South Atlantic Modern Language Association
Jessie Fauset: The Politics of Fulfillment vs. the Lost Generation
Author(s): Mary Jane Schenck
Source: South Atlantic Review, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Winter, 2001), pp. 102-125
Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association
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Jessie Fauset: The Politics of
Fulfillment vs. the Lost Generation
MARY JANE SCHENCK
Approximately 150,000 soldiers, officers and men went
to France to represent the colored race in America. Many
of them were brigaded with the French, while other thou-
sands had a contact and association with this people
which resulted in bringing for the entire number a
broader view of life; they caught the vision of a freedom that gave them new hope and a new inspiration.
-Addie W Hunton and Kathryn M. Johnson, Two
Colored Women with the American E.>peditionary Forces
To SAY THAT JESSIE FAUSET'S 1924 WORK THERE IS CONFIUSION HAS
historical significance is one of the more generous comments to
be made about this first novel of the Harlem Renaissance. Fauset,
who is credited with being midwife to the movement in her capacity as literary editor of Crisis magazine from 1919 through 1926,
has been neglected but deserves to be better known along with
her contemporaries Hurston, Toomer, and Hughes.
She was an amazingly distinguished black woman for her time-
Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell in 1905, MA in Romance Linguistics from Pennsylvania, student of the Sorbonne, French teacher,
close associate of W. E. B. Du Bois, and the most prolific female
writer of the Harlem Renaissance.' While successful by many standards, she was not one of the best fiction writers of her generation, and her four novels (There is Confusion, Plum Bun, The Chinaberry Tree, and Comedy American Style) have generally earned her a
reputation as a bourgeois apologist or rear-guard melodramatist.
Many critics place her fiction in the "best foot forward" school
(Davis, Redding, and Joyce), or more generously as an exemplar
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South Atlantic Review 103
of the novel of manners and genteel realism (Bell). Shortly after
the first novel was published, Braithwaite called Fauset the Jane
Austen of black letters, but some have been less kind (Bone). As
the feminist critic Cheryl Wall in Women of the Harlem Renaissance
points out, she was a major force in the literary circles of her day,
but is "now among the least respected" (36). In trying to reassess
her role in the Harlem Renaissance, Wall does not try to turn
Fauset's tin plate prose into feminist gold. Rather, she praises
Fauset's power as an essayist and her work as a literary mentor
(48).
Whatever its limitations, her first novel, There is Confusion, is
worthy of reconsideration, first because it is not mere bourgeois
ideology, and second because it has never been understood as an
example of black modernism. The deliberate choice Fauset made
to depict middle-class black Americans, principally ambitious
women, who strive to succeed and who dream of personal happiness through work and love, does not mean that she failed to depict the devastating impact of racism or the disillusionment more
characteristic of the great modernist writers. She was not a privi-
leged woman writing in defense of her class. As her biographer,
Carolyn Sylvander, points out, she was the daughter of a Methodist minister, and her step-brother commented in an interview, there
was never much money at home (25-26). We also know that Fauset
worked to support herself until she married at the very late age of
forty-seven. She may have had the advantage of being from a loving home, which embraced typical American middle class values,
but her writing was not born of smug complacency or classism.
A "quiet rebel" as Deborah McDowell calls her, Fauset cannot
be considered backward or faulted for failing to execute someone
else's political or stylistic agenda. She was not a muckraking realist, nor a modernist in form. Yet she does include a range of con-
troversial topics related to race and even sex discretely; and, as
McDowell thinks, uses the novel of manners as a "protective mim-
icry," an appropriate gesture where the influence of society on
character is explored (87). In his foreword to There is Confusion,
Thadious M. Davis admits that the novel is "not without formal
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104 Mary Jane Schenck
weaknesses" (x), yet he is able to admire her daring in depicting
black women as true feminists in their drive for education, work
outside the home (other than as domestic servants), and respectability. He can also see that for her female characters, marriage is
not the opposite of feminism but perhaps its culmination: "In
Fauset's view of matrimony, individual will, ambition, morality,
and work coalesce in sustaining, fortifying happiness and function
to unlock the future, a future that would successfully combat not
only racism but sexism as well" (xxii). While this may be romantic
idealism, it is also an early form of feminism, in that Fauset depicts women who freely choose their partners for marriages based
on collaboration.
It is obvious in reading Fauset's There is Confusion that she felt a
profound constraint that complicates the "double-consciousness"
W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about in The Souls of Black Folks. She is not
only black and American, but she also lives with the double bind
of being black and female. As a well-educated, refined woman,
she creates characters who are particularly careful to avoid the
negative stereotypes of black female sexuality, a stereotype that
was cultivated, not only by racists, but also, ironically, by those
very white people who embraced black culture for its purported
spontaneity and sexual liberation. They came to Harlem to enjoy
the jazz club life, mixed in literary salons with young writers, and
supported organizations such as the NAACP. Many combined
genuine patronage of black culture and political support with a
less admirable inclination to exploit young artists for personal,
private fantasies. For the latter, Zora Neale Hurston coined the
term "Negrotarians." Jessie Fauset did not care to cultivate them
or be used to satisfy their curiosity about "exotic" black life.
