March 14, 2000

Ann Petry's The Street and Jessie Redmon Fauset's There is Confusion:
Crucial to Any Study of African-American Women Authors

"My creed calls for nothing but happiness:" Joanna Marshall and Black Middle Class "True Womanhood"

     Emma Lapansky's article "Friends, Wives and Strivings" clearly enumerates the characteristics of the black middle class. For the Marshall family of Jessie Redmon Fauset's There is Confusion, most important of these characteristics is "a self-conscious belief that [the black middle class community's] successes and behaviors could significantly affect the life chances of all Afroamericans" (4-11). The Marshall family both value and possess that which characterized the "elite" Philadelphians of the late Nineteenth-century. The belief in affecting the social status of the entire race based on personal successes drives the novel's sometimes melodramatic (but always compelling) plot onward and is the basis for the characters' ultimate happiness; even in abandoning material success, characters, especially women, seem to improve the social lot of all Afroamericans.

     From the first pages of the novel, Fauset carefully draws a picture of a middle class family that longs to be socially productive. Joanna Marshall's most fervent value for greatness both molds and frustrates her, and she in turn molds and shapes Peter-- for better or worse. More than anything else, Joanna values "success and distinction"(17). Her drive to succeed makes her only interested in "people who had a 'purpose' in life"and this is what influences Peter Bye so significantly. Because Peter cannot resist wanting to please the sometimes "holier-than-thou" Joanna, Peter pushes himself to be as driven as Joanna. When Joanna carelessly exclaims "you'll be famous too-- you'll be a wonderful doctor. Do be. I can't stand stupid, common people" Peter ardently vows "You'll always be able to stand me" (46). Even after Peter is frustrated by the petty obstacles and prejudices of the medical establishment and wants to quit, Joanna's regard and belief that Peter must succeed and make the white establishment accept him keeps him going, long past his breaking point. For both characters, this desire to succeed is based on much more than the drive for personal material success; both of them instinctively feel that by succeeding, they will prove to society the values and strengths of their race. Joanna drives Peter onward; once he feels he has lost her regard he abandons his own positive strivings until his own pride flares angrily at the careless remarks of the thoughtless Mrs. Lea; he wants to prove her wrong. Once Peter is "back on track," a frustrated Joanna can safely move into the domestic, rather than public, sphere of influence and raise strong children.

     Maggie Ellersly contrasts with Joanna, finding "early in life that one avenue of escape [from poverty to respectability] lay through men" (58). Maggie seeks middle class social status through marriage with someone who has already gained the middle-class social status she craves. As a result, she is innately unhappy with her marriage to a man who is materially successful but socially a pariah. Only when Maggie unselfishly gives up all her claims on the men who would make her "middle class" does she gain happiness-- and her longed-for status.

     Thus, in Fauset's novel, middle class black women are supposed to inspire their men to social, rather than material, success (although the material success is not shunned). They are supposed to seek to better the condition of Afroamericans but not to be selfish in their quests. The role of the black middle class woman is to be a pillar of strength when their men need them to be, but to ultimately draw back from the frustrations of a segregated and biased society before it embitters and hardens them for the "true work" of making a happy family in the domestic sphere.

The Trap of Rage and Fear

     In contrast, Lutie Johnson of Ann Petry's The Street struggles to find a victory over poverty and defeat; in short, attempting (but ultimately failing) to attain an "American dream" of financial stability and success. Luties longs for the domestic stability that Fauset's novel takes for granted, but that dream is actually what ultimately traps her: as a single-mother, middle class status is a carrot held in front of her. In the process of her attempts to overcome the institutionalized racism of social stereotypes that keep them constantly hemmed in-- she is seen as the "immoral coloured woman"-- her small successes and failures push them through emotions ranging from rage to fear, to a sort of final resigned acceptance of the larger, final failure. Gender and environment complicate the issue through her own definitions of success that she, as an African American woman in a racist society, finds difficult to attain.

     Lutie's gender complicates her success because, as a woman, she wants to be seen as a good mother, who protects her own child. Lutie's definition of success features upward mobility, and education, and she recognizes that it will be a fight. Lutie plans: "first the white-collar job, then an apartment of her own" and believes that she will "fight back" against becoming "eaten up" by the circumstances of being black in a system where blackness automatically means failure. But she doesn't immediately recognize the dangers of pursuing financial over domestic success and though she knows that to keep her house, she must get a job, she cannot afford to hear the advice: "not good for the woman to work when she's young" (53). By not hearing the advice, she loses her husband, who feels emasculated when he cannot support his family, and so must find his manhood in the arms of another woman. The loss of her husband eventually leads to her vulnerability at the hands of the various unscrupulous men who desire her-- who finally succeed in taking away her overriding dream of ensuring her child's safety. This loss, inevitably, causes Lutie's final, murderous rage.

     She never really comes to terms with those surges or rage/fear, and her environment, made up of men who see her solely as a sexual object, punishes her for it. Lutie feels (and is) trapped by the city in which she lives, where the streets are a "zoo" which keeps her so confined that she can only pace about her "cage." She rightly thinks these streets are "the North's lynch mobs [. . .] the method the big cities used to keep Negroes in their place" (323). But her rage only pushes her into another cage, and one where she is alone. Unlike the middle-class world of Fauset's novel, Petry's The Street sketches a world where the struggle often overcomes women.

     Both novels are crucial to any understanding of African American women writers today-- it is essential that readers of Morrison, Walker, Dandicat, etc, read these forerunners of the African American woman novelist.