Daniel: Alright Sophia, I'm putting you on the spot. You just finished Jessie Redmon Fauset's There Is Confusion. Give me your five-word review. Sophia: Okay, pressure's on. I've got: 'Jane Austen meets Harlem Renaissance.' Daniel: Ooh, I like that. That’s very good. Mine is: 'Ambition, love, race, class, confusion.' Sophia: Exactly! It's this incredible novel of manners, full of social climbing and romantic entanglements, but with stakes that are a thousand times higher because of the racial and social realities of 1920s America. And the author, Jessie Redmon Fauset, is a story in herself. Daniel: Absolutely. Today we're diving into her 1924 novel, There Is Confusion. And you're right, Fauset is fascinating. She was the literary editor for W.E.B. Du Bois's magazine, The Crisis, which was the official publication of the NAACP. Langston Hughes himself called her one of the 'midwives' of the Harlem Renaissance, someone who discovered and nurtured the movement's greatest talents. Sophia: That’s incredible. So she was a major power player, a real gatekeeper of the culture. Daniel: A huge one. Yet, for decades, her own work was largely overlooked and fell out of print. This novel, which was critically acclaimed when it came out, is considered a rediscovered classic. Sophia: Which makes reading it feel like uncovering a hidden treasure. It’s all about that first generation of Black Americans born free, trying to figure out what 'liberty' even means when society is still stacked against you. And Fauset argues that journey starts with family legacy, with what you inherit.

Daniel: Exactly. The book opens by drawing this incredible contrast between two family legacies that are on a collision course. First, you have the protagonist, Joanna Marshall, and her family. Her father, Joel, was born enslaved in Virginia. Sophia: But he’s the definition of resilience. He gets to New York, works his way up, and builds a hugely successful catering business. He completely embodies that post-slavery hustle, turning tragedy into triumph. Daniel: He does. But in the process, he has to sacrifice his own deeply held dream of becoming a great public leader, a minister with a 'healing tongue.' So he channels all of that unfulfilled ambition, that yearning for greatness, directly into his youngest daughter, Joanna. Sophia: And he creates this bubble for her, right? He fills her world with stories of Black heroes—Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman—and instills this belief that, as he says, 'colored people can do everything that anybody else can do.' Daniel: He creates an atmosphere of immense possibility for her. Her ambition becomes an obsession. But then Fauset gives us the perfect, tragic flip side with the other main character, Peter Bye. Sophia: Okay, this family tree was a lot to unpack, but it’s so essential to the story. Walk me through the Byes again, because it's so complicated and so telling. Daniel: It is. It’s a masterclass in showing how history lives in the present. You have the white Quaker Byes, who were the wealthy slave owners in Philadelphia, and the Black Byes, who were their slaves. After emancipation, Peter's great-grandfather, Joshua, stays loyal to the family, continuing to work the land for his former masters. He becomes the quintessential 'good servant.' Sophia: He accepts his place in the hierarchy. But his son, Isaiah—Peter's grandfather—is a different story. Daniel: Completely. There's this brutal, pivotal scene when Isaiah is just a boy. The white heir, a kid named Meriwether Bye, tells him that because his father was a servant, his destiny is to be a 'good servant' too. He even offers him a job as his future coachman. Sophia: That's just devastating. To have your entire future defined for you like that, based on your ancestry. Daniel: And Isaiah’s response is the spark of a new legacy. He looks at this white boy and says, 'You'll never... you’ll never be able to say that about me.' He rejects servitude, dedicates himself to education, and becomes a respected teacher and leader in the Black community of Philadelphia. He builds wealth and a legacy of pride. Sophia: So he breaks the cycle. But then… it breaks again. Daniel: It breaks again, in the other direction. Isaiah’s son—who he ironically names Meriwether, after the white boy who insulted him—is Peter's father. And he is a tragedy. He inherits all of his father's pride but none of his work ethic. He squanders the family fortune, becomes a shiftless train porter, and descends into bitterness and alcoholism. Sophia: And he passes that bitterness down to his son, Peter. Daniel: He drills it into him. He teaches Peter one core philosophy, the complete opposite of what Joanna's father taught her. He says, 'The world owes you a living, let it come to you, don’t bother going after it.' Sophia: Wow. So Joanna inherits this legacy of 'you can do anything,' and Peter inherits a legacy of 'it's pointless to even try.' They are set on a collision course from the moment they're born. And that collision is where the 'confusion' of the title really kicks in.