Langston Hughes commented that while Fauset often entertained
the left-wing writers of the black world, whites were not usually
invited to her literary salon, "unless they were very distinguished
white people, because Jessie Fauset did not feel like opening her
home to mere sightseers, or faddists, momentarily in love with
Negro life" (qtd. in Wall 64). Thus her sexual conservatism can be
read as a deliberate social act, not middle class prudery.
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South Atlantic Review 105
Most significantly, we have to recognize that middle class does
not connote bourgeois, if by that term we mean a failure to embrace a progressive political agenda. Specifically, in rereading There
is Confusion, we need to examine the historical events depicted at
the end of the novel when her characters experience The Great
War in France. In this particular section of the novel, themes of
racial conflict, love relationships, and an enlightenment ideology
come together in ways demonstrating Fauset's modernism, which
has never been acknowledged. Her vision, not unlike that of the
black soldiers referred to in the epigraph to this essay, embodies
an optimism that may have been taken by critics as sentimentality
but is better described as the politics of fulfillment, to borrow
Paul Gilroy's phrase from The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double
Consciousness. Her depiction of the impact of WWI on a female
nurse/aide and wounded soldier is as grounded in historical reality as Hemingway's war stories were, although her novel offers a
striking contrast to his cast of lost generation characters. Looking
at the war experience refracted through a black, female perspective, we see how she fashioned her own modernism based on those
experiences, on a realistic assessment of the false pretenses of
white American society, and on a commitment to the new Negro's
role in bringing about the fulfillment of fundamental enlighten-
ment ideals.
When she wrote There is Confusion, Fauset was quite consciously
trying to show white America that there were decent, ambitious,
and successful black people. She was upset by the publication of
Birthright (1922) by T. S. Stribling, a white southerner who depicted
black primitivism. Writing about her motivation, Fauset remarked
"'Let us who are better qualified to present that truth than any
white writer, try to do so"' (qtd. in Davis xxii). This was a gesture
that was to be repeated many years later by Chinua Achebe when
he wrote Things FallApartas a counter-statement to Heart of Dark-
ness. Just as Achebe told the story of his own people, Fauset se-
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106 Mary Jane Schenck
lected characters like herself, people whose lives were completely
invisible to white America then and, unfortunately, even today.
She is also, like Achebe, essentially a realist in presenting flawed
characters against a background of historically accurate circumstances. If there are traces of romanticism in both authors' portraits of people and society, they are found in Achebe's lament for
the past and in Fauset's visions of progress in the future.
We might wonder how Fauset could be part of the Harlem
Renaissance, the "Jazz Age," have traveled to Europe both before
and after the war, and yet have remained tied to the nineteenth
century in her literary style. Is this because, as Cheryl Wall has
said, "though she read the moderns, her heart belonged to the
Victorians" (66)? She is, in fact, Victorian in her view of the novel
as a vehicle for exploring the interaction of individuals and social
forces, but she does this without the lush detail of their realism.
Hers is a plain, American realism. She gives us realistic insights
into the lives of many black Americans who were seeking a place
in the early years of the twentieth century and responding to pro-
found changes in values in ways that white modernists would not
have understood. The title, There is Confusion, acknowledges that
her characters are conflicted about their identities and futures and
that race relations in America have created a costly psychic confu-
sion for all. As Du Bois said, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line" (23), and Fauset shared this
perspective.
Fauset took up this ultimately modern problem quite forthrightly by addressing the complex issue of identity. Her characters
are not spokespersons for bourgeois assimilation, but illustrations
of a particularly modern fusion or hybridity. Paul Gilroy, in his
work on black British writing and music, criticizes the trend in
cultural studies to assume rigid national and ethnic insularity and
describes hybridity as more than mere creolization. It is, he says, a
"position" difficult to occupy and even more difficult to find ap-
preciated. Identity politics has forced categorization and "overintegrated conceptions of culture which present immutable, eth-
nic differences as an absolute break in the histories and experi-
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South Atlantic Review 107
ences of 'black' and 'white' people" (2). This results in strict polarization of racial identities, "antithetical to the rhizomorphic,
fractal structure of the transcultural, international formation I call
the black atlantic" (4). The symbol of the black Atlantic is, of
course, the ship, both as a vehicle and a movement tying people
and ideas to several different continents. The fluidity of the image
is crucial and underscores the futility of reducing racial identities
to a set of simple oppositions. Fauset, too, uses the ship, headed
across the Atlantic toward France for the war, as the locus of a
crucial encounter between white and black characters who will
ultimately sort out their common family history.
One unfortunate result of ethnic polarization is the tendency
to assume that the dominant culture is cohesive and authentic.
