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
Part way through Helga’s second year in Denmark, she starts to feel vaguely discontent and a little restless. She wishes she could rid herself of these recurring feelings of dissatisfaction with “her life, with herself” but she doesn’t know how to. One day, she receives a letter from Anne, who writes that she is going to marry Dr. Anderson. This makes Helga feel even more annoyed, and she wonders why thinking about this man always upsets her. She could have stayed in Harlem, she reasons, but she would have been stuck in a country where black people are oppressed, talking about “the race problem” until the end of her days. The thought makes her nauseous.
As Helga passes the one-year mark in her new life, she once again starts to feel restless (just as she did in Harlem and at Naxos). This time, she is discontent because she has been suppressing her blackness. In lumping together “her life” and “herself,” Larsen shows that Helga’s dissatisfaction with herself as a mixed-race person is closely intermingled (and perhaps even confused) with her frustration in every place she lives. As before, when thinking of Dr. Anderson, Helga fails to understand her true feelings. She muddles running away from him with running away from racism in the U.S.
Themes
A few days later, Helga goes to the theater with Herr Olsen and some other friends. She’s appalled to see two black men on stage singing ragtime and dancing with exuberance. The audience is charmed, but Helga feels ashamed, as if some secret part of her that she wants to forget has been exposed. She is full of hatred for the “cavorting Negroes on the stage.” Helga wonders why Herr Olsen and her friends admire her difference, when she despises it so much.
Through Helga’s encounter at the theater, Larsen shows that Helga has been suppressing her blackness in Denmark. Helga’s dismay at the “cavorting Negroes on the stage” shows that she doesn’t want people to associate her with the performers. Again, Helga’s racial shame triggers her anger and her fear, and exposes her self-loathing.
Themes
Soon after, Axel Olsen finishes his portrait of Helga, and asks her to marry him. Helga is surprised. She’s wanted this for a long time, but suddenly feels repelled. She admits that Herr Olsen has complimented her before, but she had decided that his advances were insulting and ignored them. Now, Helga decides his body and voice are off-putting as she thinks with nostalgia about Harlem. She doesn’t understand why, but she’s frightened, embarrassed, and feels “stripped, naked” under Herr Olsen’s glare. He confesses that he is “disturbed” and “maddened” by Helga, and thinks the marriage will be “an experience.”
Helga doesn’t know how to handle intense feelings and romantic encounters, so she pushes them away. She does so here by dismissing Olsen as rude and distracting herself with sudden thoughts about the repulsiveness of his whiteness when he proposes. Meanwhile, Olsen exposes how strongly he has exoticized Helga in his mind. He thinks she is so different that his attraction disturbs him, and he thinks of her as an exotic experience rather than a person.
Themes
Herr Olsen tells Helga that she has been groomed by Fru Dahl to “sell yourself to the highest buyer,” and he is truly happy that the highest bidder is himself. At this comment, Helga answers coldly, “I’m not for sale. Not to you. Not to any white man. I don’t at all care to be owned. Even by you.” He is perplexed that she is refusing him. Helga explains that she can’t marry a white man because he might be ashamed of her darkness one day. Herr Olsen is irritated that Helga is bringing up “some strange talk of race and shame” when he's discussing marriage. Too proud to explain why race matters, Helga simply says that he waited too long and missed his moment.
Herr Olsen has objectified Helga so much that he doesn’t even realize his comments about Helga selling herself are offensive. Larsen alludes here to the “tragic mulatta” trope, in which a mixed-race woman attempts to be free, but ends up being sold into slavery. Helga attempts to resist this fate by saying she’s “not for sale […] to any white man.” Although Helga displays a rare attempt to address her racial shame here, she ultimately lapses into her usual strategy of burying the topic, and her feelings.
Themes
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Helga rises to say goodbye, and Herr Olsen proclaims their encounter “a tragedy,” just like Helga’s portrait, which he thinks captures “the true Helga Crane.” After Herr Olsen leaves, Helga thinks about how she’ll never quite get over the way he painted her, as “some disgusting sensual creature with her features.” Helga asks Marie what she thinks about the painting, and Marie answers cautiously that she doesn’t want to be rude about a great artist, but she thinks the painting is “bad, wicked.” Helga agrees.
Larsen’s use of the word “tragedy” refers more explicitly to the “tragic mulatta” trope (in which a mixed-race person’s life ends in tragedy because of their race). The portrait stands for the way blackness is often treated in European societies: as a perversely sexualized commodity. Helga and Marie can see this, but Herr Olsen cannot, because he thinks it is a true likeness.
Themes
