The Worst of Both Worlds, and the Best of Neither

 

        Helga Crane's racial mixedness as a mulatto in Nella Larsen's novel Quicksand divides her socially, emotionally, and geographically, and suspends her in a perpetual "in between" status. Her uncanny role results from a combination of qualities that simultaneously identify her with, and distance her from, each side of her ancestry. Helga's identity becomes taboo because it leads her "diverging in two contrary directions"(Freud 24) that cannot exist simultaneously.

        Freud's article on "Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence" follows these two separate directions that divide the meaning of 'taboo' to find that at the end they merge to repel him in their "sense of something unapproachable"(24). He defines taboo as, "on the one hand, 'sacred', 'consecrated', and on the other 'uncanny', 'dangerous', 'forbidden', 'unclean'"(24). These two separate meanings of taboo lead back to one another after they each are split in half again. The notion of taboo as something sacred or forbidden suggests that it is either something known that is holy and should be worshipped, or something that is worshipped simply because it is sacred but the reason for its holiness is unknown. The competing idea of taboo as forbidden creates the possibility that it is either something known to be unclean and therefore tainted, or it is dangerous because the reason for its filth is unknown. Each of these four possibilities converge in the sense of 'holy dread', or 'unholy dread', as the case may be, because they all evoke the same uncanny feeling.

        Taboo restrictions and prohibitions not only further shroud its meaning in uncertainty, but spread its contaminating influence upon any person or object that is subjected to these restrictions; "Anyone who has transgressed one of these prohibitions himself acquires the characteristic of being prohibited"(29). This contagion perpetuates the characteristic mysterious and unknown qualities of taboo because the people who are submitting to them have no idea way, but readily adhere to them, "as though they were a matter of course"(28). The conflicting connotations of taboo are spread through these prohibitions to the people who violate them and then they continue beyond them to people who have not violated a taboo, but are still considered to be taboo themselves.

    Helga feels the effects of her taboo social status early on when she is alienated because of the absence of her family. This absence becomes critical to Helga's acceptance by James Vayle's family when they are discussing their possible marriage plans.

They had never liked the engagement, had never liked Helga Crane. Her own lack of family disconcerted them. No family. That was the crux of the whole matter. For Helga it accounted for everything, her failure here in Naxos, her former loneliness in Nashville. It even accounted for her engagement to James. (Larsen 8)

The Vayle family is disturbed by the nonexistence of Helga's family because without a family to identify her with, Helga by herself becomes a mysterious figure of non-identity. They associate her with a sense of 'unholy dread' because of her potential to spread her contaminating influence into their family, and more importantly, upon their family name.

        The reliance on a familial name as the criteria for evaluating social acceptance leaves the Vayle family no recourse for judging Helga. It is not that she does not meet their approval, but rather her ambiguous background places her in a non-category that the terms approval and disapproval do not even apply to. She is not even worthy of subjection to an evaluation because they have no information on which to assess her. Helga's social position according to the Vayles is below non-approval, because non-approval at least indicates that the person had enough familial qualifications that were recognized by the Vayles to be deserving of evaluation.

        Helga's ineligibility for membership into the Vayle family due to her taboo social status shows her that the formula for social acceptance is dependent upon her membership to a group. Originally, "The fact that they were a "first family" had been one of James's attractions for the obscure Helga. She had wanted social background, but--she had not imagined that it would be so stuffy"(8). Helga rejects James's marriage proposal, but in doing so she also rejects his family social status, and the social hierarchy that they reign over. She knows that, "To relinquish James Vayle would most certainly be social suicide, for the Vayles were people of consequence"(8). Helga is aware that her refusal to marry James will be deemed a "social suicide" by the members of that social group, but for Helga it would have been more self destructive to conform to the rules of this "stuffy" group. Her taboo status causes her to perform socially taboo acts like this one in order to sustain her position of drifting in between two worlds.

        Helga's taboo status as a mulatto provides her with experience in the social echelons of both black and white societies. Even though James Vayle's family is black,

Negro society, she had learned, was as complicated and as rigid in its ramifications as the highest strata of white society. If you couldn't prove your ancestry and connections, you were tolerated, but you didn't "belong" (8).

Although Helga does not "belong" entirely to either side of her ancestry because of the presence of the other half, she does benefit from her encounters within both sides. Her biracial position allows her the opportunity to experience the social structures of two separate societies. "Helga explored the contradictions of her racial, sexual, and class position by being both inside and outside these perspectives"(Carby 169). This uncanny position allows inside both of these societies to see that the opposite sides of her heritage share a common criteria for social status. But it is this quality of ancestry that they have in common with each other, and that she has in common with both, that prevents her from belonging to either side. "Larsen was able to represent such duality by making her protagonist an alienated heroine"(169). She is kept on the outside and ostracized from both sides for not being a true insider to either.

