For Nella Larsen’s Crane being a product of interracial sex is not an easy one as she spends the novel searching for the place she belongs. In the end Larsen’s protagonist is disappointed as she comes to realize that there is no place for her in the world because she is not one race but a mix of two (Larsen 1969). This negative outlook is just one example of the attitudes Americans adapted towards miscegenation and interracial sex for while there were those like Larsen who saw those who were born from parents of two different races as a horrible thing for the children would never be able to find their place in society, there were those who saw it as a chance to blend cultures and get rid of lingering prejudices. Nevertheless Larsen’s Quicksand is still an excellent way to examine this topic as it illustrates these different attitudes towards interracial sex.
In Larsen’s Quicksand, Crane does not just feel uncomfortable around her European-American relatives but around herself as well: “she realized that with every hour she would get a little farther away from this soothing haziness, this rest from her long trouble of body and spirit; back into the clear sense of her own small life and being, from which happiness and serenity always faded just as they had shaped themselves” (Larsen 259). This is a perfect example of how being the result of an interracial relationship can come to view the world as one that has no place for them and is thus cruel. It also proves how this attitude can make a bi-racial person like Crane feel depressed as she comes to believe she will never be able to find true happiness and will only suffer at the hands of others because, unlike her, they do not have a white mother and a black father which somehow makes them better than her who is.
While Crane maintains this pessimistic view point through most of the novel, however, there are moments where she finds herself believing that even though she is miserable thanks to her bi-racial heritage, she still deserves to be happy: “Things, she realized, hadn’t been, weren’t, enough for her. She’d have to have something else besides. It all came back to that old question of happiness. Surely this was it” (Larsen 259). In other words, Crane had decided she was no longer going to let her bi-racial status depress her by adopting a more active stance towards how she perceived herself and show other Americans how the negative attitudes directed at interracial sex and those born from it would not keep dragging her down. This is a stark contrast to the quote from above which demonstrates how interracial sex can depress the resulting children as society continued to condemn them and illustrates an alternative response where the children decide for themselves who they are.
All in all, Larsen’s Quicksand is an incredible example of the different attitudes Americans adopted towards miscegenation and interracial sex as she utilizes her protagonist Crane who is a result of a white mother and a black father. Though Larsen does take the time to examine both a negative attitude as well as a positive one, however, her novel ends on a depressing note as Crane finds herself in a marriage with a black man whom she quickly finds she does not love and wants to get away from but while she fantasizes about leaving him, she does not (Larsen 1969). Perhaps the main thing which should be taken away from this story is that it is because of society people of bi-racial heritage like Crane are unhappy for it does not provide a place for them where they can feel like they belong. If only society accepted interracial sex, maybe then Crane would have found true happiness instead of an unfulfilling marriage.
Work Cited
Larsen, Nella. Quicksand. New York: Negro Universities, 1969. Print.
