| A Modern Bildungsroman by Jamie Jensen |
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A popular novel genre of the nineteenth century was the bildungsroman. The term comes from the German Bildung, “education,” and Roman, “novel,” making it a novel genre concerning the maturation of the main character (“Bildungsroman.” Merriam-Webster OnLine). Nella Larsen’s Quicksand is full of bildungsroman conventions. Helga Crane, the main character, is an orphan. This convention logistically allows for the growth of the main character, especially if it is a female character, because it forces her out into the world, allowing many more opportunities for growth than are available to a girl who is confined to the home or hometown. Helga also travels to several different locations inside the United States and even one outside the country. Travel, especially to more than one location, corresponds with the increased opportunities for growth. Finally, Helga fits the conventional ending of the female bildungsroman by marrying and having children. This ending symbolizes completion, fulfillment, and the achievement of maturity (Birk, Salotto). Quicksand fits the bildungsroman genre, but problematically. Helga’s wide travels subject her to diverse experiences that contribute to her growth. However, her peace and fulfillment depend on a sense of belonging, which she never achieves. She travels to each new location with high hopes that this at last will be her home, the place where she belongs. However, each time she realizes that she is different from everybody around her, and therefore she does not feel that she belongs. Instead of her experiences building on each other until she reaches a fully mature selfhood, Helga participates in a fruitless cycle of adopting a certain role—obedient teacher, niece, bourgeois Negro, exotic, lover, preacher’s wife—realizing that she does not fit the role, and abandoning the role to begin all over again in a new location. Her experiences do not build on each other; rather, each time she tries to fill a different role and so must start over in developing a fully mature self. After each defeat, Helga still retains the possibility for finding a sense of belonging, until her marriage at the end of the novel. Unlike conventional female bildungsromans, Helga’s marriage does not signify her successful maturation. On the contrary, as an inextricable situation, marriage seals her off from ever achieving the fulfillment she craves. Quicksand, then, is a failed bildungsroman. This disruption of established precedents serves to illustrate its Modernist sensibility. The novel involves disruption of order in undermining the conventions of the bildungsroman genre and also involves an existential disruption of Helga’s selfhood. Thus the failure of Quicksand to fulfill the expectations of its genre makes it a Modern bildungsroman. Helga’s story begins in Naxos, a southern Negro school, where she works as a teacher. She doesn’t quite fit in at the school, which establishes a dress code of “[b]lack, gray, brown, and navy blue” (17-18). She wears instead her “dark purples, royal blues, rich greens, deep reds, in soft, luxurious woolens, or heavy, clinging silks” (18). Helga’s wardrobe mirrors her enthusiastic, spontaneous attitude, which contrasts with the smug, self-righteous attitude general to Naxos. At a school that prizes conformity, Helga’s deviance is not appreciated. Another problem Helga faces at Naxos is a lack of family:
While Helga’s orphanhood allows her to leave Naxos to grow and discover herself, it ironically creates the need for her belonging, the step of her maturity that she is never able to achieve. Helga attempts to gain a respectable family while at Naxos through her engagement to James Vayle. In this way she tries to fit into her surroundings. However, she and her fiancé are two different types of people. James conforms to the Naxos attitude—superior, yet also servile to Anglo-Saxon standards. James is ashamed that Helga will not conform to gain the approval of her peers, as he has done. Helga, however, is disappointed in James for giving up his individuality and conforming so easily. Helga’s lack of success in her relationship with James—they have been engaged well over a year and still have no definite wedding plans—prevents her from establishing any sort of connection or belonging at Naxos. Larsen describes Helga when she first came to Naxos as “immature” (5). In doing this, Larsen announces Helga’s need for growth throughout the novel. Helga’s past reveals why she still has so much growing to do at this point in the novel. Having grown up with a hateful white stepfather and relations, Helga was ashamed of her Negro heritage. When Helga was 15, her mother died and she went to live with her Uncle Peter, who sent her to a Negro school. There she finally learned not to be repulsed by her Negro heritage. Upon finishing her schooling, Helga began teaching at Naxos. Since she had only recently learned not to be repulsed by herself, Helga still had much more growing to do in terms of understanding herself (23-24). Helga begins her self-discovery at Naxos by realizing that she does not fit in with the other teachers, nor does she want to fit. She rejects the first role that she tries to play, that of the obedient teacher. She disapproves of the values upheld at Naxos—conformity, rigidity, suppression of enthusiasm, snobbery—and resolves to pursue her life elsewhere. Yet, soon after resolving to leave the oppressive Naxos, Helga comes across another realization: It wasn’t, she was suddenly aware, merely the school and its ways and its decorous stupid people that oppressed her. There was something else, some other more ruthless force, a quality within herself, which was frustrating her, had always frustrated her, kept her from getting the things she had wanted. Still wanted. (11) This is Helga’s first recognition that her restlessness and discontent are caused by something within