48 pages • 1 hour read
Charles W. ChesnuttThe Wife Of His Youth
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1898A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
Sam Taylor/Mr. Ryder
Mr. Ryder is defined by duality. On the one hand, he is Sam Taylor, a man who was freeborn and shiftless because there was no benefit to working hard when the master to whom he was apprenticed would take all his labor’s profit. On the other hand, he is Mr. Ryder (note the formality of this name), an affluent man, eligible bachelor, and property owner who is upwardly mobile due to his work ethic.
Physically, Mr. Ryder also has a dual identity. He is of mixed-raced ancestry but still dark enough to be unable to pass, unlike many members of the Blue Vein Society. He embraces the white part of his ancestry and makes every attempt to disassociate himself from all things black and working class. In the story, Mr. Ryder faces a pivotal moment in which he prepares to cut himself off irrevocably from his past (as Liza Jane’s husband and a near slave) by marrying Mrs. Dixon and thereby “help to further the upward process of absorption he had been wishing and waiting for” (Part 1, Line 79). In short, marrying a lighter-skinned woman such as Mrs. Dixon will solidify his position as a member of the light-skinned, black elite. But Liza Jane’s entrance arrests Mr. Ryder’s attempt to destroy Sam Taylor. The plot twist—acknowledgement of Liza Jane—marks Mr. Ryder’s integration of both parts of himself, his past and present.
Liza Jane
Liza Jane is described as an old woman whose body and appearance mark her as an unfortunate who bore the brunt of slavery, poverty, and hard labor. The description of her dress and physical features—“She looked like a bit of the old plantation life” (Part 2, Lines 123-24) and has very dark skin—associates her with racist representations of black women as “mammies” and excludes her from the Eurocentric notions of beauty that Mr. Ryder and the Blue Vein Society promote.
In the story, however, Chesnutt casts Liza Jane as the epitome of the fidelity and love of which women—particularly black women who maintained family ties during slavery—are capable. She is, in a sense, the heroine of this story, an outcome that serves as a lesson to the members of the Blue Vein Society and the reader to look beyond physical appearance/race.
The Narrator
The story’s narrator is limited and omniscient, with access to the minds of the members of the Blue Vein Society as well as Mr. Ryder. The narrator’s tone is frequently ironic and derisive, especially when it comes to the internalized racism purported by characters in the story.
Mrs. Molly Dixon
Mrs. Molly Dixon is Mr. Ryder’s love interest. A widow made prosperous by a life insurance payout after the death of her husband, Mrs. Dixon is an attractive, light-skinned, educated member of the black elite. She markedly contrasts with Liza Jane, and thus represents all of Mr. Ryder’s hopes for becoming more upwardly mobile by associating himself with whiteness or near whiteness.
The Blue Vein Society
The Blue Vein Society is an exclusive social club that represents some of the worst tendencies of black elites during the aftermath of Reconstruction. While some clubs and fraternities of this historical period dedicated themselves to racial uplift of those who were less fortunate, this club is focused on a strange kind of uplift that denigrated working class and darker-skinned African Americans through exclusion. Chesnutt uses the club to critique the snobbishness of some black elites of the day. In the end, however, the story of Liza Jane’s faithfulness is so powerful that the club members, reminded of similar story in their own pasts, relents and agrees to accept Liza Jane as Mr. Ryder’s wife.
Related Titles
By Charles W. Chesnutt
