Charles Chesnutt’s “The Wife of His Youth” tells a story about two characters, 25 years after the end of slavery, and through the differences between them, questions the success of reconstruction. It shows a disparity between what people said about the goals of the movement and what it was actually able to accomplish, emphasizing how difficult it is to “recover” from something like slavery.
Right from the first page, it describes the “Blue Veins” with an ironic tone. I view the Blue Veins as a metaphor for reconstruction. They are trying to help black people rise socially and improve their status, and in this way they are trying to “redress the inequalities of slavery”. As Chesnutt writes “Its [the Blue Veins] purpose was to establish and maintain correct social standards among a people whose social condition presented almost unlimited for improvement” (Chesnutt 1). Right from the start, Chesnutt depicts the near impossibility of the mission that reconstruction sets out to do. It also questions the focus of the organization. “Social standards” is in many ways, a superficial term. It is not something that is necessary to survive, and is something that is associated with wealthy, privileged people that do not have to focus on more basic needs. When we first hear the phrase, “social standards” seems to be something that would help people establish order in their day to day lives, but this description calls out the fact that in reality it is about focusing on something that detracts attention from the real issues that black people are facing.
After giving us an overview of the Blue Veins, the story shows us the people that its approach left behind. We are introduced to Liza Jane, someone that didn’t fit the limited sector of black people that the Blue Veins tried to help, those who could essentially pass for white. As the story says “she looked like a bit of the old plantation life, summoned up from the past by the wave of a magician’s wand…” (Chesnutt 10). She is someone who wasn’t able to move forward after slavery ended the way Mr. Ryder was and is therefore someone Mr. Ryder doesn’t encounter in his day to day life. The reference to a “magician’s wand” indicates that Mr. Ryder doesn’t fully recognize the existence of people like her. He would rather imagine her as someone who has magically been brought to his world, than acknowledge that her and the issues she’s facing are still real, even in his time. For 25 years, she has been stuck trying to pick up the pieces she needed to get to a place where she could start building up, by looking for the family she’d been separated from. Her story emphasizes that the effects of slavery weren’t something that could just be changed overnight by emancipation. Just getting to a stable situation where she could settle down with her family was something that was still impossible for Liza Jane after 25 years of freedom. Yet her situation was invisible to the government and to people like Mr. Ryder that might have been able to use their social status to help her.
But, it’s not just Liza Jane who’s still struggling to build a regular life after slavery. At the end of the story, learning that Liza Jane was Mr. Ryder’s wife forces us to call into question the impression we had of Mr. Ryder. His wealth and high social status might make us think that he has “moved on from slavery” but though he seems to have made a new identity for himself, it comes crashing down in some ways when Liza Jane comes back. His new identity was all on the outside, but inside he hasn’t resolved the regret of leaving Liza Jane and the knowledge of what he was missing and what he lost because of slavery. The Blue Veins allowed him to hide the trauma, but it doesn’t help him actually address the issues and struggles he has to deal with because of slavery.
Liza Jane and Mr. Ryder are two people that started out in the same place and position when they were slaves, but ended up in very different places 25 years later. At first, it seems clear that Mr. Ryder’s position is better off as he is wealthier and has higher social status, but after thinking about it, it’s not clear to me that he’s happier. I can’t help wondering what Mr. Ryder would have been like if he had followed a path more similar to Liza Jane’s. Would he have been able to reunite with her sooner? Would they have had a happier life together? Looking at the text, I think Mr. Ryder wonders the same thing. Although Mr. Ryder seems to be the kind of person who would look down on someone with lower social status, Mr. Ryder shows respect to Liza Jane from the moment she walks into his office. He is intrigued by her and the strong impression she makes on him, seeing her as magical. When he finally acknowledges her as his wife at the party, he describes her saying “such devotion and confidence are rare even among women” (Chesnutt 20). With this line, he praises the character traits that kept her from assimilating with white people.
Overall, “The Wife of His Youth” shows reconstruction as too focused on trying to make black people like white people, leaving the reader with a lot of questions. Were the actual steps taken as noble as the goals?
