66 pages • 2 hours read
Nella LarsenQuicksand
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1928A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 22-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
Helga marries the “grandiloquent Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green” (118) and relocates with him to a small town in Alabama where he is pastor. Initially, she is fascinated by this life change and her newfound religion. She accepts the poverty accompanying her status and plans to help the congregants: she will advise the women on economic modes of home decoration, on tasteful clothing choices, and help to educate the children. When she makes home visits, an important function of the minister’s wife, the people Helga encounters are open toher suggestions; yet, upon her departure, refer to her as an “uppity, meddlin’ No’the’nah” (119) and bemoan their beloved Reverend’s failure to marry a local woman, Clementine Richards.
Prior to her conversion, Helga might have found humor in the thought of the attention granted the Reverend by these women, but she is overly occupied with her garden, chickens and pig, as well as her fascination with the marital state. For a time, Helga is enraptured with her new way of life, although she experiences a sense of “Challenge. Anticipation. And a small fear” (120) as night approaches.
Mornings bring the calm of the domestic routine and the happiness of the garden. She is unperturbed by her poor house and furniture and its theologically-themed wall decorations. This glow extends to the other houses and cabins, and the hardworking women in the area strike Helga, in their own way, as miraculous extensions of the goodness of the Creator. She is grateful for her husband, proud of his vigorous sermons, and accepts him, along with his dirty fingernails and infrequent bathing habits. While he tends to an “atmosphere of self satisfaction” (122), she is able to ignore this, for a time. The vitality of their physical relationship is so strong for Helga that “it devoured all shoots of reason” (122).
Chapter 23 Summary
In sharp contrast to Helga’s happiness and peacefulness at the start of the marriage, pregnancy and child rearing take a tremendous toll upon her. She gives birth to twin boys and a daughter within a twenty-month period, and “the light, care-free days of the past, when she had not felt heavy and reluctant or weak or spent” (123) are but a memory. She has no time to pursue her past idealistic goals of helping the women of her husband’s congregation. Pleasant still treats her with kindness; however, his encouragement is “a little platitudinous” (124), and he considers her periods of intrepidation about the birth of another child to be spiritual ingratitude.
She is unable to keep up with domestic chores: the house and children are unclean, and Helga is unable to maintain her own grooming. Admiring female church members pity Green and invite him to their orderly homes for special meals. Helga is happy to be relieved of cooking duties, and is surrounded by perpetual disorder and unpleasant odors. She is unable to imagine how other women work so hard and maintain and aura of contentment. Sary Jones, a neighbor who had given birth annually for the past six years, states that “we all gits ouah res’ by an ‘by. In de nex’ worl’ we’ll all recompense’”(125). Helga wishes that she could find such philosophical acceptance and feels inadequate by comparison.
Ultimately, Helga accepts sleeplessness and pain as part of her lot, trying to develop a greater faith. Religion shielded her “from the cruel light of…reality” (126) and her belief in a Deity enabled her to “put the entire responsibility on someone else” (126).
Chapter 24 Summary
Helga’s labor with her fourth child lasts for over forty-eight hours, and she has no emotional reaction as she observes the “little dab of amber humanity” she had borne to a “despised race” (127). She closes her eyes and fails to interact with the sickly baby or anyone else. Church-women arrive to help and her husband prays, but Helga remains unmoved. Eventually, a city physician has a serious talk with Pleasant and a stern nurse arrives to impose order upon the chaotic household. Helga’s children are temporarily removed to the homes of congregants, and Helga remains barely conscious for weeks, occasionally enjoying scenes involving her dead mother, Anderson, Anne and Axel, among others.
Her husband praises God upon her awakening and holds her hand. She finds this to be unpleasant and draws away, and Helga realizes that she hates him. During the physical agony of this birth, she has lost her religion and come to find Pleasant Green to be repugnant. The perceptive nurse advises him that Helga must be allowed to rest. Helga welcomes Nurse Hartley’s protective presence and resolves not to recuperate too quickly.
