 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. |
