Jessie Fauset was the most prolific of the Renaissance novelists…. But in spite of an admirable persistence, her novels are uniformly sophomoric, trivial, and dull. There Is Confusion (1924) is nothing if not well titled, for it is burdened with a plethora of characters whose complex genealogy leaves the most conscientious reader exhausted. Plum Bun (1928) is a typical novel of passing, structured around [a] nursery rhyme…. The Chinaberry Tree (1931) seems to be a novel about the first colored woman in New Jersey to wear lounging pajamas. Comedy American Style (1933) is an account of a colored woman's obsessive desire to be white, not unlike the novels which condemn passing in its nationalist implications.

Undoubtedly the most important formative influence on Miss Fauset's work was her family background. An authentic old Philadelphian …, she was never able to transcend the narrow limits of this sheltered world. It accounts for her gentility, her...