Quicksand

Although this novel takes place several hundred years after the supposed demise of the Puritan culture, the impact of its mentality upon Helga’s sexual functioning is quite evident. Early in the novel, the reader is introduced to Miss MacGooden, the children’s matron at Naxos. Helga regards this character with contempt due to her demeaning treatment of the young students. She is also amused by the memory of a conversation in which Miss MacGooden implies that her failure to marry was due to her distaste at the thought of a sexual relationship with a husband. It may not be coincidental that the word “Good” is contained in the name of a character who chooses to remain eternally virginal.

The way in which Helga deals with her own sexuality is ambivalent, at best.She realizes her physical attraction to the young Dr.Robert Anderson upon meeting him, yet is angered by this idea. She appears to regard his unintended appearance in her thoughts and dreams as unwanted intrusions, although it seems that she is upset by the randomness and her lack of control over the frequency with which these thoughts occur. Helga rejects Anderson’s attempt to court her by visiting in a conventional manner. It is only after he is married to Anne Grey, and therefore unavailable for a long-term, committed relationship, that she allows herself to fantasize about an adulterous sexual relationship with him. Humiliated and angry when he fails to continue his sexual pursuit of her, Helga engages Pleasant Green, an individual to whom she feels absolutely superior on every level, in a passionate sexual relationship. She is punished for the same by a series of consecutive pregnancies and an exhausted, unhappy life. Most importantly, despite the initial passion of their relationship, Helga comes to despise Pleasant, the object of her lust. 

The idea of gradations of color is explored throughout the novel. Helga is obsessively interested in noticing nuances of hue in the areas of skin tone, hair and eye color. However, the author uses the idea of color to indicate changes in emotional tone. Specifically, Helga often experiences depression in the spring, when her emotional tone is the precise opposite of a world bursting with vivaciousness and life. The fall season, with its accompanying greyness and dead leaves, has a similar impact upon her.

The portrait artist Axel Olsen is clearly intrigued by color in his use of paints as he creates a portrait of Helga. Her own choice of clothing is considered somewhat unconventional due to her love of bright colors, so different from the drab hues that conventional wisdom at Naxos prescribes as appropriate for black women. While Helga enjoys her own somewhat garish selections, she is upset by those imposed upon her by Aunt Katarina. This conflict seems to portray a deeper conflict: Helga is accepting of her own adventures in the world of vivacious colors, but is angered and somewhat humiliated if she feels that the same is forced upon her by others. This thinking correlates with her mentality regarding race. Helga seldom wishes to entirely renege upon her identity as a biracial woman; however, she is angered when the afflictions inherent in identification as a black woman become part of her daily experience. On a final note, it is interesting that Helga is identified both by American society and herself as black, despite the fact that she is half white.