her. Later she will realize that it is in fact her mixed ancestry, Caucasian and Negro, both of which she identifies with, that prevents her from ever belonging fully to one or the other of these rigidly separated groups. Upon leaving Naxos, Helga goes to Chicago to visit her uncle, Peter Nilssen. This is a logistical necessity, since she is in need of money and hopes he will once again show her generosity. Unfortunately, on her unannounced visit, Helga meets only Uncle Peter’s new wife. Mrs. Nilssen behaves very rudely toward Helga, insisting that Mr. Nilssen is not her uncle since Helga’s father was not married to Peter’s sister, which may or may not have been true. Mrs. Nilssen despises the thought of being in any way related to a Negro, so she denies Helga the second role she tries to fill, that of a niece. Because of Mrs. Nilssen’s racism, Helga cannot belong to the only family she has in America that cares about her. She therefore must continue to search for a place to fit in. Helga’s stay in Chicago is brief. She soon finds herself in New York, having traveled there on a job with Mrs. Hayes-Rore. Here she finds many willing to accept her. Anne, a finicky boarder, takes Helga in, and Harlem is a whole city filled with Helga’s people, Negroes. Mrs. Hayes-Rore, however, warns Helga not to bring up her white ancestry: “…I wouldn’t mention that my people are white, if I were you. Colored people won’t understand it, and after all, it’s your own business” (41). Harlem in the early 20th century was willing to accept any and all blacks, but if someone wanted to belong to both the black and the white race, they took offense. They saw white people as their enemies, and understandably so, considering how many whites treated them. In the novel, Anne especially holds this view. Aside from lynching, which still took place, several race riots broke out in the early 20th century, including one in New York in 1900 (Wintz 8). Helga follows Mrs. Hayes-Rore’s advice about keeping her white ancestry to herself. At first, Helga thoroughly enjoys Harlem. “Their sophisticated cynical talk, their elaborate parties, the unobtrusive correctness of their clothes and homes, all appealed to her craving for smartness, for enjoyment” (43). In Harlem, Helga finds exactly what was missing at Naxos. Here the people are vibrant. They embrace the Negro culture. They wear tasteful, colorful clothes. And their talk is “sophisticated” and “cynical” instead of snobbish and self-righteous. Helga is also pleased to discover that “[h]er New York friends looked with contempt and scorn on Naxos and all its works” (43). Helga is happier in Harlem than she ever remembers being before:
Harlem, the antithesis of Naxos, Helga believes is at last where she belongs. However, just as Helga realized Naxos was not the true root of her discontent, its antithesis is not the total cure. Discontentment creeps back into her life, and for a while she cannot identify its origin. She simply recognizes that “[a] sensation of estrangement and isolation encompassed her” (47-48). Once again, Helga does not belong. Eventually she recognizes the source of her discontent:
At last Helga realizes that she does not feel wholly connected to black people. She does not feel that she belongs to their culture. She has tried to play the role of the bourgeois Negro, but she can no longer be satisfied with thinking of herself as wholly Negro. She can no longer deny the white ancestry that she is concealing from Harlem. Helga decides instead to try to connect with the other side of her ancestry, her white relatives in Copenhagen. An opportune gift from Uncle Peter of 5,000 dollars makes her voyage possible. Helga fortunately finds Aunt Katrina and Uncle Poul undisturbed by her Negro blood, unlike her other white relations. They receive Helga warmly, and she is relieved to be away from Harlem, where she was bound to her race. She “revel[ed] 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). Helga is more certain than ever before that Denmark is her true home: “[I]t was the day, so she decided, to which all the sad forlorn past had led, and from which the whole future was to depend. This, then, was where she belonged. This was her proper setting. She felt consoled at last for the spiritual wounds of the past” (67). Helga is determined to be happy and fulfilled in Denmark, and she now abhors America for how it treats Negroes. She finds Denmark much more agreeable, where she is odd, but accepted. Aunt Katrina is not racist, but she is ambitious. She uses Helga to try to advance from “the merely fashionable set to which they belonged [to] the artistic one after which they hankered” (90). To this end, Aunt Katrina dresses Helga up in flashy and revealing clothing to accentuate her exotic beauty. Aunt Katrina then drags Helga around with her to socials in order to attract everyone’s notice and admiration. Helga is aware that she is being exhibited: “[She] felt like nothing so much as some new and strange species of pet dog being proudly exhibited” (70). However, she chooses to ignore it at first because she enjoys all the attention: “Helga Crane’s new existence was intensely pleasant to her; it gratified her augmented sense of self-importance” (74). She even justifies what Aunt Katrina subjects her to: “She had to admit that the Danes had the right idea. To each his own milieu. Enhance what was already in one’s possession” (74). Perhaps she allows herself to mistake Aunt Katrina’s exoticization of her as consistent with her belief that people should not dress and behave merely as others do (e.g., the Naxos teachers dressing and behaving like white people) but instead in a way appropriate for themselves. Helga already has ideas on what dress and behavior are appropriate for her, but she alters them for Aunt Katrina. Perhaps she does this out of her love for Aunt Katrina, her only relation who still accepts her. Perhaps she is subconsciously willing to sacrifice a little bit of herself in order to finally belong somewhere, to finally fit the role she is trying to fill. But Helga eventually resents her role as the exotic. Her first hint of resentment occurs at a vaudeville show. One act consists of Negroes “danc[ing], pounding their thighs, slapping their hands together, twisting their legs, waving their abnormally long arms, throwing their bodies about with a loose ease” (82-83). They are essentially portraying themselves as subhuman idiots for the entertainment of the white audience. And the Danes love it, not because they think Negroes no more valuable than animals but because they benignly find Negroes exotic, savage, primitive. This upsets Helga extremely:
This passage alludes to Helga’s sexuality. A general assumption of the time was that blacks were more sexual beings than whites. This is why Aunt Katrina dresses Helga so revealingly and why the Danes are so amazed and so appreciative. They view Helga as inherently more sexual and therefore more justified in flaunting it. But, brainwashed with white American prudishness, Helga cannot see her sexuality as a good thing. She can only see it as a monstrous thing. It belongs only to animals, not civilized people, and Helga wishes to be a civilized person. Helga’s more powerful revulsion at having played the exotic comes from Axel Olsen’s marriage proposal. Olsen says the following to her, with no notion of her taking offense: “‘You have the warm impulsive nature of the women of Africa, but, my lovely, you have, I fear, the soul of a prostitute. You sell yourself to the highest buyer. I should of course be happy that it is I. And I am’” (87). Olsen would never think to call a respectable Danish girl a prostitute, but he seems to find nothing wrong with telling Helga this. Olsen’s logic is a more exaggerated version of interpreting Helga as an overly sexual, primitive being. His stereotyped view of her sexuality causes him to treat her in a thinly veiled subhuman manner. Helga does not wish to return to America, but she has failed to fill yet another role, that of the exotic. Moreover, she misses being around Negroes. Helga’s exoticization has severed her connection with her Danish ancestry—they see her only as an outsider. Now Helga must try again to connect with the other side of her ancestry, the side to which she in fact feels closer. Back in New York, Helga finally acknowledges that she is divided between two lands and cannot belong wholly to one or the other. She gains “physical freedom in Europe and spiritual freedom in America” (96). But she realizes that it would be ridiculous to constantly travel back and forth between Denmark and America, not to mention expensive. She cannot be in both lands at once. There is no place for Helga to be both black and white. There is no place where she completely belongs. Helga came back to New York on the pretense that it would be only a visit. Yet, months pass and she has no inclination to return to Denmark. Then one evening, Robert Anderson kisses Helga, filling her with crazed desire. Anderson has married Anne, but Helga doesn’t let that stop her from planning an affair with Anderson, albeit single-handedly. Anderson is the only man she has felt intense passion for. Such a trifling thing as his marriage to Anne cannot get in the way of Helga’s insatiable desire for belonging and fulfillment. Anderson plans a rendezvous with Helga, which she interprets as a consummation. He, however, takes the opportunity to explain that the kiss meant nothing and arose merely from the influence of too much alcohol. Incredibly stung by this rejection, Helga slaps Anderson and walks away. She realizes that “she had so terribly wanted something special from [Robert Anderson]. … And now she had forfeited it forever” (108). Helga blames her slapping Robert Anderson for ruining her hope of having any claim on him, of belonging to him. But being the stoic that he is, fearing the sexual desire that Helga stirs in him and labeling it as bad, Anderson probably never would have consented to any sort of relationship with Helga. Therefore, Helga cannot play the role of lover to the only man she has ever intensely desired. Yet another option is eliminated for her. Anderson’s rejection of Helga drives her out into the rain. She finds shelter in a church. Seeing her unkempt and lost appearance, the congregation assumes she is a sinner. When a woman grabs her coats and Helga takes it off in order to free herself, the congregation sees her hastily chosen, revealing red dress and takes her for a prostitute. They then set out to “save” her: “foul, vile, and terrible, with its mixture of breaths, its contact of bodies, its concerted convulsions, all in wild appeal for a single soul[, h]er soul” (113). Helga, who feels her soul is lost anyway, who has been defeated at all attempts to find belonging and fulfillment, submits to the church’s whim and absorbs the great energy of the event, devouring it as though starved. One man of the congregation, a visiting pastor, escorts Helga back to her hotel room. She realizes that she can have sex with him and cannot resist the opportunity. The act makes her realize, “[A]ll I’ve ever had in life has been things—except just this one time” (116). This causes Helga to desire the stability of marriage, which was something she had never wanted before, since she had always associated it with children. But now, marriage holds for her the chance to have something besides material possessions, the chance to belong to something at last. So she decides to marry the Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green, a stranger whom she doesn’t love, and move with him to his rural Alabama parish. Love, after all, evaded her when Robert Anderson rejected her. So now Helga supposes she can at least have marriage and at last indisputably belong to someone. Once again, Helga is happy at first. Once again, she supposes now she has finally found fulfillment, found where she belongs.
