather than to pursue a relationship with her. Helga senses that how events were transpiring were different than she had planned. Anderson blames the kiss on the alcohol served at the party, and Helga implies that the kiss had not been meaningful to her. Anderson, noticing that Helga is dressed up, says that he does not want to keep her from going out, and prepares to leave.
Helga feels “belittled and ridiculed” by this interaction (107). Losing all control, she slaps Robert Anderson in the face in the public reception room of the hotel, and leaves the room. Subsequently, she has an unsuccessful attempt to rationalize her behavior, and she tries to drink enough to be able to sleep. Helga realizes that she “had ruined everything” (108). Anderson, no matter what his physical desires might be, will never behave in a way that would damage his own sense of self-worth. Helga has an upsetting idea of a future stretch of “dreary years” (108).
Chapter 20 Summary
Helga wakes feeling incoherent and isolated. Her sexual desire for Dr. Anderson has been met with humiliation and she almost wishes to die. She dismisses the notion quickly, as it would “reduce her, Helga Crane, to unimportance, to nothingness” (109). Her self-confidence is gone, and she is desperate to leave her hotel room.
Walking aimlessly in the pouring rain while dressed inappropriately, Helga is blown by the wind into the gutter. She is exhausted and weak, but pulls herself to a lighted storefront. She finds a religious revival meeting in progress, and hundreds of people singing about “[s]howers of blessings” (111). Humiliated, disoriented and frazzled, Helga sits on the floor and breaks into hysterical laughter. An African-American man and woman stand on either side of her, and Helga breaks into uncontrollable sobs. The congregation starts to clap to the melody. Helga removes her wet coat while trying to escape the large woman at her side, and is declared “[a] scarlet ‘oman” (112). The minister, and Helga’s future husband, Rev. Mr. Pleasant Green, counsels his congregants to refrain from judgment.
Helga is disdainful of the service and feels the need to escape, but she is held in place as if lacking the strength to leave. The energy of the congregants is contagious, and she is overcome with the desire to join their singing and dancing. Eventually, she cries out “Oh God, mercy, mercy. Have mercy on me!” (114). Her companions rejoice and embrace her. Helga experiences a “miraculous calm” (114) and a far simpler happiness than she has in her lifetime.
Chapter 21 Summary
The Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green, “the fattish yellow man” (115) who had sat beside Helga, escorts her back to the hotel, as she is still weak. She lays her hand on his arm to prevent dizziness and sees that he finds her attractive. She sees him as a man obsessed with spirituality and the welfare of the soul, while realizing that he could be easily seduced.
She experiences peace on the following morning and considers that it was, perhaps, religion that had induced this feeling. Helga has an epiphany: “things” were what she has had all of her life, and they have not satisfied her. She is determined to attempt to claim permanent happiness through belief in God and power over a man. She recalls her humiliating interaction with Dr. Robert Anderson and notes that, if she finalizes her relationship with the Reverend, it would make it impossible for her “ever again to appeal to him” (117).
Helga determines that she will marry the Reverend that day. She is initially panicked by the thought, but is able to calm herself. She knows that Reverend Green is a “naïve” creature by nature, and will be unable to withstand her arguments in favor of marriage. Helga plans to use the devices of “distress…fear…remorse” (117).
Chapters 18-21 Analysis
Helga remains entrenched in her cyclical emotional pattern. She is happy dressing for a party in a Harlem home that is “…large and comfortable” with “food and music that were always the best” (98), and enjoys her increased popularity and the admiration she receives. Conversely, she considers the change in her relationship with Anne Gray Anderson, who will be a guest there. Anne now views Helga in a “half patronizing attitude, mixed with distrust” (99), and Helga fails to understand the reason. Helga realizes that Anne’s marriage to Anderson is now a wedge in their friendship, although she now rationalizes that Anderson is “nobody much” as a husband (99).
Audrey Denny, Anderson’s former flame, is also a guest at the party, as is Helga’s former fiancé from Naxos, James Vayle. Vayle still pursues Helga and opines that advantaged women of color such as Helga should give birth to children, as opposed to “the others” (103) of their race. Uncharacteristically, Helga is kind in response to Vayle’s renewed interest in her, and pretends that she thinks he is teasing in order to spare his feelings.
In another unusual reaction, Helga responds enthusiastically to a passionate kiss given her when she happens into Robert Anderson alone in a hallway during the party. Shortly thereafter, though, she is seized by a “sudden anger” (104). This is far more typical of Helga: she has longed and lusted for Anderson, yet she is infuriated by the intensity of her sexual response to him. Unable to identify or process her emotional response, she retreats to the familiar feeling of anger. When they converse at another party some time later and he asks to see her alone the next day, Helga ecstatically prepares herself for a love affair; however, it becomes clear that Anderson merely wishes to apologize, and attributes his behavior to having consumed alcohol. Infuriated, Helga responds by slapping Anderson in the face and retreating to her hotel room to drink herself into oblivion. She starts to experience an existential dread at the prospect of what the remainder of her life may hold. Although Helga has undergone the glimmers of several introspective epiphanies over the course of the novel, she is never able to think them through to fruition in terms of altering her own behavior.
The following day finds Helga wandering through the Harlem streets in a rainstorm, feeling isolated, lacking in confidence and weakened. She falls in a rain-filled gutter and then makes her way to a lighted storefront, which is a church in which a revival meeting is being held. Members of the congregation help her after she collapses on the floor in inappropriate laughter. The minister, Rev. Mr. Pleasant Green, “a fattish yellow man” (111) who helps to comfort her, will be seduced by Helga that evening and manipulated into marriage on the following day. While she views the service with disdain, a combination of Helga’s diminished self-esteem, desperate desire to belong, and emotional vulnerability cause her to join in the enthusiasm of the service and request that God have mercy upon her.
The Reverend, a naïve individual, is clearly attracted to Helga. On the morning after their relationship begins, she reasons that she has had a lifetime of dissatisfaction after having been provided with “things,” and now will seek marriage and spiritual solace. In yet another self-destructive, irrational and impulsive act, Helga will inalterably change the course of her own life, and that of the Reverend’s. She swings between extreme ends of the pendulum in terms of her criteria for an appropriate spouse, spanning from her initial goal of a financially successful man to that of an easily-maneuvered, relatively-innocent and entirely-inappropriate individual such as the Rev. Mr. Pleasant Green.
