The Worst of Both Worlds, and the Best of Neither

The Worst of Both Worlds, and the Best of Neither

Helga Crane's racial mixedness as a mulatto in Nella Larsen's novel Quicksand divides her socially, emotionally, and geographically, and suspends her in a perpetual "in between" status. Her uncanny role results from a combination of qualities that simultaneously identify her with, and distance her from, each side of her ancestry. Helga's identity becomes taboo because it leads her "diverging in two contrary directions"(Freud 24) that cannot exist simultaneously.

Freud's article on "Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence" follows these two separate directions that divide the meaning of 'taboo' to find that at the end they merge to repel him in their "sense of something unapproachable"(24). He defines taboo as, "on the one hand, 'sacred', 'consecrated', and on the other 'uncanny', 'dangerous', 'forbidden', 'unclean'"(24). These two separate meanings of taboo lead back to one another after they each are split in half again. The notion of taboo as something sacred or forbidden suggests that it is either something known that is holy and should be worshipped, or something that is worshipped simply because it is sacred but the reason for its holiness is unknown. The competing idea of taboo as forbidden creates the possibility that it is either something known to be unclean and therefore tainted, or it is dangerous because the reason for its filth is unknown. Each of these four possibilities converge in the sense of 'holy dread', or 'unholy dread', as the case may be, because they all evoke the same uncanny feeling.

Taboo restrictions and prohibitions not only further shroud its meaning in uncertainty, but spread its contaminating influence upon any person or ...

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... culture where she had just arrived. This period of simulated acceptance was a period of in-betweeness when she felt that she had penetrated a sphere. This alienated heroine was never able to survive past this initial period of novelty because her taboo status as a mulatto forbid assimilation. This left Helga as an emotional nomad drifting in between time and space where she experienced the worst of both worlds and the best of neither.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1950.

Larsen, Nella. Quicksand and Passing. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986.

Carby, Hazel V. Reconstructing Womanhood. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Golden, Marita. Forward to An Intimation of Things Distant, The Collected Fiction of Nella Larsen. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1992.