“Emmy” Jessie Fauset(1912–1913)
A gripping romance by JESSIEFAUSETand the first
of her fictional works to appear in THECRISIS.
“Emmy,” which appeared in two parts in the De-
cember 1912 and January 1913 issues of Crisis,is
set in Plainville, a central Pennsylvania town, and
in the city of PHILADELPHIA. It chronicles the ways
in which two young people, Emmy Carrel and
Archie Ferrers, her childhood sweetheart, grapple
with troubling lessons about race, racism, and
white privilege and their eventual honorable tri-
umph in the face of social and racial prejudice.
Fauset’s emphasis on the protagonists’ physical
beauty underscores her critique of shallow ideas
about racial exceptionalism. The story reflects
Fauset’s lifelong interest in the politics of romance,
the ways in which African-American domesticity is
beset by racial realities, and her efforts to explore
how facts and fictions about black identity con-
strain, influence, and emancipate whites and peo-
ple of color.
The story, which constitutes a male and fe-
male bildungsroman,first locates African-American
female experience of inter- and intraracial preju-
dice within the school and home. Emmy is the
daughter of an industrious and talented unmarried
mulatto woman and the granddaughter of a
woman enslaved in New Orleans and the white
man who helped her to escape to HAITI and
FRANCE. In Plainville, Pennsylvania, Emily is one
of two children of color; in a series of potentially
humiliating encounters, her teacher and white
schoolmates insist on her blackness and reveal
their unwavering belief in her inferiority. Emmy
grapples with the coded messages and confronta-
tions and, with Archie, her impoverished light-
skinned beau, wonders about the role of color and
the hurtful dimensions of exclusion.
Archie Ferrers learns his lessons about race in
a series of workplace encounters and in the urban
world of Philadelphia. He loses jobs because he de-
fends dark-skinned employees and receives several
cautions from white employers urging him to let
well enough alone. A well-meaning white patron
arranges a job for Ferrers at his family’s prestigious
engineering firm but urges Ferrers not to reveal his
racial identity. Eventually Ferrers is spotted in
town with Emmy, his fiancée, and he is tortured by
the prejudice that her presence elicits in social sit-
uations. The tension intensifies when Ferrers’s su-
pervisor, who finds favor with his employee and
wants to groom him for partnership in the firm, in-
correctly assumes that Emmy is Ferrers’s mistress
rather than his fiancée. Ferrers attempts to post-
pone his marriage in order to secure a major pro-
motion, but Emmy rejects his logic and his love.
The two are reunited after Ferrers is fired when he
reveals his love for Emmy and his true identity. Just
as they mourn the heartache brought on by what
Emmy refers to as “color,” a telegram arrives with
news of Ferrers’ reinstatement and a pending apol-
ogy from his employer.
Its tidy conclusion aside, “Emmy” is an absorb-
ing tale about socialization in early 20th-century
America and an earnest portrait of private strug-
gles against prejudice in the public sphere.Bibliography
McLendon, Jacquelyn Y. The Politics of Color in the Fic-
tion of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen.Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Sylvander, Carolyn Wedin. Jessie Redmon Fauset, Black
American Writer.Troy, N.Y.: Whitson Pub. Co.,
1981.
Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.Emperor Jones, TheEugene O’Neill(1921)
play
A play by EUGENEO’NEILL, originally entitled The
Silver Bullet, that in the 1920s became a signature
piece for actor, singer, and activist PAULROBESON.
The play was inspired by Haitian history and
chronicled the adventures of Brutus Jones, an es-
caped convict and former Pullman porter. With
help from a Cockney trader named Henry
Smithers, Jones uses trickery and plays on the su-
perstitions of West Indian island natives in order to
become ruler. Eventually this despot, who has
raided the island of its riches, attempts to leave.
However, he is overwhelmed by the supernatural
world and by haunting scenes of his African fam-
ily’s enslavement and is finally killed by the natives
whom he has oppressed.
The play was performed first in GREENWICH
VILLAGEat the Provincetown Playhouse and also
was staged at the LAFAYETTE THEATRE inEmperor Jones, The 141