The entertainment of a Harlem cabaret hypnotizes Helga Crane, the protagonist of Quicksand by Nella Larsen. She loses herself in the “sudden and continuous rhythm” and delights in the sexually suggestive movements of the dancers. Helga is “blown away, snatched away, battered by the joyous, wild, troubled orchestra” in a moment suggestive of a sexual climax. But when the music fades, Helga comes back to reality and says that "she was not, she told herself, a creature of the jungle." Helga feels this struggle between sexual freedom and restraint throughout the novel. As Larsen shows in Cabaret, black women in the early 20th century repressed their sexual desires so that white America would perceive them as respectable. In its struggle for equality, the black social elite wanted women to emulate the conventions of dominant society. Maintaining a good image was intended to not only produce change within the race, but also to combat white stereotypes that caused discrimination against black people. Thus, described as primitive and promiscuous since slavery, black women hid their sexuality under socially accepted behaviors. But, as Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham says, this “politics of respectability” had profound consequences. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the Original EssayRespectability politics has shifted the blame for racist stereotypes from whites to blacks. Instead of preventing white people from unfairly labeling black women, race-promoting ideology forced black women to change their behavior in response to stereotypes. As Kevin K. Gaines argues in his book Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century, racial uplift supported an internalized form of racism. He writes: “The gender policies of racial advancement ideology led African American elites to confuse the effects of oppression with causes…” Larsen's Quicksand shows the psychological consequences of repressing sexuality. Helga moves from place to place and seeks happiness without rationality. Her misfortune comes from the fact that respectability politics has prevented black women from defining the terms of their sexuality. They were either lustful “jungle creatures” or the ideal Victorian lady. Thus, elevation prevented black women from embracing their sexuality in healthy ways. Although respectability politics had good intentions, it significantly restricted individual freedom and prevented black women from forming their own identities. The black elite wanted respectability politics to prevent discrimination. They believed that if white people saw that black people had similar morals, they would have no reason to treat them unequally. Respectability politics aimed to counteract the dissemination of negative black images present in films like DW Griffith's Birth of Nation and other media. Among the most entrenched – and therefore most contested – stereotypes was the promiscuous black woman. Higginbotham argues that "black womanhood and white womanhood were represented with diametrically opposed sexualities." She gives the example of a white woman being quoted in a newspaper as saying, “I cannot imagine such a creation as a virtuous black woman. » While American society viewed white women as chaste, it viewed black women as sex-crazed and cowardly. Thus, the black elite sought to reinvent the image of the black woman. They adopted the standardsand morals of white society and instructed black women on issues ranging from proper conduct on streetcars to appropriate colors for clothing. But, as Larsen illustrates in Quicksand, respectability politics promoted strict conformity and erased individuality. The black elite censored people who engaged in inappropriate behavior. Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., demanded that people caught dancing and drinking appear in church court. The black elite also attacked jazz, perhaps the most significant contribution to American culture at the time. Echoing the thoughts of Helga Crane at the cabaret, they said that going to jazz venues was tantamount to "a voluntary return to the jungle". Black women were no longer free to have fun without judgment. They have become, like Helga, psychologically incomplete, in need of sexual fulfillment, but which the dominant society denies them. Respectability politics emphasizes that the individual determines the fate of the race. The black elite believed that individual behavior reflected on everyone. Higginbotham writes of Baptist women's fear of not conforming to their morals. “Baptist women spoke as if they were always aware of the gaze of white America, which, in a panoptical way, focused on each black person and recorded their transgressions in a global accounting of black inferiority,” asserts She. To keep everyone in line, the social elite interfered in the family lives of black women. They associated poor eating habits with “chewing, smoking and…drinking.” The woman who kept her house dirty became an “enemy of the race.” In addition to nutrition and housekeeping, the black elite emphasized that the worthy individual required good parents and good lineage. For people like Helga, from broken homes, this expectation made them strangers. Helga struggles with the tainted image she inherits through Quicksand. When she wishes to marry James Vayle, her parents disapprove of her lack of family. Lamenting the black social structure, Helga asserts that "black society, she had learned, was as complicated and as rigid in its ramifications as the higher strata of white society." If you couldn't prove your ancestry and connections, you were tolerated, but you didn't "belong." » By scrutinizing every aspect of personal life, respectability politics has eliminated the individual in favor of the collective. This has placed so many burdens on black women that Helga tries to escape her race. When