After our rather critical discussions of Helga Crane in class, Zoey identified her with a literary type: the tragic mulatto. Now I'm reading a collection of essays about Norwegian-American women (Norwegian American Women: Migration, Communities and Identities, eds. Bergland and Lahlum) that includes one on another literary type: the hungry heroine. Ingrid Urberg explains that the type is found first in European folklore and then represented in immigrant fiction, more specifically works by and about Norwegian-American women. Then she explores the translation of this fairy-tale type in several novels considering how these female protagonists move from their "lack" through a "quest" and achieve a "reward" in a new home.
In part her purpose is to counteract the common impression that Beret, in Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth, is the prototypical Norwegian immigrant woman: reluctant, depressive, and yet strong. In some aspects a tragic type. As I read Urberg's essay I was reminded that no single fictional character can adequately portray the wide range of human experience and response to common situations. I wondered once again about what might be learned by considering Quicksand both as a novel of the Harlem Renaissance and as an immigrant novel. I'm not at all sure that this would change our response to Helga, but the larger field of comparison might yield useful insights about the intertwining of race, ethnicity, and gender in the early 20th century.
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