넬라 라슨의 퀵샌드: 헬가 크레 인의 여정과 흑백 모녀관계

Abstract

Nella Larsen's Quicksand: Helga Crane's Journey and Her Biracial Mother-Daughter RelationshipSeung Ah OhIn Nella Larsen's novel Quicksand (1928), the mulatta heroine Helga Crane is on an endless journey oscillating between the rural South and Northern cities, between African American society and a white European city. At each location Helga experiences inexplicable boredom and suffocation despite a magically agreeable first impression, and she repeatedly moves on to the next destination with a sense of painful isolation.Helga's restlessness to secure her own place originates from the trauma of desertion by her white mother, but Helga's lifelong fascination with tasteful objects also has to do with her desire to identify with beauty and to gain a healthy sense of self which she has been deprived. Helga detests her mother's momentary submission to bodily passion that resulted in Helga's birth, and she conceals her white heritage in order to belong to Harlem's African American crowd. Helga's encounter with her mother's homeland of Denmark and even her glamorous experience among the high society of Copenhagen ironically operate to intensify Helga's cynicism toward marriage and motherhood. However, in the end, Helga surrenders to her own momentary desire just as her mother did, and the urban woman transforms into a stereotypical African American mother in the deep South.