Unwinding Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Ariadne’s Quest: Helga Crane’s Sacrifice to the Minotaur of Racial Uplift

This essay compares the Greek, mythological Theseus/Ariadne story and the story of Helga Crane in Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen’s Quicksand . Through this comparison, Larsen emphasizes that the (conditioned) qualities of “good taste” and “decorum” that sanction racial uplift in Black men are the same preconditions that disenfranchise and limit the advancement of Black women, as Helga discovers to her misfortune.