Essay On The American Dream In Nella Larsen's 'Quicksand'

In America, the time between the world wars ushered great change and with it, the clash between existing foundations and new ideas. With this era, the advent of Modernism as a literary movement emerges; this trend reflects the turbulent social conflicts and new perspectives taken in response. During the same period, the Harlem Renaissance was also a movement that focused on issues specific to African American communities such as racism and cultural representation. This period also marked the rise of an American Dream defined by wealth accumulation and the ties to social status. “Quicksand,” by Nella Larsen, is about the life of Helga Crane, a biracial woman, and her struggles to find belonging within various communities. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” narrates Dexter Green’s pursuit of the American Dream within a stratified status quo and the shattering of his hopes. Both Modernist stories recount the loss experienced when one is blinded in the belief in an unattainable ideal separate from reality. These two contemporaneous works

show how different the experiences of social mobility in America are along gender and racial divides during the 1920s.
The idea of the American Dream encompasses two opposing perspectives, one that fixates on economic success and other on equality of opportunity.

Unfortunately, the more shallow version is much more appealing. On the surface is “The naive belief in the American Dream as an almost automatic movement towards personal success and riches and its negative counterpart of an American nightmare resulting from economic principles of growth...are two sides of a coin and are literally connected to money” (Hornung 547). With halves of the American Dream, the one that upholds capitalist consumption tends to stand out due to how people have become so acclimated to the idea of pursuing wealth and their sole goal in life. This image is supported by the rapid expansion of cities and ease of consumption due to industrialization. Tangible goods were an easy way to display status, whether or not those objects guaranteed social equality was

questionable.
Helga Crane begins her journey through embracing the material American Dream and leaving behind a chance at the Dream of equality of opportunity. She hates her employment at Naxos, the African American institution dedicated to racial uplift, because of how it valued conformity to specific ways of thinking and dressing that clashed with her sense of individuality. When leaving, however, the practicality of finances slow Helga down as “She hated to admit that money was the most serious difficulty….All her life Helga Crane had loved and longed for nice things” (Larsen 555). Rather than questioning her desires, she assumes that her values are fixed. Helga takes her ideals for granted and does not stop to think about where she got the idea that material goods are necessary to survive. She retains this viewpoint despite the emphasis on modesty and not standing out at Naxos.
Like Helga, Dexter buys into this Dream. Fitzgerald writes that Dexter does not understand the impulse to accumulate wealth other than a desire for ownership, “He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people—he wanted the glittering things themselves. Often he reached out for the best without knowing why he wanted it” (662). He takes a risk by attending a more prestigious school on a thin budget in order to immerse himself in the culture and surroundings of the social world he desires. More than to be near these elements, he wants to have and define himself through these factors. All the while, Dexter does not ask himself why any of it is important to his life.
The methods in which wealth can accumulated are different between men and women due to the constraints of gender. When Helga tries to attain independence via employment, she comes up against the obstacles of both gender and race. At the YWCA employment office, the assistants express doubt to the possibility of helping her without references. Even the lower occupations of domestic labor normally available to women of color require a reference that is provided by a former white employer. Helga’s search leaves her demoralized, feeling “the smallness of her commercial value” (Larsen 571). This barrier restricts Helga’s ability to find new approaches to social mobility due to her abrupt leaving of Naxos. She cannot fully utilize her education or even secure menial work to work her way up. In the critical essay, “Too High a Price: The ‘Terrible Honesty’ of Black Women’s Work in Quicksand,” Jessica Labbé points out that this difficult situation reveals how the “cornerstone of African American women’s labor is white appeasement indicates the extent to which upper-class white America controlled the opportunities available to all women of color” (96). This reiterates how Helga could not advance due to her unwillingness to bow to the rigid standards at Naxos only to find less freedom outside the school. She sacrifices her employment record to get away from the stifling attitudes, but finds herself still restrained by the larger white dominant society.
In contrast to the few options Helga has, Dexter’s route to material gain is fast and straightforward. After school, Dexter starts a successful laundry business. He gets closer and closer to the idea he once watched from afar as a golf caddy; eventually he is even invited to play golf with the very same group of men he once served. Without the barriers of gender or race, Dexter has a lot more flexibility in how he wants to achieve his dreams. Both Helga Crane and Dexter Green yearn to have a comfort and status stemming from wealth and social regard. Only one is able to make their way towards this goal, but making a living is only one part of the journey to fulfilling the status-driven American Dream.
Without the means to support herself at the level of wealth she deemed acceptable, Helga turns the institution of marriage as a means to achieve her desires. Although the 1920s appeared contain drastic changes to the role of women such as less supervision and advances towards equality, the changes did not alter the underlying relations between men and women. As historian Geoffrey Perrett puts it, the majority of women were hardly troubled by “The right to vote, the fate of the Equal Rights Amendment, sexual equality with men, marriage versus career…What they were interested in was not feminism but femininity….And while this interest in looking beautiful may have had something to do with self-confidence and self-respect, it also had a lot to do with finding the right man” (158-159). Because Helga’s employment opportunities are limited by her race, she turns to the connection with a man in order to fulfill both her desire for opulence and her need for validation. She has the illusion that if she keeps searching, there will be some place that allows her to achieve these, if not in America, then Europe.