The Wife Of His Youth

“The Wife of His Youth” reflects the influence of realism in American writing of late nineteenth century, and it is one example of Chesnutt’s many efforts to grapple with race issues through a realist short story. While the story’s grounding is in the history of slavery in the American South and the realities of a nascent black middle class in the American North during Reconstruction, the story also includes countervailing tendencies toward sentimentality. The realist elements of the story are apparent in Chesnutt’s careful attention to the lives of Liza Jane and Sam during slavery, the sharply ironic but accurate portrayal of colorism among upwardly mobile mixed-race people during Reconstruction, and his use of dialect.

The decision of the master to sell Sam despite Sam’s being an apprentice is a historically accurate representation of the vulnerable legal status of freeborn African Americans in both the slaveholding South and ostensibly free Northern states that also controlled their free black populations with harsh black codes. Families comprising people with various legal statuses—freeborn, slave, manumitted—are also accurately rendered. Finally, the devastating impact of slavery and its aftermath on black families is well-documented, so contemporaneous readers of the story would have found nothing far-fetched about Liza Jane’s tale of separation and long efforts to reunite with her husband.

One of the consequences of slavery was that the offspring of female slaves and their masters (or other whites) stratified African American society. Sometimes, the children of such unions were set free or even supported with property or money that gave them a leg up in life. After emancipation, African Americans who more closely approximated whites in appearance experienced more upward mobility in society both because of racism and colorism (internalized racism that made African Americans look more favorably upon lighter skinned blacks). Such fair-skinned African Americans held a disproportionate number of the first professional jobs and elected positions gained by African Americans during Reconstruction.

Social constructs, such as clubs and fraternities like the story’s Blue Vein Society, reinforced the line between darker- and lighter-skinned African Americans. The intraracial politics outlined in the short story’s initial paragraphs represent a culture of racial uplift built upon colorism. This type of internalized prejudice persists in some corners of African American culture even today, particularly as it relates to popular beauty standards.

The last significant way that Chesnutt’s work exhibits characteristics of realism is in his limited use of dialect. At the time of his writing, African American Vernacular English, a dialect of English spoken by some African Americans (especially Southerners), was well associated with slavery. Therefore, because most of the African-American characters in the story are Northerners, few of them speak in dialect. In contrast, Liza Jane consistently speaks in dialect. Her long-time association with the South and slavery marks her as a symbol of the past. Mr. Ryder code switches from Standard American English to dialect in Part 3 of the story to lay claim to his past and his relationship with Liza Jane. However, the prevalence of Standard English throughout most of the dialogue represents how eagerly the story’s characters are to move away from their shared, painful past.

Despite all the predominant realist elements of the story, it ends on a sentimental note. That Liza Jane persisted in looking for her husband for twenty-five years and Sam/Mr. Ryder finally acknowledges and claims his long-lost wife are evidence of an epic love. Just in case the lesson of this love story is lost on the reader, Chesnutt includes an audience within the story (the dinner party guests) and scripts their deeply emotional response to Sam and Liza Jane’s reunion.

The story’s conclusion also serves to reinforce Chesnutt’s primary message: that people of mixed-race ancestry must come to terms with and accept their black past if they are to be made whole.