Then one sees the "subaltern" as arriviste or merely imitative, if
similar values are embraced. What is admired in a white writer
may become suspect in a black one. For instance, while the idea
of "cultivating one's own garden" is considered brilliant in Voltaire's
Candide, the small-scale, domestic peace that Fauset's female char-
acters seek is dismissed or even characterized as sophomoric by
some critics (Bone 101). The reference in this context to Voltaire
is not idly chosen. The Encyclopidiste reflected more acutely than
anyone on the brutal irony of Enlightenment ideology which en-
visioned better human societies based on the supposedly "univer-
sal" nature of humankind and certain values-egalitarianism, private property, freedom-but which were, in fact, built on slave
labor, indentured servitude, and the suppression of indigenous
populations. Fauset, in a modest way, shows us that when the descendants of those laborers arrive a bit late at the table, their ap-
petite for what was promised must be appreciated as a genuine,
not sentimental, claim on the universality of those promises.
As we will see, There is Confusion is a good example of what
Gilroy calls "the politics of fulfillment," the black artist's desire
for a realization of promised Enlightenment goals. "The politics
of fulfillment practiced by the descendants of slaves
demands.., that bourgeois civil society live up to the promises
of its own rhetoric .... It is immanent within modernity and is no
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108 Mary Jane Schenck
less a valuable element of modernity's counter-discourse for being consistently ignored" (37). It is in this respect, not in respect
to form, that we can speak of the modernity of Jessie Fauset.
The novel focuses on the formative years of the children of
three different black families as these young people emerge into
adulthood and seek education, careers, and life partners. Joanna
Marshall, the central figure, is the daughter of a former slave who
has become rich through his catering business. She and her brother
Philip are filled with ambition, racial pride, and self-centeredness.
Peter Bye is the orphaned son of Meriwether Bye, a shiftless, bit-
ter man descended from the "black Byes" of Philadelphia. They
were once slaves to the white Byes, a Quaker family, whose fortune came from orchards planted by slave labor. Peter shares his
father's cynicism about whites and figures the world owes him a
living. He is a dilatory medical student and Joanna Marshall's devoted suitor, but he is not ambitious enough for her, and she breaks
their engagement. Maggie Ellersley, the third central character, is
the daughter of a poor, single mother. Although she has high
ambitions and a good head for business, she is preoccupied by
seeking a man to provide social status and economic stability.
Maggie and Philip Marshall are childhood sweethearts, untilJoanna,
thinking Maggie a social inferior, manages to sabotage their relationship.
Most of the novel focuses on Joanna's pursuit of a career as
singer and dancer, Peter's problems with school and love, and
Maggie's search for a husband. The scene suddenly shifts, however, from New York and Philadelphia to France for part of the
final portion. The war is first mentioned when Peter explains to
Maggie (to whom he has become engaged "on the rebound" from
the break with Joanna) that he will go back to medical school.
"There's only one thing that would keep me from finishing and
that would be war. It seems foolish for a colored man to fight for
America, but I believe I'd like to do it. Only I want to pick up a
commission somewhere. Not a chance for a colored fellow at
Plattsburg, but some of the boys are whispering of a training camp
for Negro officers at Des Moines. This is still sub rosa, so don't
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South Atlantic Review 109
mention it"' (207).2 He also mentions his plan to his aunt and,
with his typical bitterness, states that America makes him sick, but
it is his country after all, so he might as well fight. Fauset clearly
wants to inform the reader that even if this character is not particularly patriotic, black men have a long history of service to the
country, for she adds that Peter's Aunt Susan, "beamed on him.
'Your great-grandfather served in the Revolution, Peter, and two
of your uncles, my brothers, were in the Civil War. If you enlist,
you'll only be following their example"' (208).
A few chapters later Peter's story is taken up again, and we see
him on a ship headed for Brest. His motivation for signing up is to
escape from Maggie, more than to distinguish himself in service
to the country. The change in scene is abrupt and contributes to
the sense that the war episode is used to bring the racial theme
and the love stories together artificially. Peter just happens to be
on the same Army ship as the young Meriwether Bye, whom he
has never before met. This white man is the grandson and namesake of Meriwether Bye, the childhood friend of Isaiah Bye, Peter's
grandfather. Meriwether not only resembles Peter but has also
chosen medicine as his profession. When he learns of Peter's identity, he pours out his guilty conscience about his slave-owning family
and suggests that this history is part of his despair and fatalistic
attitude about not returning from the war. Peter is deeply impressed
by Meriwether's genuine remorse, and he is able for the first time
to overcome his frank dislike of whites.
When Peter makes it to the front near Metz, the scene is pure
battlefield romanticism, but the realities of racial hatred intrude
as well. In the dark, Peter sees two figures in the distance, and
then, a flare illuminates a German soldier and Meriwether locked
in combat. Peter kills the German but not in time to prevent the
German from throwing a grenade, which mortally wounds
Meriwether and hurts Peter. The melodramatic scene of Peter trying to drag him back behind the lines and exchanging final words
of friendship is brought down to an ugly realism by the words of
a medic who arrives to find Peter unconscious, slumped over
Meriwether. '"Cripes!' [he] said, 'I've seen many a sight in this war,
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110 Mary Jane Schenck
but none ever give me the turn I got seein' that smoke's hair dabblin'
in the other fellow's blood"' (252). This sudden shift of perspective is one of Fauset's more effective moments.
