This paper investigates the literary representation of the New Negro Woman, an ideal that brought together the claims of the 1890s New Woman and the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, in Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral by Jessie Fauset, published in 1928. It argues that Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun critiques the social and cultural limitations imposed on Black women during the Harlem Renaissance by portraying the protagonist Angela Murray’s failed pursuit of happiness through whiteness, femininity, and marriage. Drawing on the ideals embodied in the historical figure of the New Negro Woman, the novel examines how the intersection of racial and gendered hierarchies compels Angela to pass as white and enter the marriage market to achieve social mobility. Angela achieves New Negro Womanhood through her rejection of the Victorian ideals inherited from her parents and by embracing her racial identity. However, the novel’s ending, where Angela emigrates to Paris, suggests that her happiness remains unattainable within racist America.