        This contradictory identity is what attracts Axel Olsen to Helga because he tells her that, "You know, Helga, you are a contradiction"(87). His attraction to her is based on her contradictory image, but the attraction itself is a contradiction because it has no foundation. However, at the same time this lack of a foundation is the only basis that he has for his desire that he is sure exists, but is a result of his inability to be sure. He knows that she disturbs him and Helga has a feeling that, "her origin a little repelled him"(84), but it is this repulsion to her unapproachability that makes him want to approach her.

        Helga's contradictory emotional oscillations are mirrored in her geographical movement back and forth between Copenhagen and Harlem.

This knowledge, the certainty of the division of her life into two parts in two lands, into physical freedom in Europe and spiritual freedom in America, was unfortunate, inconvenient, expensive...and mentally she caricatured herself moving shuttle-like from continent to continent (96).

Helga's geographical movement between the two continents, and later between the North and the South, gives a physicality to her social and emotional division by mapping out the impossibility of an intersection between these two worlds. "The geography of the soul, the rocky, rich terrain of dreams, is in reality the setting for Quicksand and Passing"(Golden ix). This alienated heroine roams as an "emotional nomad"(vii) throughout her soul's geography in search of an imaginary place that reconciles the separate freedoms offered by the opposing spheres of Harlem and Copenhagen. Her inability to do so led her wondering, "Why couldn't she have two lives, or why couldn't she be satisfied in one place"(93)?

    Helga's taboo identity prevents her from ever being completely satisfied in one place because their is no realistic setting that can fulfill her contradictory desires. Helga experiences "dissatisfaction with her peacock's life"(81) on both sides of the Atlantic because of her insider and outsider position. Her frustration is doubled because she will always be either an outsider who is never able to assimilate entirely to either side, or an insider who can identify with both. This insider status is also an outsider role because it is socially forbidden and keeps her outside of standard societal categorization. It is the insider role to both that causes Helga to be,

filled with a fierce hatred for the cavorting Negroes on the stage. She felt shamed, betrayed, as if these pink and white people among whom she lived had suddenly been invited to look upon something in her which she had hidden away and wanted to forget (83).

Helga's shameful reaction to the mixing of the two sides of her racial composition shows how she has become emotionally and mentally conditioned to existence of these sides, but only in their segregated environments. When she is among white people in Copenhagen she tries to mentally push aside and hide her black heritage and fully immerse herself in the white part of her identity. This performance of blackness that she becomes a spectator to intrudes her own white performance and serves a dual reminder that she is a spectator to both.

        The only time when she comes close to feeling the sense of release from the social and racial confines of Harlem and Copenhagen is when she is on the ship on her way to Denmark. She was "found on deck, reveling like a released bird in her returned feeling of happiness and freedom, that blessed sense of belonging to herself alone and not to a race"(64). Floating over the racially neutral waters of the Atlantic is the only place where she does not feel the need to belong to any category but her own. However, these waters are a non-location of in betweeness that duplicate her own neither, nor status. This space does not exist except for several fleeting hours in between one sphere and the other.

        Helga left Harlem for Copenhagen on this journey after, "the great superfluity of human beings, yellow, brown, and black, which, as the torrid summer burnt to its close, had so oppressed her. No, she hadn't belonged there"(63). However, once she is in Harlem "meeting only pale serious faces when she longed for brown laughing ones"(92) she longs for a change back to Harlem. For Helga, "at first the novelty of the thing, the change, fascinated her"(118) and once this novelty were off, she searched for a new change. This constant longing for change motivates Helga to marry Reverend Pleasant Green and change her location again when she moves to Alabama. "And so for a time she loved everything and everyone"(120).

        This time of novelty was taboo for Helga because it temporarily suspended her feeling of alienation and feigned her assimilation into the culture where she had just arrived. This period of simulated acceptance was a period of in-betweeness when she felt that she had penetrated a sphere. This alienated heroine was never able to survive past this initial period of novelty because her taboo status as a mulatto forbid assimilation. This left Helga as an emotional nomad drifting in between time and space where she experienced the worst of both worlds and the best of neither.

 

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company,
        1950.

Larsen, Nella. Quicksand and Passing. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University
        Press, 1986.

Carby, Hazel V. Reconstructing Womanhood. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Golden, Marita. Forward to An Intimation of Things Distant, The Collected Fiction of Nella
        Larsen. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1992.