The tender scene of reconciliation between black and white as
well as their physical resemblance foreshadows the information
that Peter will get after the war. Meriwether's grandfather, old Dr.
Bye, comes to visit him in New York and tells him they are blood
relatives because Peter's great grandfather "blackJoshua Bye" was
his half-brother (Dr. Bye's father, Aaron fathered Joshua with one
of his slaves, Judy). Most of the genealogy of the two families,
minus this important detail, is related at the beginning of the novel
and the reader guesses that racial mixing is a crucial part of the
confusion Fauset's characters feel.
For the world of the novel, the war is a time of reconciliation,
resolution of racial tension, and happy endings in love because
Maggie goes to France to care for black troops and meets both
Peter and Philip. They are able to sort out their confused relationships and, although Philip is dying from having been gassed at the
front, he wants to marry Maggie. When they get back to New
York, she nurses him through his final days.
It is strange for a novel weak in specifics of setting that these
chapters on the war are rather precise about details in France. The
plot is no less contrived, but the references to places and events
are historically accurate and intriguing. They are not, however,
Fauset's first-hand experiences. She was not in France during the
war and biographies do not mention that she ever traveled to the
locations---Brest, Lathus, the training center at La Courtine, the
front at Metz and the rest camps at Chamb~ry in the Alps-which
are settings for the novel. There are many possible sources, of
course, for stories about the war, such as reports in the black press
which Fauset surely would have read, articles published in Crisis
which she may have edited, and conversations with W. E. B. Du
Bois.3
While these sources may have given Fauset general information about the black troops, they are unlikely sources for the brief,
but important role of Maggie in this episode. The idea that a black
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South Atlantic Review 111
woman like Maggie, without advanced planning, would suddenly
ship out for France in 1918 to attend black troops may strike the
reader as completely fanciful. Indeed, in the novel it seems unrealistic because Fauset doesn't present much motivation for Maggie's
decision. There is, however, historical reality behind the events
Fauset retells and the emotions they elicited. Her source of information about women's involvement overseas may have been a slim
memoir published in 1920, by Addie Hunton and KathrynJohnson
entitled Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces. It
describes their work with the YMCA in canteens and at leave ar-
eas for black soldiers in the very locations where Maggie finds
herself. Even the suddenness of Maggie's departure is paralleled
in Hunton's work.4
Addie Hunton, a black American working in New York for the
YWCA, describes her own hasty departure for France. She and
her companion Kathryn Johnson were among the first black
American women sent by the YMCA to the war zone to offer
social services to black soldiers. In the initial pages of her history,
she relates getting the assignment and their unquestioning accep-
tance of this potentially perilous mission. Since Americans had
entered the war very late and any consideration for the black sol-
diers came even later, there was a real sense of urgency. Amid
great secrecy they shipped out a few days after getting the call
(Hunton 9-10).
The story Hunton tells of the troops, the conditions they lived
in, the incidents of racial prejudice and occasional violence at the
hands of white Americans, the good rapport with the French, and
especially the women's work in the canteens make fascinating read-
ing. Hunton and Johnson were in France fifteen months from
spring 1918 to late summer 1919, and for almost a year, they and
another woman were the only black females there. They worked
in separate camps setting up and running Y "huts" for stevedores,
engineers, and infantry soldiers at locations such as Brest, St.
Nazaire, and Romagne near Verdun. The poignancy of their tale,
the references to how grateful the troops were for hot chocolate
and lemonade, movies, or help with writing letters home and sew-
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112 Mary Jane Schenck
ing stripes on their uniforms is all the more powerful when we
consider these were segregated facilities and there were only three
women, but some 200,000 black troops (Hunton 136). Her firsthand experiences uniformly impress her with the courage and hard
work of the men, their respect for the women, and their pleasure
at being treated with dignity by the French.
That the black "Y" workers were undoubtedly the inspiration
for Fauset is clear when we look at the brief prelude to Maggie's
departure for France. In the course of a conversation with an old
friend who is a minister, Maggie pours out her heart about the
problems of her tortured love life and expresses her desire to escape it all. The minister suggests a way.
The Young Men's Christian Association had decided to
send a few colored women workers among the colored
men at the front. Two had already gone, but more were
needed. If he could get the position for Maggie, it would
prove just the change she needed. Did she think she
could go? (There is Confusion 258)
Two paragraphs later she is described as arriving at Brest, and
"from Brest she went to Paris, where she was summoned to
Chamb&ry to help Mrs. Terry, the colored worker in charge of the
leave-center in the Savoyard capitol" (259). This Mrs. Terry is not
developed as a character but does have an historical counterpart,
as does Maggie's itinerary. In spring 1919 after a nearly a year of
working alone, according to Mrs. Hunton, sixteen more black "Y"
women arrived in France, and they assisted in the existing camps
and also with the new "Leave Areas" in the Alps opened for black
troops in February 1919. While Mrs. Hunton was in charge at
Challes-les-eaux, the one at Chambtry was run by a Mrs. Curtis
(Hunton 162), who could be the model for Mrs. Terry in Fauset's
novel.
