The “Highly Important Matter of Clothes”: Apparel and Identity in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand
Larsen’s detailed attention to clothing stems from her keen understanding of modern identity formation. Indeed, Helga’s persistent use of clothing and other aesthetic commodities as icons of identity indicates Larsen’s awareness that modern identity is conceived as itself a commodity. The consequence of identities constituted by material objects “is not just that self-identity is understood in relation to possessions, but that it is itself constituted as a possession” (Lury 8). Because Helga attempts to establish identity through her possessions, apparel and other commodities play a major role in her efforts to locate herself within racial communities.[15] In Naxos, Helga spends most of her earnings on clothing, books, and furniture (6). Despite her financial desperation in Chicago, she cannot resist consumption’s allure and “spen[ds] money, too much money, for a book, and a tapestry purse, things which she wanted, but did not need and certainly could not afford” (32). Consuming Harlem’s newspapers, shops, restaurants, theatres, and art galleries constitutes community participation (45). In Copenhagen, Helga becomes a commodity for others to admire, enjoy, and even purchase.[16] In the face of multiple disappointments and mounting evidence that sartorial artistry may not ensure group membership, Helga rejects the commodities upon which she has heretofore relied. This shift occurs after her transatlantic search for belonging has begun to double back on itself, in that she has returned to Harlem, a place she has already found disappointing. While still in Copenhagen she begins to long for things “not material,” and she associates this longing with African-American community. She is homesick “not for America, but for Negroes” (92). The morning after she seduces the man she will soon marry, Reverend Pleasant Green,[17] she decides that the “things” by which she has defined her desires “hadn’t been, weren’t enough for her” (116). She turns to marriage as an anchor of identity and a definite entry into a black community. Unfortunately, Helga’s rejection of commodities is another kind of flight, another cycle in her pattern of departure and reinvention. Like her other relocations, it fails to bring her satisfying self-definition.
