Reconstruction in The Wife of His Youth

    The short story “The Wife of His Youth” covers the struggle of the black and mixed-race community between assimilation into white culture and maintenance of black culture. In the story we follow a mixed-race man named either Mr. Ryder or Sam Taylor deciding to propose to a young mixed woman, only for an older black woman to approach him before the ball and recount her story to him, leading to him instead proposing to her. The story follows the conflicting ideologies of assimilationism and black identity. The young white-presenting mixed race bride that Mr. Ryder chooses is a representation of rejection of black identity. The bride rejects her black identity and the throughline of slavery in her life by being a member of the Blue Veins, a society which is made up of a small group of elitist light-skinned mixed-race people attempting to “correct [the] social standards” (Chesnutt 1) of black people. The society also rejects the history of slavery as it relates to the history of black people, having an unspoken rule of requiring free birth or extraordinary circumstances that “presen[t] enough romantic circumstances to rob their servile origin of its grosser aspects” (Chesnutt 3).

    Metaphorically Ms. Dixon also represents the rejection of black identity and being subsumed into white identity. Much is made of her light skin, as well as the light skin of the members of the Blue Veins. By rejecting black culture the author deprives them of black skin as well, showing on their bodies their assimilation. Ms. Dixon is also very young, with Mr. Ryder being referred to as “old enough to be her father”(Chesnutt 5). This works to represent the assimilationism of Ms. Dixon as a younger movement going in the wrong direction, instead of the wife of Sam Taylor’s youth, who is older and represents an acknowledgement of the past. By originally choosing Ms. Dixon Taylor can live on in a fantasy where the past injustices of slavery never happened and where ultimately, he can pretend that he is white. As Langston Hughes criticized Countee Cullen, by rejecting the black label Taylor is applying a race-neutral label in a non-race-neutral world, meaning he is accepting the status quo of white supremacist ideas.

    The Wife of Taylor’s Youth, Liza Jane, by contrast to Ms. Dixon represents an acceptance of the past and the horrors of slavery and discrimination. For example, after the usual introductions and the accounting of her story are out of the way the first thing Ms. Jane says is “W’en I wuz young I us’ter b’long ter Marse Bob Smif, down in Ole Missoura” (Chesnutt 12). Unlike the Blue Veins who section off slavery into unseen or romanticized imagery, Jane has slavery as one of her first priorities to speak of, she doesn’t try to excuse her history as a slave but recounts matter-of-factually. It is also notable that Ms. Jane is written with a very heavy AAVE dialect, something which is obvious in any quotations of her words. Her speech is unabashedly black, which contrasts with the Blue Veins, who in their quest for propriety and assimilation are written in strictly unaccented standardized English.

Illustration of the end scene of the book

 

    Ultimately, “The Wife of His Youth” is a story of two conflicting perspectives of what should happen to the black and mixed communities of America after Reconstruction. One perspective argued for what amounted to ignorance of the past, that slavery was a horror and that it should be swept under the rug while the community tried to assimilate into white society. The other perspective argued the opposite, saying that slavery’s effects are an unavoidable part of being black in white society, that it should be acknowledged and that the community should maintain itself as a distinct community from white society. The author is not afraid to involve his opinions quite heavily in the story, showing the anti-assimilationist perspective to be superior, with the story ending with the entire ball cheering on Sam Taylor/Mr. Ryder in marrying Mary Jane, a stand-in for the anti-assimilationist perspective. The story stands as an example of how throwing the past away to assimilate can ultimately end in more harm than good, as Sam Taylor forgets Liza Jane before he is reminded several decades later.