During the course of her agony, Helga called upon God for help and did not received an answer. She now realizes that it was because she perceives that God does not exist. Helga feels that life is not miraculous; for Negroes, it is a great disappointment. She is emaciated and disillusioned, particularly with Pleasant Green’s obsession with “the white man’s God” (130). Helga marvels at herself for having been duped by religion, and pities her children’s future in this hypocritical environment.
Upon being advised of the death of her fourth child during the first week of his life, Helga merely closes her eyes. Although her nurse will not allow her to sit up and read, she does offer to read to her. Helga chooses an Anatole France story titled “The Procurator of Judea”; it concludes with a reference to Pontius Pilate’s inability to recall the existence of Jesus of Nazareth.
Chapter 25 Summary
During her long recovery, Helga ruminates about having been a fool who has ruined her life. She wishes religion had not failed her, but views it as a device to “rob life of its crudest truths” (133). In her opinion, organized religion has hurt black Americans, and she wonders if God did not laugh at this joke of his own making. Her nurse reminds her of the need to sleep and get strong. Helga is in agreement, as she needs strength to pursue her plan.
Once again, she must escape her environment from this “bog,” and she has the same feeling of asphyxiation that she experienced in Naxos, New York and Copenhagen. She now views Pleasant with hatred and contempt, although she feels some pity for him. She has already decided to abandon him, despite her own admission that she has been responsible for the marriage. Her hatred extends to the local community and church members for “their stupid acceptance of all things” and their trust in “de Lawd” (134).
Helga does not wish to leave her children, having experienced paternal abandonment in her own childhood. Conversely, she rationalizes that they would not have to deal with a mixed racial heritage: “they were all black together” (135). She is unable to desert them, and she delays her plans to leave. When she is barely able to leave her bed and walk, she realizes that she is pregnant with her fifth child.
Chapters 22-25 Analysis
Upon her relocation to Alabama to help Pleasant Green minister to a small congregation there, Helga nurtures superior, idealistic dreams of educating the local women in matters of decorating, clothing choice and childhood education. Amiable in her presence, the women secretly dislike her and refer to Helga as a “meddlin’ No’the’nah” (119). Besotted by the intensity of her newfound sexual relationship with Pleasant, Helga temporarily overlooks his deficiencies in matters of hygiene and his tendency toward self-importance. The Reverend is a generally kind, amiable man; however, he is the diametric opposite of any of the more educated men who have shown interest in Helga prior to her marriage. In the end, she has only been able to establish a sexual relationship with an individual to whom she can feel superior in every way.
The birth of twin boys and a daughter within a twenty-month period negates Helga’s plans for the education of the masses, and she starts to find Pleasant’s verbal support to be “platitudinous” (124). This is a red flag for Helga; the demise of her relationships always begins with criticism of some behavior on the part of others. Overwhelmed by domestic responsibilities, Helga is relieved when local women invite Pleasant to eat dinner at their homes, as this relieves her of cooking responsibilities. Helga’s self-confidence plummets as she realizes that her own abilities to fulfill her childrearing tasks are greatly surpassed by those of the uneducated local women whom she had intended to instruct.
Religion becomes a balm to Helga as it allows her to renege upon responsibility by “putting it” on someone else (126). Eventually, this source of solace is eradicated, and she comes to believe that religion has been injurious to black Americans, causing “stupid acceptance” of inequities (134). Upon the death of her fourth child, Helga is ill and nearly comatose for weeks. Neighbors take her older children into their homes to care for them, and an authoritative nurse supervises Helga’s household and recovery. As Helga reverts to her former behavioral pattern, Pleasant becomes repugnant to her in every way. She plans her escape from Alabama, which has come to suffocate her; however, she soon realizes that she is pregnant with her fifth child.
Helga’s cycle of skewed emotional responses, failed aspirations and disastrously impulsive decisions remains unchanged throughout the course of the novel. Flight and abandonment characterize her reaction to intimate relationships; despite her ability to bear children, her life remains emotionally barren.
