Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Quicksand, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race, Segregation, and Society
Mixed-Race Identity
Racial Shame and Emotional Repression
Race, Beauty, and Exoticism
Religion, Poverty, and Oppression
Summary
Analysis
Helga likes her new life in Denmark. She’s taken very well to the luxury, admiration, and attention from everyone around her. As Marie, the “rosy-faced maid,” brings in Helga’s breakfast, Helga decides that here—in this luxurious Danish house with fine things—is where she belongs. She doesn’t even mind the “sly, curious” looks from people who are seeing a person of color for the first time in their lives.
Larsen highlights that mixed-race people are uncommon in the setting for this part of the story, as indicated by the “sly” and “curious” looks from the people around her. Larsen also emphasizes Helga’s comfort with affluence, which will be juxtaposed with Helga’s poverty toward the end of the story. Larsen’s description of Marie as “rosy faced” once again avoids binary physical descriptions of people as just black or white.
Themes
Fru Dahl comes in to consult Helga on the outfit Helga should wear to tea, but finds Helga’s clothes “too sober.” She thinks Helga needs “bright things to set off your lovely brown skin. Striking things, exotic things” that will “make an impression.” Helga is shocked when Fru Dahl picks out a flamboyant black and purple taffeta dress for tea, suggests that Marie trim down Helga’s emerald green dress for a dinner party later tonight, and makes a note to buy Helga high heels and jewelry. Helga is a little resentful at first, but she gives in to the attention, deciding that there’s no harm in a bit of showing off.
Fru Dahl dresses Helga up in ways that show off Helga’s physical difference from the community in Copenhagen. Fru Dahl wants Helga to be seen as “exotic” in a way that shows off her “lovely brown skin.” Larsen begins to show, through the way Fru Dahl dresses Helga, that Helga’s blackness is being objectified rather than genuinely admired or respected. Fru Dahl treats Helga as exotic in order to entice a reaction from others, or to “make an impression.”
Themes
Herr Dahl and Fru Dahl have decorated Helga with lots of jewelry, and she blushes as people stare and whisper “sorte” (which means “black” in Danish) when they walk toward the tea house. At the tea house, Helga is overcome with the feeling of being “some new and strange species of pet dog being proudly exhibited.” She feels uncomfortable, but nonetheless enjoys the attention.
In saying that Helga feels like a “strange species of pet dog,” Larsen shows explicitly that Helga is, in fact, being objectified: she feels like an animal or a possession that the Dahls own and want to show off, rather than a person they want to get to know.
Themes
At the dinner party, Helga feels very exposed in the makeup, jewelry, and emerald dress that has been trimmed to “practically nothing but a skirt.” Still, she enjoys the murmurs of admiration as she walks through the room and sits down to talk about America with the guests. The guests admire Helga’s exotic beauty, but aren’t jealous, as she is isn’t one of them.
The revealing nature of Helga’s trimmed dress shows that the Dahls’s objectification of Helga is tied up with a problematic perception of black bodies as sexual commodities. The absence of jealousy among the guests shows that Helga is really seen as an outsider, and not a person who shares Danish heritage with them.
Themes
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A theatrical man in a cape strides over to Helga with Fru Dahl, who introduces the man as Herr Axel Olsen. Herr Olsen studies Helga and proclaims to Fru Dahl in rapid Danish that she’s “marvelous” as Helga catches phrases about her hair and her skin. A guest explains that Herr Olsen—who didn’t address Helga directly at all—came to decide if he would paint her portrait, and the matter would be settled with Herr Dahl. Helga is amused, and imagines herself as a protected young Danish maiden. Later that night, Helga feels happy as she climbs into bed, but is a little mystified by her aunt’s comments that Helga is “different.”
Herr Olsen emphasizes how strongly Helga is being objectified. Rather than talking to Helga as a person, he talks about Helga’s body to Fru Dahl. The portrait that he will eventually paint will also represent the way Helga’s blackness is sensualized and objectified in this culture. Helga’s naïve optimism exposes the difference between the way she sees herself (as a Danish maiden among people like her) and the way others see her (as a racially exotic outsider) at the party.
Themes