From the description of the muddy fields around Brest to passages about the racism of the white American soldiers, and from
depictions of handing out hot chocolate to touring historic attrac-
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South Atlantic Review 113
tions around Chamb~ry, Fauset could have gotten the selected
details for her novel from Two Colored Woimen with the American
Expeditionary Forces. Based on this work, we can figure out, for
example, that Peter Marshall was part of the 367th Infantry of
the 92nd Division because their officers came from the Des Moines
officer's training camp, the soldiers were mainly from New York,
and they went through Camp Upton before shipping out, the very
locations that Fauset mentions without precisely identifying his
unit. After they arrive at Brest, the troops are sent on to Lathus
for a training camp, La Courtine, which is apparently for black
and white troops because Peter runs into Meriwether there, and
he also meets an old friend, Harley Alexander, who proposes that
they take some French girls to a concert that night on the square.
As Harley says,
"These girls are all right. Not afraid of a dark skin. 'How
should we have fear, m'soo,' one of them says to me,
'when you fight for ourpatrie and when you are so beau?'
'Beau' that's handsome, ain't it? Say this is some country
to fight for; got some sense of appreciation." (249)
Unfortunately the concert never takes place because some white
Southerners come along and attack the black soldiers when they
see them with the French girls. The French stand back in amaze-
ment and watch the fight and remark "'Nom de dieu! Are they
crazy, then, these Americans that they kill each other!"' (250).
Hunton recounts many incidents of violent conflict between
white and black Americans, and other incidents between Americans and French when the white Americans were accused of attacking black French soldiers. In her chapter devoted to "Relationships with the French" the tale is told of a riot in St. Nazaire
in April of 1919:
It grew out of the fact that a white French woman and
a colored Frenchman entered a restaurant frequented
by American officers, in order that they might enjoy
their lunch together. An insinuating remark concerning
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114 Mary Jane Schenck
the woman was overheard by her brother, who understood English, and immediately resented it. The restaurant was demolished in a free-for-all fight, which grew
in proportions until the French people mounted a machine gun in the middle of the public square, to restore
order. (Hunton 191)
The indignities perpetrated by the American military command
are now legendary. There was an organized campaign to disseminate false information about the black troops (Franklin and Moss
336), and American commanders warned the French not to treat
the African Americans too well or they would expect the same at
home (Fabre 49). Black troops constituted one third of the total
strength in American support troops, and numerous black regiments and battalions of combat soldiers were among the most
highly decorated, principally by the French.5 Yet, the American
commanders did not allow them, according to Hunton, to march
in the Armistice Day parade in Paris.
The climate of racial intolerance on the part of white Americans is portrayed in There is Confusion in several scenes and in com-
ments about the new leave areas that were segregated.
For a time the Negro soldiers had been permitted to go
over to Aix-les-Bains once a week, to reap the benefit
of the baths, but a white American woman seeing in
this an approach to "social equality," contrived to start
a protest which resulted in a withdrawal of this permis-
sion and the black men were confined strictly to
Chamb&ry. (258)
The final war scenes of the novel take place in Chambery, a city
in the French Alpes which, as Fauset tells us, "Up to a few years
ago... was celebrated chiefly because it was the location of the
chateau of the old dukes of Savoy and the birthplace of JeanJacques Rousseau. Now it is known to thousands and thousands
of Americans because during the great War it was metamorphosed
into a rest center for colored soldiers" (254). It is interesting to
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South Atlantic Review 115
note that Hunton's first description of Chambery points out the
very landmarks used in Fauset's novel:
Chambiry is hardly less interesting than Aix-les-Bains.
Surrounded by mountains, with the cross on Nivolet
dominating all the rest, with its quaint stores, streets and
houses, it is indeed picturesque. One follows the rue de
Boigne with its old arcades and beautiful stores from the
Fontaine des Elephants up to the Chateau des Ducs de
Savoie... The finest part of this chateau is its chapel
with its Gothic architecture, ancient windows and fine
paintings. Just across the street from this chateau was the
"Y," a charming building, beautifully furnished and always lively with music and good cheer.... A word about
the Fountain des Elephants because for the Americans it
was the center of town .... One would usually say, "Meet
me at the Elephants." (Hunton 166-67)
In the novel, Maggie draws inspiration from the Cross on Mont
Nivolet, she meets Philip at the Statue des Elkphants, and during
a tour through the chapel of the Ducs de Savoy they reveal their
love for each other. As this scene ends, the cross is again referred
to as a symbol of their faith and newfound hope.
There is much that is artificial in the novel beginning with a
battle scene reunion between black and white cousins who had
never before met. It is unrealistic to have Maggie Ellersley, who
was not involved in "war-work" suddenly leave for France where
she just happens to meet both Peter and Philip. The romantic
encounter between Maggie and Philip in the chapel, and the benevolence of nature and Christian symbols around them are sentimental. But it is not unrealistic, romantic, or melodramatic for
Fauset to convey the great ironies of the black experience in this
war.
In the novel, Fauset gives us Maggie's reactions without conveying her day-to-day activities that may have motivated the feel-
ings, so a passage such as the following may seem melodramatic:
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116 Mary Jane Schenck
The need of the men overwhelmed and staggered her.