Daniel: Precisely. Their entire relationship, the central romance of the book, is defined by this fundamental clash of worldviews. Joanna is obsessed with ambition and success. When she first meets Peter in a schoolroom, she's initially drawn to his beauty, but her immediate, cutting assessment is, 'he doesn’t care; he just doesn’t want to be anybody.' She dismisses him out of hand. Sophia: But he's so inspired by her! Her drive, her purposefulness, is the catalyst for him. It's after he impresses her with his unexpected knowledge of physiology that he spontaneously declares he wants to become a surgeon. She literally gives him an ambition. Daniel: She does, but it’s an ambition on her terms. She's constantly pushing him, trying to mold him into her version of a successful man. It's a love story, but it's also a constant, exhausting power struggle. She loves him, but she loves her idea of what he could be even more. Sophia: And that's where the novel gets so sharp in its social critique, because Joanna's ambition isn't just about her career. It's about class. This is where the character of Maggie Ellersley becomes so important. Daniel: Yes. If Joanna represents pure, unadulterated ambition, Maggie represents the desperate, pragmatic pursuit of social status. Sophia: Maggie's story is just heartbreaking. She comes from abject poverty and sees marriage as her only escape hatch. She's smart and resourceful, but her entire life is a calculated climb. She first sets her sights on Joanna's brother, Philip, because he has 'background,' he's a Marshall. Daniel: And Joanna’s reaction is pure, unvarnished classism. She's horrified. She tells a friend that Philip is destined to be 'somebody great, wonderful, a Garibaldi, a Toussaint!' But Maggie? Maggie is 'just nobody.' And she sneers at her profession, hairdressing, calling it a pursuit of 'lowly aims.' Sophia: It’s so shocking to see that kind of snobbery coming from our protagonist. It really complicates her character. The novel received some criticism for its pacing and character development, and I can see why. Joanna can be hard to root for. Daniel: It’s true, but it’s also what makes the book so realistic. Fauset is showing that the Black community wasn't a monolith. There were intense class divisions. And Joanna weaponizes them. She writes this incredibly cruel letter to Maggie, a letter that basically says, 'You're not good enough for my brother.' Sophia: And the line that just kills you is when Joanna reveals what Philip said about Maggie. He told his sisters that Maggie 'can do things that my sisters mustn't do.' Daniel: It's a devastating one-two punch. A dismissal based on class from Joanna, and a dismissal based on a gendered double standard from Philip. It implies Maggie is from a world where she's expected to be less 'respectable.' Sophia: And that letter is the direct cause of the book's first great tragedy. Maggie, completely broken and believing all her hopes are dashed, impulsively accepts a marriage proposal from a mysterious, wealthy older man who has been pursuing her—a gambler named Henderson Neal. Daniel: It's a decision born of pure despair. She's trading love for security. Sophia: And the book gives us this chilling line as she leaves New York with him. It says she left 'weeping, to return to it one day dry-eyed but with a bitterness that was worse than tears.' It’s such a powerful foreshadowing of the cost of these desperate choices. The confusion is leading to real destruction.

Daniel: That bitterness and confusion forces all the main characters to hit rock bottom. And Fauset argues that it's only from that place of failure that they can begin to find a new, more authentic purpose. Peter's journey is especially powerful. Sophia: Right, he's been drifting, making money as a musician, a path Joanna despises. He’s given up on medicine. But then he has this humiliating encounter with a wealthy white woman, Mrs. Lea. Daniel: It's one of the most searing scenes in the book. Mrs. Lea recognizes his last name, Bye, and connects him to his family's history of being enslaved by her family's ancestors. And she says to him, with this casual cruelty, 'It’s so in keeping with things that the grandson of the man who was slave to his grandfather should be his entertainer to-night.' Sophia: It’s so vile. She's basically telling him that his role in life is to be a servant, just like his ancestors. It’s the same insult his grandfather Isaiah faced, but a generation later. Daniel: Exactly. And it's the slap in the face he needs. It forces him to confront his own choices. He realizes he's been living down to her expectation. In that moment, he reclaims his grandfather Isaiah's legacy of defiance. He quits music on the spot and rededicates himself to becoming a surgeon. Sophia: He's no longer doing it just to please Joanna. He's doing it for himself, for his ancestors. He's finding his own 'pattern.' Daniel: And Joanna has her own awakening. After all her relentless ambition, she achieves massive success. She becomes a sensation on Broadway. But she's miserable. She's surrounded by adoring fans and intellectuals, but she feels a profound ennui, a total emptiness. Sophia: She realizes fame isn't the same as fulfillment. I love the scene where she's driving home with her father after a show and she just asks him, 'Is this your idea of real greatness?' Daniel: And he admits he had hoped for something different for her. It's this quiet, powerful moment where she realizes her ambition was a bit hollow. She starts searching for a 'worthy visible end,' a purpose beyond just being on stage. Sophia: Which, of course, ultimately leads her back to Peter. Their final reconciliation is so moving because it's not about that 'first fine careless rapture' of young love. It's a mature love, forged in shared struggle and failure. Daniel: It is. Peter comes to her and tells her about the legacy of the white Meriwether Bye, his friend who died in the war. Meriwether told him that the fight for Black freedom was no longer just physical, but a battle against 'spiritual and mental obstacles.' He charged Peter to 'finish up my life.' Peter asks Joanna to help him do that. Sophia: Their love becomes a shared mission. It’s not just about their individual success anymore. It’s about finding strength in each other to face the 'confusion' of being Black in America. They finally find the 'pattern' for their life, together.

Daniel: And that's the profound heart of this novel. Fauset is showing that for this generation, the path to selfhood wasn't a simple, straight line. It was a constant, painful negotiation with history, with race, and with class. Sophia: Right. The 'confusion' in the title isn't just a romantic drama. It's the existential state of being Black in America at that time. There's a line that just floored me, where Joanna says, 'If you’re black in America, you have to renounce.' Daniel: That idea of 'renunciation' is so powerful. The constant need to give things up—dreams, opportunities, sometimes even love—just to navigate a world that is fundamentally hostile. Sophia: It's a heavy, almost unbearable burden. But the novel doesn't end in despair, which is what I found so remarkable. It ends with this incredible sense of hope, delivered by Joanna's brother Philip on his deathbed. Daniel: Yes, after a life spent fighting for racial justice, he tells Joanna that the key to winning the battle is to 'keep the power of being happy.' He says happiness isn't a luxury; for them, it's a crucial tool for fighting life's battles. It's an act of resistance. Sophia: What a powerful idea to leave us with. It completely reframes the entire struggle. It's not just about enduring hardship; it's about actively seeking and creating joy in the midst of it all. What a book. I'm so glad it's being rediscovered and getting the attention it deserves. Daniel: Me too. It's a vital piece of American literature. And it leaves us with a great question. We'd love to hear what you all think. Does happiness feel like a tool of resistance in your own lives? Find us on our socials and let us know. Sophia: This is Aibrary, signing off.