Feminine/Masculine Dichotomy in Quicksand

 Quicksand is perhaps most well known for its commentary on race. It is obvious that Helga Crane, as the protagonist of the story, has been deliberately designed to offer this commentary – as someone who has both black and white heritage, and someone who experiences aspects of both. However, Larson’s commentary doesn’t stop at the racial dichotomy – it uses other, carefully chosen aspects of Helga Crane. Most obviously, Larson ties the feminine/masculine dichotomy to the racial dichotomy through Helga’s parents and through the cultural setting Helga is surrounded by in various parts of the story. 

Using clothing as a proxy for self-expression of femininity, we see that at the beginning, Helga is clearly Separated from the Feminine. She states that the Naxos attire is ““dull attire…Drab colors, mostly navy blue, black, brown, unrelieved…,” something which is conceptually linked to her distaste, boredom, and borderline despisal of Naxos (Larson 16). In this way, Helga is forced to separate herself from expressing her femininity in the form of “good fashion,” or bright colors. 

This is something which is also conceptually linked to the racial dichotomy. Helga thinks: “some unanalyzed driving spirit of loyalty to the inherent racial need for gorgeousness told her that bright colours were fitting and that dark-complexioned people should wear yellow, green, and red. Black, brown, and gray were ruinous to them, actually destroyed the luminous tones lurking in their dusky skins. One of the loveliest sights Helga had ever seen had been a sooty black girl decked out in a flaming orange dress, which a horrified matron had next day consigned to the dyer. Why, she wondered, didn't someone write A Plea for Color?” (Larson 38-39). Because, precisely, “Helga Crane loved clothes, elaborate ones,” and because of her opinion that clothing and color were race pride’s “most delightful manifestations,” her expression of her femininity is an “inherent racial need for gorgeousness” as well (Larson 39).

Her transition to living in Harlem and then Copenhagen can be seen clearly with her Reconnection to the Feminine – again in the form of fashion. Indeed, we can see a smooth gradient here – for her deliberations on choosing a fashion piece in Harlem as “too décolleté, and too outré,” in Copenhagen, after her protests of “Isn't it too gay? Too-too-outré?” become “Oh dear, no. Not at all, not for you. Just right.” (Larson 124, 150). 

And lastly, during and after the Death stage with Dr. Anderson, she appears to fully embrace her feminine side. Her attempts to woo Dr. Anderson show her accepting and utilizing her femininity and fashion and are a marked contrast to Naxos and even Denmark. During her “salvation,” her “clinging red dress…bare arms and neck” make a man “shudder…at her right” (Larson 104). Another woman exclaims that she is “"A scarlet 'oman…[a] Jezebel!” indicating she appears so attractively or is dressed so provocatively that the masses think she a prostitute (Larson 104). Although decidedly not the case, it is evidence of her embracing her feminine aspects, and she even seduces the Reverend – exemplifying the full progression of the monomyth and narrative. Overall, the careful construction of Helga’s character to not only offer commentary on the racial dichotomy in the 1920s but also the feminine/masculine dichotomy shows just how much fine detail and interpretation there is in Quicksand beyond the initially apparent.