There Is Confusion
There Is Confusion by Jessie Redmon Fauset (published 1924) is a rather enjoyable read--especially when compared to the earlier books on my reading list. It follows the fortunes of three young African Americans at the beginning of the 20th century as they fall in love, follow their ambitions, and try to find happiness. I found myself actually caring about what happened to these people and identifying with large parts of one of the central characters' personality and the struggles that she faced--race aside, that is. Of course, that's the trick. Part of the point of this novel is that race cannot be truly set aside.
As a novel about the ways in which race is a part of everyday American life--from the lower class to the upper, from the white former slaveowner to the black descendant of slaves--this is a very effective novel. It is even more effective in its consideration of the additional burdens black women face that black men or white women do not face. The two central women of the novel--Joanna and Maggie--take very different approaches to life that somehow mirror each other, Joanna determining to work hard and be a success, never mind the prejudice of the rest of the world, and Maggie determining to find personal fulfillment in either social respect or love, also leaving the issue of prejudice for others to deal with. In the end, both approaches are found to have something lacking. Joanna finds that her success is nothing without love and Maggie finds that her striving to find a man to lift her up and out of her situation is meaningless without a sense of herself. So in the end the two women must change their approaches or continue to be unsatisfied.
And it is here that the strengths and the weaknesses of the novel are most clear. On the one hand, Fauset provides the reader with a (relatively) broad range of female opportunities in these two characters, whether in the arts, in the business world, or in the home. This is a nice change from novels in which black women are merely housewives or domestic servants. But on the other hand, the conclusion of the novel requires significant shifts in both Joanna and Maggie's priorities. Maggie's shift in priorities is believable. She resolves to live for herself but then, finally, has a chance to marry her one true love. She never had any higher ambition than to marry Philip, so her marriage to him allows her a happy ending but also reveals the ways in which she has changed for the better because she marries him because she loves him instead of for his social connections and because after his death she goes on with her life, grateful for the chance she had for this period of happiness with him and ready to create another kind of happiness for herself. Joanna, however, was always ambitious. From the age of five, she has been wishing to be great. With this in mind, her shift from nakedly ambitious and driven to succeed above all else to a woman who will not only marry and adjust her life to accommodate the love of her life but instantaneously give up the career she has worked for all these years in order to stay home and mother their children is hard to swallow. She too easily abandons the call of greatness for the call of happiness, here displayed as domestic happiness with only a little artistic dabbling on the side. In these two shifts Fauset retreats from the strong feminist argument she had made with Joanna's character in particular to a more traditional representation of women and the possibilities for their happiness.
The big question, though, is how all of this relates to the issues of race that the novel raises. What do these plot twists and relationships have to say about the status of African Americans in the early 20th century and what have they to say about the responsibilities of African Americans as individuals to the race as a whole? The answer is simple, really: love. Love is, according to Joanna, "a pattern to guide us out of the confusion" caused by the race question. Her brother Philip sums it up even more clearly: "Happiness, love, contentment in our own midst, make it possible for us to face those foes without. 'Happy Warriors,' that's the ideal for us."
This novel stands as a testament to the importance of individual relationships and personal happiness in the process of creating larger change. But what kind of change? Fauset's final argument is a strong one for the Booker T. Washington approach. Those few characters who attempt to devote their lives to the cause wind up unhappy and alone; the kind of change the "Happy Warriors" described by Philip are meant to create is gradual, generational, relational--not political or adversarial.
As a novel about the ways in which race is a part of everyday American life--from the lower class to the upper, from the white former slaveowner to the black descendant of slaves--this is a very effective novel. It is even more effective in its consideration of the additional burdens black women face that black men or white women do not face. The two central women of the novel--Joanna and Maggie--take very different approaches to life that somehow mirror each other, Joanna determining to work hard and be a success, never mind the prejudice of the rest of the world, and Maggie determining to find personal fulfillment in either social respect or love, also leaving the issue of prejudice for others to deal with. In the end, both approaches are found to have something lacking. Joanna finds that her success is nothing without love and Maggie finds that her striving to find a man to lift her up and out of her situation is meaningless without a sense of herself. So in the end the two women must change their approaches or continue to be unsatisfied.
And it is here that the strengths and the weaknesses of the novel are most clear. On the one hand, Fauset provides the reader with a (relatively) broad range of female opportunities in these two characters, whether in the arts, in the business world, or in the home. This is a nice change from novels in which black women are merely housewives or domestic servants. But on the other hand, the conclusion of the novel requires significant shifts in both Joanna and Maggie's priorities. Maggie's shift in priorities is believable. She resolves to live for herself but then, finally, has a chance to marry her one true love. She never had any higher ambition than to marry Philip, so her marriage to him allows her a happy ending but also reveals the ways in which she has changed for the better because she marries him because she loves him instead of for his social connections and because after his death she goes on with her life, grateful for the chance she had for this period of happiness with him and ready to create another kind of happiness for herself. Joanna, however, was always ambitious. From the age of five, she has been wishing to be great. With this in mind, her shift from nakedly ambitious and driven to succeed above all else to a woman who will not only marry and adjust her life to accommodate the love of her life but instantaneously give up the career she has worked for all these years in order to stay home and mother their children is hard to swallow. She too easily abandons the call of greatness for the call of happiness, here displayed as domestic happiness with only a little artistic dabbling on the side. In these two shifts Fauset retreats from the strong feminist argument she had made with Joanna's character in particular to a more traditional representation of women and the possibilities for their happiness.
The big question, though, is how all of this relates to the issues of race that the novel raises. What do these plot twists and relationships have to say about the status of African Americans in the early 20th century and what have they to say about the responsibilities of African Americans as individuals to the race as a whole? The answer is simple, really: love. Love is, according to Joanna, "a pattern to guide us out of the confusion" caused by the race question. Her brother Philip sums it up even more clearly: "Happiness, love, contentment in our own midst, make it possible for us to face those foes without. 'Happy Warriors,' that's the ideal for us."
This novel stands as a testament to the importance of individual relationships and personal happiness in the process of creating larger change. But what kind of change? Fauset's final argument is a strong one for the Booker T. Washington approach. Those few characters who attempt to devote their lives to the cause wind up unhappy and alone; the kind of change the "Happy Warriors" described by Philip are meant to create is gradual, generational, relational--not political or adversarial.