They were pathetically proud of her--and Mrs. Terry,
too,-glad to be allowed a sight of her bright face, to
exchange a word. To be permitted to dance with her
sent any one of them into a delirium of ecstatic pride.
They were brave fellows, conducting themselves as be-
came soldiers, persistently cheerful in the face of the
hateful prejudice that followed and flayed them in the
very act of laying down their lives for their country.
(258)
Nevertheless, the sentiments could be picked up from any num-
ber of passages in Hunton's work where the emotions are very
authentic. Mrs. Hunton recounts, for example, how much the black
men loved having the "Y" workers help them, how they talked of
their women back home, how they adored seeing pictures in news-
reels of black women, and how "Sometimes they shed tears at
their first sight of a colored woman in France" (Hunton 157).
The experience in France left Hunton with a new perspective on
"the boys" which is also a crucial aspect of what happens in the
novel where these reactions are "told" more than "shown."
Hunton, on the other hand, is credible and touching when she
relates the emotional reaction to the events she has witnessed:
... we learned to know our own men as we had not
known them before, and this knowledge makes large
our faith in them. ... We learned somewhat of their
matchless power of endurance and of their grim determination to be steady and strong to the end in spite of
all odds. We came to know also that what is often taken
to be ignorance, was a deep and far-thinking silence....
We learned to know that there was being developed
in France a racial consciousness and racial strength that
could not have been gained in a half century of normal
living in America. Over the canteen in France we learned
to know that our young manhood was the natural and
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South Atlantic Review 117
rightful guardian of our struggling race. Learning all
this and more, we also learned to love our men better
than ever before. (155-57)
The ultimate lesson of the war for Maggie as she watches the
wounded soldiers is a lesson for all as they return to the States and
even for those who, like Joanna, stayed home. Life is worth living,
commitment to others is possible, and family is more valuable
than career ambitions. These are not bourgeois or unworthy val-
ues, especially for black Americans who could have made excuses
for revolt or cynicism. For Maggie, the experience in Chambiry
teaches her that racial persecution cannot be wished away, nor
used as a rationale for despair.
The determinedly cheerful though somewhat cynical
attitude of "the boys" in such conditions seemed to
her the most wonderful thing she had ever witnessed.
It was as though they said to hostile forces: "Oh, yes,
we know you'll do for us in every possible way, slight
us, cheat us, betray us, but you can't kill the real life
within us, the essential us. You may make us distrustful,
incredulous, disillusioned, but you can't make us despair
or corrode us with bitterness. Call us children if you
like, but in spite of everything, life is worth living, and
we mean to live it to the full." (259-60)
When the war is over, the black troops come back and Harlem
becomes home to everybody. As Fauset says, "There were all sorts
and conditions of black men, Harvard graduates and Alabama
farmhands. These last had seen Paris before they had seen New
York and they blessed the War which had given them a chance to
see the great capital" (269). Here, in a way, is the essence of what
the Great War meant--a chance for thousands of African Ameri-
cans to see a world that was truly different, to experience some
social freedoms which underscored that racism is a social construct, not a natural condition. If they could date French women
or eat in cafrs without being harassed, then there were certainly
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118 Mary Jane Schenck
possibilities for new social conditions at home. Granted, some
realized that America would be slow to change. Therefore they
decided to become ex-patriots like Peter's friend Harley, who stays
in France as a musician. Nevertheless, most went to Harlem or
other northern cities, not wanting to return to rural homes. In
part, this group of soldiers returning with rising expectations is
responsible for and participated in the great flowering of black
arts and entertainment known as the Harlem Renaissance.
When we read of these soldiers and their loves, the ex-patriots
choosing to live in France, and the evocation of the Paris jazz
scene, we cannot help but think of Hemingway's depiction of the
wounded heroes Frederick Henry of Farewell to Arms and Jake
Barnes of The Sun Also Rises, characters who illustrate the gulf
that separated the white and black experience of that war. Given
Fauset's love of French culture, her travels to Paris, and the fact
that she wrote about the war, we might wonder whether there was
any communication between Fauset and the ex-patriots, especially
Hemingway. Would he not have heard of her, given that she was a
prolific female writer of the Harlem Renaissance and that they
shared a publisher? Boni and Liveright, Hemingway's and Sherwood
Anderson's publisher, brought out There is Confusion just two years
before The Sun Also Rises. Fauset had studied in Paris before the
war and was there again several times, starting in 1919, then again
in 1924 at the same time Hemingway was. But there is no mention
of her or any other Harlem Renaissance writer in either A Move-
able Feast or the letters exchanged between Hemingway and
Fitzgerald which chronicle many of the connections between writ-
ers in America and on the continent during the 1920s. Of the
Harlem Renaissance writers, only Claude McKay seems to have
interacted with any of the white ex-patriots. He met Stein, whom
he called "la vache sacre," but not Hemingway (Fabre 105). There
is nothing to suggest that Fauset was interested in Hemingway,
although she did have some brief correspondence with Sherwood
Anderson (Sylvander 64). The distance between Hemingway and
Fauset, their invisibility to each other, is symptomatic of black
and white experiences during and immediately after WWI.