Helga has grand intentions, but the parishioners are not receptive to them. They are polite to her face but call her “‘dat uppity, meddlin’ No’the’nah” behind her back (119). Moreover, sex in the 1920s necessarily means children, and soon Helga is pregnant. She unfortunately handles pregnancy and childbirth very poorly and is always ill. This prevents her from continuing with any of her grand plans. Helga’s physical health deteriorates to the point where she desperately asks some of the town women how they manage a normal existence despite childbirth. One replies, “‘‘Tain’t nothin’, nothin’ at all, chile…. Yuh all takes it too ha’d. Jes’ remembah et’s natu’al fo’ a ‘oman to hab chilluns an’ don’ fret so’” (125). Helga finally does give herself up to faith:
However, eventually she realizes that this is an artificial faith. “The cruel, unrelieved suffering had beaten down her protective wall of artificial faith in the infinite wisdom, in the mercy, of God. For had she not called in her agony on Him? And He had not heard. Why? Because, she knew now, He wasn’t there” (130). Helga sees the Christian God as the white man’s God and detests that they feed it to downtrodden blacks, promising them “full compensation for all woes and privations in ‘kingdom come’” (133). Helga does not fit the final role she attempts to fill, that of preacher’s wife and good Christian. But this time Helga cannot abandon her role and move on to something else, for marriage cannot be undone. And it is not only her husband that she would abandon, but her three children as well. Helga remembers how hard growing up an orphan was and has determined not to put her own children through the same misery. This time, therefore, Helga is completely trapped. She does not belong to this religious group of people. She does not believe in God. She does not belong to motherhood, either, since she is relieved when her fourth baby dies, being one less to take care of. She does not belong to family life, her husband regularly deserting her to socialize with his female parishioners, her house a mess. Helga has failed at every attempt to find meaning and purpose in her life. She has failed at every attempt to belong. All she can do now is wait to die. And not to enter the glorious paradise promised by God, for she doesn’t believe in God. Simply to die. To cease to exist. Helga’s failure to complete her maturation, to find fulfillment and a place where she belongs, makes this story a failed bildungsroman. The disruption of order and meaning illustrates a Modernist characteristic of the novel. Throughout Quicksand, Helga is tormented by an existential discontent and disruption of selfhood, stemming from her dual ancestry. She tries and fails to establish meaning in her life by grasping at love, both familial and romantic. Helga fails to create a purpose or an order in her life, and she abandons belief in a God, which denies her the possibility of a purpose or an order after life as well. Therefore, this novel is in essence a Modern bildungsroman. Works Cited "Bildungsroman."Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. 2003. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 26 September 2003. <http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article?eu=382564>. “Bildungsroman.” Merriam-Webster OnLine. 2003. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 26 September 2003. <http://www.m-w.com>. Birk, Rachel. The English Bildungsroman. 26 September 2003. <http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/geweb/ENGLBILD.htm>. Larsen, Nella. Quicksand. Quicksand and Passing. Ed. Deborah E. McDowell. New Brunswick, NJ; Rutgers UP, 2002. Salotto, Eleanor. ENGL 104: Major British Writers II. Spring 2002. Wintz, Cary D. Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance. Houston: Rice UP, 1988. 1-29. |