The Wife Of His Youth

“[I]f most of their members were light-colored, it was because such persons, as a rule, had had better opportunities to qualify themselves for membership.”

One of the enduring impacts of slavery is that people who more closely approximated whiteness had better economic, professional, and educational opportunities. This quote reflects that reality.

“There were those who had been known to assail it violently as a glaring example of the very prejudice from which the colored race had suffered most; and later, when such critics had succeeded in getting on the inside, they had been heard to maintain with zeal and earnestness that the society was a life-boat, an anchor, a bulwark and a shield,—a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, to guide their people through the social wilderness.” 

This quote includes an ironic allusion to God’s guiding the Israelites out of Egypt during their Exodus using miracles of nature and signs. The implication is that the Blue Vein Society, with its color and class distinctions, has become an idol to its members’ racial hypocrisy. 

“Another alleged prerequisite for Blue Vein membership was that of free birth; and while there was really no such requirement, it is doubtless true that very few of the members would have been unable to meet it if there had been. If there were one or two of the older members who had come up from the South and from slavery, their history presented enough romantic circumstances to rob their servile origin of its grosser aspects.”

Central to the Blue Veins’ identity as a burgeoning black middle class in the North is the members’ rejection of any hint of a slave history.

“While he was not as white as some of the Blue Veins, his appearance was such as to confer distinction upon them. His features were of a refined type, his hair was almost straight; he was always neatly dressed; his manners were irreproachable, and his morals above suspicion. He had come to Groveland a young man, and obtaining employment in the office of a railroad company as messenger had in time worked himself up to the position of stationery clerk, having charge of the distribution of the office supplies for the whole company.” 

In this ironic quote, Chesnutt captures the internalized racism and colorism of the Blue Vein Society. Aspects of character are mingled with aspects of physical appearance, underscoring the shallowness of the values of the society’s members. Despite not being able to pass for white, Mr. Ryder is accepted because he is middle class as well.

“Poetry was his passion. He could repeat whole pages of the great English poets; and if his pronunciation was sometimes faulty, his eye, his voice, his gestures, would respond to the changing sentiment with a precision that revealed a poetic soul and disarm criticism.” 

Mr. Ryder’s passion for English poets is a mark of cultural refinement. On the other hand, his duality is clear: Despite his embrace of English literature, Mr. Ryder is unable to shake off all marks of his past, as shown by the persistence of his accent.

“He had observed of late a growing liberality, almost a laxity, in social matters, even among members of his own set, and had several times been forced to meet in a social way persons whose complexions and callings in life were hardly up to the standard which he considered proper for the society to maintain.”

Like the other Blue Veins, Mr. Ryder is a snob. His snobbery is baldly stated here as one that is based on color and class. 

“‘I have no race prejudice,’ he would say, ‘but we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black. The one doesn’t want us yet, but may take us in time. The other would welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step. “With malice towards none, with charity for all,” we must do the best we can for ourselves and those who are to follow us. Self-preservation is the first law of nature.’” 

As his comments elsewhere in the story make clear, Mr. Ryder’s statement that he has no prejudice is patently untrue and thus ironic. Further, Mr. Ryder justifies his intra-racial prejudice by using the language of nature as well as alluding to Lincoln's call for mercy for the soon-to-be-defeated South during his second inaugural address. The two appeals, one for self-interest and another for charity, contradict each other, presenting yet another example of the logical inconsistency of Mr. Ryder’s position. 

“He marked the verse, and turning the page read the stanza beginning,—

‘O sweet pale Margaret,

 O rare pale Margaret.’

He weighed the passage a moment, and decided that it would not do. Mrs. Dixon was the palest lady he expected at the ball, and she was of a rather ruddy complexion, and of lively disposition and buxom build.” 

Mr. Ryder’s attempt to use English poetry about white women to describe Mrs. Dixon demonstrates how much he has internalized white beauty standards. This mismatch, and his inability to see it, is an example of irony in the story.

“She was a little woman, not five feet tall, and proportioned to her height. Although she stood erect, and looked around her with very bright and restless eyes, she seemed quite old; for her face was crossed and recrossed with a hundred wrinkles, and around the edges of her bonnet could be seen protruding here and there a tuft of short gray wool. She wore a blue calico gown of ancient cut, a little red shawl fastened around her shoulders with an old-fashioned brass brooch, and a large bonnet profusely ornamented with faded red and yellow artificial flowers.” 

In this description of Liza Jane, her body and clothing evidence the very hard life she endured both during slavery and after emancipation. She is a living survivor of a past others in the story have buried. 

“And she was very black,—so black that her toothless gums, revealed when she opened her mouth to speak, were not red, but blue. She looked like a bit of the old plantation life, summoned up from the past by the wave of a magician’s wand, as the poet’s fancy had called into being the gracious shapes of which Mr. Ryder had just been reading.” 

This quote explicitly contrasts the refined, white women of Tennyson’s poems with Liza Jane. Liza Jane’s appearance—described here in terms that make its association with racial stereotypes clear—lends weight to the argument that she is a symbol of the slave past. 

“‘I’s be’n ter Noo Orleens, an’ Atlanty, an’ Charleston, an’ Richmon’; an’ w’en I’d be’n all ober de Souf I come ter de Norf. Fer I knows I’ll fin’ ‘im some er dese days,’ she added softly, ‘er he’ll fin’ me, an’ den we’ll bofe be as happy in freedom as we wuz in de ole days befo’ de wah.’ A smile stole over her withered countenance as she paused a moment, and her bright eyes softened into a far-away look. This was the substance of the old woman’s story. She had wandered a little here and there.” 

In this quote, Liza Jane recounts her epic search for her lost husband, despite the low odds of success. This search characterizes her as a faithful person motivated by love. Chesnutt also depicts her as an oral storyteller, an important figure in African American culture, who preserves history through tales. 

“He then related, simply but effectively, the story told by his visitor of the afternoon. He gave it in the same soft dialect, which came readily to his lips, while the company listened attentively and sympathetically. For the story had awakened a responsive thrill in many hearts. There were some present who had seen, and others who had heard their fathers and grandfathers tell, the wrongs and sufferings of this past generation, and all of them still felt, in their darker moments, the shadow hanging over them.” 

The encounter with Liza Jane transforms Mr. Ryder into a storyteller as well. His public re-telling of Liza Jane’s story signals his willingness to reconnect with and acknowledge his past—and awakens that willingness in others.

“Suppose, too, that, as the years went by, this man’s memory of the past grew more and more indistinct, until at last it was rarely, except in his dreams, that any image of this bygone period rose before his mind. And then suppose that accident should bring to his knowledge the fact that the wife of his youth, the wife he had left behind him,—not one who had walked by his side and kept pace with him in his upward struggle, but one upon whom advancing years and a laborious life had set their mark,—was alive and seeking him, but that he was absolutely safe from recognition or discovery, unless he chose to reveal himself. My friends, what would the man do?” 

Liza Jane’s and Mr. Ryder’s distinct paths represent the paths open to African Americans after emancipation: a struggle for survival on the one hand and the relative comfort of joining a nascent black middle class on the other. Mr. Ryder’s question is one that is pertinent to his relationship with Liza Jane, but it also reflects an ongoing debate about the responsibility of the more affluent members of the African American community to those who continued to struggle.