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South Atlantic Review 119
For the great modernist writers and intellectuals, the war resulted in a loss of faith in institutions and ideologies that had fu-
eled dreams of social progress. It was a war that illustrated the
bankruptcy of European civilization, that "old bitch gone in the
teeth" as Ezra Pound called it. So the term "the lost generation"
has generally been accepted as an appropriate label for the young
men adrift in the aftermath of the war. But it was not as apt for
the black experience, and we can see how blind Hemingway was
to the difference when we consider the origin and context for this
phrase. We know fromA Moveable Feastthat Hemingway took "You
are all a lost generation" from Gertrude Stein and used it as one
epigraph to balance a passage from Ecclesiastes which provides
the other epigraph and title for The Sun Also Rises. Stein's comment suggests despair; the Old Testament quote implies hope that
"one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh,
but the earth abideth forever... The sun also ariseth, and the sun
goeth down."
There are at least three versions of the origin of "the lost generation" phrase. Gertrude Stein, inEverybodyj'sAutobiography, says a
hotel keeper remarked that all the men who went to war at eigh-
teen missed a crucial period of civilizing and were thus a "lost
generation" (52). In an unpublished preface to his manuscript of
what became The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway recounted a slightly
different, less cynical version than he does in A Moveable Feast
(Mellow, Charmed Circle 273). Whatever the truth is, the latter ver-
sion is more interesting to us here because of how it leads
Hemingway to reveal himself. He says that in response to Stein's
complaints about her poorly repaired Model T, the boss of the
young mechanic purportedly said to the boy, you are all aginiration
perdue. Stein then said to Hemingway, "That is what you all are ...
All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost
generation .... You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death" to which Hemingway slyly replied, "was the young
mechanic drunk?... and have you ever seen me drunk?" (Moveable 29).
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120 Mary Jane Schenck
As he reflects on this conversation some forty-two years later
for A Moveable Feast, Hemingway recalls his indignation at Stein's
remark. He says he wondered about the boy and whether he had
ever been hauled down a hill in an ambulance so old that it had to
be jammed into reverse when its brakes gave out. And then he
says, "I thought of Miss Stein and Sherwood Anderson and egoism and mental laziness versus discipline and I thought who is
calling who a lost generation?" (Moveable 30) After his conversation with Stein, he goes to the Closerie des Lilas and stares at the
statue of Marshal Ney whose strategies at Waterloo resulted in
disaster, and then reflects on each generation being lost by something. As he thinks about Ney's later heroism in fighting a rearguard effort during the retreat from Moscow, Hemingway rejects
the effetism and trite sloganeering of Stein, and those who have
not suffered in war.
Nevertheless, two years after this remembered event, he considered entitling his new novel The Lost Generation (later using the
phrase from Ecclesiastes instead), for he must have considered
the appropriateness of the description for characters who capture
the post-war generation and its walking wounded. His ironic view
of his characters, not yet anti-heroes but with limited prospects
for heroism, is reflected in the use of an epithet for them that he
once rejected as "rot." Certainly, a further irony is that Stein's pes-
simistic phrase dominates our collective attitude toward this period, rather than the glimpse of transcendence found in the quote
from Ecclesiastes.
Ironically, this passage inA Moveable Feast also links Hemingway's
post-war experiences and the Harlem Renaissance in an oblique
way. Immediately following the explanation of the famous phrase,
Hemingway goes on to make very acerbic comments about
Sherwood Anderson. "When he wrote a novel finally called Dark
Laughter, so terribly bad, silly and affected that I could not keep
from criticizing it in a parody, Miss Stein was very angry" (Moveable 28). Hemingway is referring to his own Torrents of Spring, subtitled A Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race, about
which he is not completely forthright. He wrote it not just to parody
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South Atlantic Review 121
Anderson, but in a calculated move to write something so horrible that he would be able to get out of his contract with Boni
and Liveright. 6 All this may belong in the dustbin of literary his-
tory, except that Dark Laughterwas Anderson's flirtation with the
primitivism cultivated by white writers and patrons of the arts like
Carl Van Vechten and Eugene O'Neill. Primitivism can be seen as
a white counterpart to the new Negro movement, and it represents the sort of stereotyping Fauset abhorred.
But for Hemingway, it is just a joke. There is no reference to the
racial issues Anderson may have been trying to present; Dark Laughter is mentioned only in a self-serving comment on Hemingway's
part about his cleverness in writing a good, or bad enough, satire.
Hemingway shows no awareness of black writers, and for someone who cared so much about the impact of the Great War on the
young men of his time, he was strangely silent on what it may
have meant for the thousands of black men who also fought for
European civilization.
If he had read There is Confusion, he would have seen how Fauset
depicted the impact of the Great War and her version of "grace
under pressure." It certainly reflects the transcendence of
Ecclesiastes, not the lost generation. We see several black, middle
class, ambitious versions of Catherine Barkley who are are not
only central characters but who also do not die at the end. That
war and love figure differently in Hemingway's and Fauset's nov-
els is not merely a gendered difference; it is a clear example of
Fauset's counter-discourse of modernity.