she leaves Harlem for Copenhagen, Helga rejoices in "this blessed feeling of belonging to herself and not to a race." But, as she soon realizes, she could not break her racial bonds by changing location. Larsen also faced the oppression of racial uplift and infused Quicksand with his personal experience. Like Helga, she had parents of different races. His mother was Danish and his father was West Indian. Like Helga, her mother later married a white man who looked down on Larsen because of his race. Larsen studied science at Fisk University in Tennessee and also took courses at the University of Copenhagen. In 1915, she moved to the South and became superintendent of nurses at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. She left Tuskegee because she did not like its teaching methods and went to New York, where she began writing several years later. She published her first novel, Quicksand, in 1928. As an author of the "New Negro" period, Larsen wrote for an audience that expected her to conform. Many leaders of this race believed that theBlack literature had to combat white stereotypes. In the “New Negro,” Alain Locke argued that African-American literature should promote racial pride. WEB Du Bois wrote a review of Quicksand for "The Crisis" in which he compared the novel to Claude McKay's Home to Harlem. He commends Larsen for his "fine, thoughtful and courageous work", but criticizes McKay for his emphasis on sex. DuBois describes the book as nauseating and said it made him "clearly want to take a bath." Du Bois enters the debate on sexuality and elevation in his critique. He condemns Home to Harlem for responding to "this lascivious demand on the part of the whites" and praises Quicksand for depicting "honest and fighting young black women." It thus promotes the idea that black people should suppress their sexuality to combat white stereotypes about their promiscuity. Du Bois shows that black elites preferred to approach sexuality indirectly or not at all. Despite her conservative audience, Larsen criticized elevating goals and dealt seriously with female sexuality. Social expectations constrained her, but she asserted that black sexuality could not be ignored. Deborah E. McDowell, in the introduction to Quicksand, writes: "Larsen wanted to tell the story of the black woman with sexual desires, but was constrained by a competing desire to establish black women as respectable in middle-class terms black. McDowell adds that because of the second consideration, Larsen could only address sex "indirectly." Larsen used Helga to express his thoughts on upliftment and sexuality. She based the fictional Naxos on Tuskegee and made the same criticisms of its social rules as Helga. Helga finds the social environment of Naxos oppressive and rigid. She believes that although Naxos was founded with good intentions, it has become a machine. Helga states that "it was...now only a great knife with cruel, sharp edges cutting mercilessly in a pattern, the white man's pattern." Naxos teaches its students to abandon their individuality, and the sexuality associated with it, in favor of a respectable image. Larsen shows that even the smallest expressions of sexuality could not exist in this environment. The teachers wear dull-colored clothing and become uncomfortable when Helga puts on "dark purples, royal blues, rich greens, and deep reds." Unwilling to accept social conventions, Helga leaves Naxos when Dr. Anderson calls her a "lady", a term loaded on her mind. For Helga, this means giving up her individuality and deceiving herself. Even though Helga defies social conventions by leaving Naxos, she remains concerned about "feminine" behavior. In a situation reminiscent of Harlem cabaret, Helga attends a vaudeville show in Copenhagen in which two black Americans perform. Their “cowardly” movements embarrass and repel Helga, who attends the spectacle with her white friends. “She felt ashamed, betrayed, as if these pale pink and white people among whom she lived had suddenly been invited to contemplate something in her that she had hidden and wanted to forget,” Larsen writes. What “she had hidden” was her sexuality. Helga wants to challenge the white stereotype of black people as prim and lascivious, but she also wants to express her own sexuality. She shows that respectability politics prevented black women from releasing their sexual tensions. Instead, it bottled up their physical desires and allowed them to reach a near boiling point. Higginbotham demonstrates that African American women in the early 20th centuryfelt similar social obligations to Helga. “Respectability also provided black Baptist women with a perception of defense of their sexual identity,” she says. Just as white audiences put Helga in a defensive position, black women were fighting a society that placed them in a negative role. The Woman's Convention, an auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention, affirmed that the black woman "must become a moral tower of force and, by her reserve and dignified demeanor, defy and intimidate her aggressors." » Although the black elite wanted to combat stereotypes, they often unwittingly accepted them. Respectability politics assumed that blacks gave whites reason to treat them unequally. Higginbotham argues that "respectability politics equated nonconformity with the cause of racial inequality and injustice." In this way, elevation made discrimination a supposed improvement of black morality rather than a fight against white prejudice. Gaines says the focus on family life has also placed the blame for misconceptions about sexuality on black women. “Such emphasis on family life as a racial panacea often treated the problem as a failure of blacks to conform to Victorian sexual mores, instead of a consequence of systematic and ongoing repression,” Gaines writes. Inspired by the black