comes too completely and too abruptly” and that
“she embraces an ideal external to the novel
proper, but she underscores its conclusion: that the
African-American woman must subordinate gen-
der issues and personal ambitions to the advance-
ment of the race through the male’s attainment of
parity—notwithstanding the fact that she is his
equal” (Davis, xxi).
The publication of There Is Confusioninspired
CHARLESS. JOHNSON, editor of OPPORTUNITY,to
organize a celebratory publication dinner at the
CIVICCLUB. Much to Fauset’s dismay, however,
the March 1924 event evolved into an occasion on
which many notable figures such as W. E. B.
DUBOISand JAMESWELDONJOHNSONdirected
attention away from Fauset and toward the emerg-
ing and predominantly male writers of the Harlem
Renaissance instead. Fauset’s publishers used the
occasion to advance their publicity of the work.
They characterized the event as a birthday celebra-
tion for “a new sort of book about colored peo-
ple—the birthday of a fine novel about Negroes of
the upper classes of New York and Philadelphia—
as impressive and vital in their special environ-
ment as the upper class whites whom Edith
Wharton or Archibald Marshall love to write
about... Yes, there’s something new under the
sun,” the press exclaimed, “and it is There Is Confu-
sion” (Sylvander, 71). The poet and writer GWEN-
DOLYN BENNETT celebrated Fauset’s novel by
dedicating a poem, “To Usward,” to The Crisislit-
erary editor and Cornell University graduate.
The novel garnered significant praise from
leading members of the Harlem Renaissance intel-
lectual elite. ALAINLOCKEdeclared that the novel
articulated the issues at the core of the Harlem Re-
naissance and that it was “the novel that the
Negro intelligentsia [had] been clamoring for”
[Miller, 208]. Locke’s HOWARDUNIVERSITYcol-
league T. MONTGOMERYGREGORY, who reviewed
it in the June 1924 issue of Opportunity,praised it
for its decisive portrayals of African Americans,
images that defied the pervasive racial stereotypes
that usually relegated people of color to sub-
servient social roles. According to Gregory, “the
great value of this novel [lies] in interpreting the
better elements of our life to those who know us
only as domestic servants, ‘uncles,’ or criminals”
(181). GEORGESCHUYLER, who admitted that the
book had kept him completely absorbed, endorsed
the novel for readers of THEMESSENGER.Literary
critic Ernest Boyd saw the novel as more powerful
than “the ordinary story of negro life.” In his June
1924 NEWYORKTIMESarticle, “Charting the Sea
of Fiction,” he insisted that the novel “assumes the
proportions of an important book; it is well exe-
cuted, so well, in fact, that no Ku Kluxer could
stand it” (NYT,22 June 1924, BR1).
There Is Confusionis a provocative meditation
on the politics of domesticity, female empower-
ment, and the potentially alienating nature of the
public sphere. Fauset’s critique of self-indulgence
and of self-sacrifice enriches the novel and provides
Harlem Renaissance readers with a meaningful
study of racial advancement and gender politics.Bibliography
“Books and Authors.” New York Times,September 1924,
BR18.
Boyd, Ernest. “Charting the Sea of Fiction,” New York
Times,22 June 1924, BR1.
Davis, Thadious. Foreword in There Is Confusion,by
Jessie Fauset. Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1989.
Fauset, Jessie. There Is Confusion.1924, reprint, Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1989.
Gregory, Montgomery. “The Spirit of Phillis Wheatley.”
Opportunity(June 1924): 181.
Jones, Sharon. Rereading the Harlem Renaissance: Race,
Class, and Gender in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset, Zora
Neale Hurston, and Dorothy West.Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 2002.
Miller, Nina. “Femininity, Publicity, and the Class Divi-
sion of Cultural Labor: Jessie Redmon Fauset’s
There Is Confusion.” African American Review 2
(summer 1996): 205–220.
Sylvander, Cheryl. Jessie Redmon Fauset, Black American
Writer.Troy, N.Y.: Whitson Pub. Co., 1981.They That Sit in DarknessMary Burrill
(1919)
A compelling one-act drama by MARYBURRILL
that considers the life-threatening nature of ex-
cessive work and unrelenting domestic labor. Set
in the South, the drama focuses on the impover-
ished Jasper family. Malinda Jasper, the mother of
seven children, has survived repeated pregnanciesThey That Sit in Darkness 513