Helga Crane is a beautiful young woman of mixed racial descent who has no memory of her father, a man of color, and recalls her Danish mother as having been emotionally remote. When the reader first meets Helga, she is unhappy with her teaching post at a Southern boarding school for Negro children. Educated and intelligent, Helga feels superior to her colleagues at the school, whom she senses are overly acquiescent to inherent racism within the institution. She makes the impulsive decision to resign immediately and break her marriage engagement, arranging immediate relocation to Chicago. This pattern of impulsivity and disdain for others characterizes Helga’s life, and it ultimately leads her into a disastrous marriage to a rural minister.

Helga both craves and disdains human relationships. While she feels chronically ostracized as a result of racism, she responds to individuals of color who treat her with kindness (for example, Anne Gray) by eventually lashing out at them and breaking the friendship. Her attitude toward love and sexuality are conflicted; she experiences erotic attraction to men, such as Dr.Robert Anderson, yet, she is repulsed by them if the prospect of marriage is broached, as is the case with Axel Olsen.Her solution to conflict in any relationship is to flee; in one case, she actually relocates to another country.