elite, this self-reproach contributed to a confused racial identity. Helga oscillates between looking at tall black people and feeling connected to them. “Despite her racial characteristics, she did not belong to these dark and segregated people,” Helga says. "She was different. She felt it. It wasn't just about color." Helga goes to Copenhagen to escape her race, but discovers that color is important there too. Her Danish relatives uphold the stereotype of the exotic black woman and make Helga a sexual object. Her aunt and uncle dressed her in bright, revealing clothes and exposed her to their friends. Unwilling to accept this new role, Helga returns to Harlem and longs to be part of her race again. “How absurd it was to think that another country, other people could free her from the bonds that tied her forever to... these lovely, dark hordes,” Helga muses upon her return to Harlem. Helga's inability to define her own sexuality causes hesitation between the races. In Harlem, she must suppress her physical desires to be respectable. In Copenhagen, her loved ones transform her into an object of desire. When Helga returns to Harlem, she begins to express her sexuality, but in bizarre and misguided ways. Drenched and in search of shelter, Helga finds refuge in a church and undergoes an experience of both religious conversion and sexual liberation. Larsen blurs the lines between religious fervor and passion in this intense scene. She writes: “As Helga looked and listened, a curious influence penetrated her; she felt an echo of the strange orgy resonating in her own heart.” After releasing her sexual frustration at church, Helga seduces a pastor who helps her return home. But his decision has serious consequences. She enters a loveless marriage and becomes pregnant five times. Larsen likens motherhood to a slow death, because each child increases Helga's suffering. All hopes of happiness end when she has her first child. "She had ruined her life. It was impossible for her to do the things she wanted, to have the things she loved, to mingle with the people she loved," says Larsen. Thus, Larsen argues that black women had to sacrifice their dreams to satisfy their physical desires. She criticizes respectability policies that either proposea non-sexual existence, i.e. domestic servitude. McDowell argues that “Larsen criticizes the double price – marriage and pregnancy/childbearing – that women must pay for sexual expression.” By ending Quicksand with Helga pregnant once again, Larsen attacks social conventions for the burdens they place on black women. Helga's mixed background further complicates her search for sexual satisfaction and happiness. She doesn't really know where she belongs and how the politics of respectability affect her. When she leaves Copenhagen, Helga laments that she doesn't feel part of either race. “Why couldn’t she have two lives, or why couldn’t she be satisfied in one place?” she thinks. Sometimes she wants to escape from other black people and forget the ties to her race. But when she goes to Copenhagen, she finds that her white relatives treat her only as an exotic curiosity. Helga's confusion is akin to what Du Bois calls double consciousness. Du Bois argues that whites' perceptions of blacks influenced how blacks viewed themselves. Du Bois writes: “It is a special sensation, this double consciousness, this feeling of always looking into the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the yardstick of a world that looks on with contempt and pity. amused. » Because Helga is a person of mixed heritage, the feeling of double consciousness becomes pronounced. When Helga describes the Harlem nightclub as a jungle, she looks at the scene with blank eyes. She accepts the stereotype of the wild black man and prevents herself from enjoying the dance. Larsen writes: "She became enveloped in mild disgust as she watched the performers throw themselves into the bursts of syncopated jungle." Larsen shows the power of white stereotypes in black lives. Helga lives with the fear of being watched and analyzed. Even when she is free to have fun, white ideas still influence her behavior. Larsen is not only concerned with double consciousness, but also with what it means to be black. She examines whether being black can be a choice in Quicksand and her other novel Passing. Helga moves between black and white communities to find her place. She tries to move in with her uncle in Chicago, but the idea of ​​having a black person in the family terrifies his wife. Rejected and desperate for work, she moves to Harlem, where she stays with Anne. But she has had enough of talking with Anne about the “Negro problem”. Helga believes that the discussion of the black problem only emphasizes the oppression of black people. “She wanted to free herself from this constant chatter about the incongruities, the injustices, the stupidities, the wickedness of white people. It awakened memories, probed hidden wounds, the poignant pain of which generated a surprising oppression in her,” says Larsen. Unable to accept her inferior position in America, Helga travels to Copenhagen to embrace her white parents. Although her Danish parents treat her kindly, they do not consider her an equal. “It’s true that she was attractive, unusual, exotic, almost wild, but she wasn’t part of it. She didn’t count at all,” Helga thinks during her loved ones’ dinner. Helga wants to return to Harlem when she realizes she is different from her white friends. Because Helga needs to be around black people, Larsen suggests that blackness is innate, even for people from mixed backgrounds. Helga's separation from her race is impossible. Likewise, Larsen's ties to the black middle class affected his work. Because Larsen was part of this class, she could not freely criticize respectability politics. McDowell argues that "even if Larsen criticizes.