A Lack of Support

    The Wikipedia page describes support as being a time when “The heroine accepts the help of the supporter and comes to understand that ‘being alone is never enough’” and explains that “Due to the support she has gotten, the heroine finds courage and hope again”. Yet despite the numerous times that character's support Helga Crane, the main character of “Quicksand” by Nella Larson, never once was she able to find someone (or many someones) who helped her out of the lonely cycle she found herself in. After further inspection I boiled it down to two problems as to why that would be. First, there tends to be an ulterior motive tied to the support she received and second, she prevents herself from using support or finding support that will help her in a productive manner. 

In the beginning when Helga received ingenuine support, she was able to use it to live in a “perfect world”, but eventually it caused her to stray away from her goal of finding a community to live in. For example, in Copenhagen her aunt and uncle give her many material goods like clothes, food and shelter, but in return she is displayed like one would display an exotic pet. At first, she loved this “gave herself up wholly to the fascinating business of being seen, gaped at, desired” (68). Eventually she loses happiness again and after watching the circus and being proposed to as the artist she realizes how was objectified and outcasted by the community. In this case she despite being helped with all her material needs she was never going to be able to feel fully comfortable with them. 

As for the reason that she is her own problem for her downfall there are two occasion I want to highlight the first one being Mrs. Hayes-Rore. Mrs. Hayes-Rore takes her to Harlem, hooks her up with a job and a home without anything in return. She set Helga up perfectly to start a new life yet, not long after being there Helga began to pull away from that life taking “Lonely excursion outside of Harlem” and separating herself so that “isolation encompassed her” (43). She failed to learn that being alone is not the way to go and exemplifies that she didn’t know how to use the support from Mrs. Hayes-Rore to help herself build other support systems only to hurt herself.  

Another example is when she went away with the priest to start a new life away from Harlem. With the priest “it was a chance at stability, at permanent happiness, that she meant to take.” (108). She used him as support (was false support) to escape from her problems and hurt herself more in the long run. She put herself in a position where she was neglected and “Failed to blame him for the thoughtless selfishness of these absences” (115). On this occasion her attitude prevented her from finding good support to lift her out of her miserable state. 

The combination of self-sabotage and the ingenuine help from others makes Helga’s task an impossible one. As I was writing this blog post though, I started to put more of the blame on Helga instead of the faulty help from others. There were characters around her who helped build her up, but then she would isolate herself or surround herself with the wrong type of support. Is it fair to put so much blame on her, or is it society that should share most of the blame?