Understanding her source material in Hunton's memoir clarifies that, while she may not be a great novelist, Fauset nonetheless
conveys authentic war experiences as well as genuine, not sentimentalized, hope for the future. The modernism of Jessie Fauset
is in having captured a "politics of fulfillment" which depends
upon the new black male, who emerged from the Great War with
his dignity intact and his horizons enlarged. Although the novel is
by a woman about strong female characters, the final word is given
to Peter. In the last scene, Peter rejects old Dr. Bye's offer of
financial help and informs Joanna that he is capable of pursuing
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122 Mary Jane Schenck
his dreams and eager to provide for his family. He is in many
respects the "new Negro" celebrated by the Harlem Renaissance.
Maggie's feelings of tenderness for and pride in the soldiers in
France are justified by Philip's courage in the face of death and
Peter's transformation. The fact that the couples marry for love
suggests relationships of equality; and the family is "fulfilled" by
the birth of the child. The characters find commitment to love an
emotional bulwark against the pain of racism and war.
It is in presenting those historical circumstances that Fauset
strikes the truest notes of her work. The war is not the "end" of
civilization, as the moderns thought, but a beginning of many
things for black Americans-a vehicle for seeing racism in a new
light, social and geographic mobility, even career advancement.
As Hunton says of the returning black soldiers,
Some of them received the rudiments of an education
through direct instruction.., while many hundreds had
the opportunity of traveling through the flowering fields
of a country long famed for its love of the beautiful,
and seeing its wonderful monuments, cathedrals, art gal-
leries, palaces, chateaux, etc., that represent the highest
attainment in the world of architecture and art. They
looked upon the relics left by a people long gone...
from the port cities to the front line trenches, or to the
towering Alps, or through the farms and villages of a
quaint and thrifty people. And while they traveled they
learned that there is a fair-skinned people in the world
who believe in the equality of races, and who practice
what they believe. (254)
As this passage makes clear, the exposure to the French inspired blacks, and they came home to seek freedom, the pursuit
of happiness, careers, and families. They did not embrace the
modernist disaffection with civilization in general or Europe in
particular. When Peter gets home, he is said to be "raving about
France, but silent as a tomb about the War. He says the colored
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South Atlantic Review 123
soldiers were all sold-fighting for freedom was a farce so far as
they were concerned. But France is all right as long as the white
Americans don't get in too much propaganda" (272-73). The disaffection is not with modern culture, but a very localized political
situation in the United States. The war was an experience linking
them to the passage from Ecclesiastes Hemingway used as the
epigraph for The Sun Also Rises. The black soldiers and black women
"Y" workers understood that life would go on; the sheer fact of
survival and possibilities for new generations is cause for hope.
In a moving scene, Hunton describes the final indignity of the
war-the assignment of black troops to rebury the dead hastily
buried on the battlefields. She describes the soldiers working
throughout the night, and moving across the Flanders fields car-
rying white crosses to mark the graves of fallen soldiers. They
were not doing this work voluntarily, but because they had yet
again been ordered to do the dirty work. But her response shows
the paradox of belief-how this grizzly assignment becomes the
occasion of transcendence because it is a sacred task given to them.
In their humble roles as sextons to the war dead, they were especially marked to uphold the dignity of human life, which is surely
the essence of Enlightenment ideals. Fauset, in her novel, has characters, like the real soldiers, who exemplify the same dignity. That
such idealism is achieved only through art is central to modernism. That it can be attained by black Americans in Ife as well as art
through the politics of fulfillment is central to Jessie Fauset's
modernism.
University of Tampa
NOTES
SShe published several different genres: news reports, essays, reviews, short stories, translations, and four novels between 1924 and 1934.
2All quotations from Fauset are taken from There is Confusion.
SHe had accompanied Robert Moton, President of Tuskegee, to France on a mission ordered by the Secretary of War to investigate allegations of misconduct by black
troops. They found that instead of twenty-six alleged cases of rape or other misconduct, only seven actual cases were filed, only two of those resulted in a conviction, one
of which was later overturned. This was covering a period of several months for a
regiment of 1200 men (Franklin and Moss 338).
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124 Mary Jane Schenck
The work is published under both Hunton's and Johnson's names, but it seems
clear from the context that the story is Mrs. Hunton's. It will be referred to as Hunton.
The 369th Infantry, called the "Hell Fighters" by the Germans, was decorated as
a regiment and many individual soldiers were decorated with the Croix de Guerre and
the Legion of Honor" (Franklin and Moss 331). Hunton also relates the numerous
decorations given to black troops by the French.
6James Mellow's opinion in Hemingway:A Ife Without Consequence. Matthew Bruccoli
in FitZggerald and Hemingway says the inference is possible but doesn't think that
Hemingway colluded with Fitzgerald to this end, although the latter was trying to get
Hemingway signed with Scribner's. It is clear he wrote it in a very short period and
wasn't serious about selling it.
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