The Wife of His Youth Literary Elements

Short Story

Late 19th century, fictional city of Groveland, Ohio

Third-person omniscient

Tone: direct, self-assured, contemplative, pragmatic

Mood: calm, contemplative, nostalgic, apprehensive

Protagonist: Mr. Ryder; Antagonist: Liza Jane to an extent, but abstractly, Mr. Ryder's sense of honor

The major conflict for Mr. Ryder is whether or not he will choose Mrs. Dixon, the representative of the elite mixed-race society in which he gladly moves, or the wife of his youth, who represents the poorer, less educated and darker-skinned contingent of African Americans.

The climax occurs when Mr. Ryder announces to the crowd that he is the man in the story, and the woman is his wife.

1. Chesnutt foreshadows what Mr. Ryder is to endure when Liza Jane returns through his dwelling on Mr. Ryder's desires to have his “ball... serve by its exclusiveness to counteract leveling tendencies” based out of his frustrations that there is “a growing liberality, almost a laxity, in social matters, even among members of his own set, and several times had been forced to meet in a social way persons whose complexities and callings in life were hardly up to the standard which he considered proper for the society to maintain.” It is thus obvious that he is going to get his comeuppance.
2. Mr. Ryder's identity as Sam Taylor is foreshadowed when he stares into the mirror at himself after staring at the daguerrotype.

N/A

- Slavery and the Civil War (1861-1865)
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) is one of the most famous Victorian poets, renowned for "The Idylls of the King," "In Memoriam," "Maud," and many more
- Mr. Ryder quotes Shakespeare's "Hamlet" about being true to thyself
- "pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night" is an allusion to Exodus, in which these two things guided the fleeing Israelites

The imagery in this story centers on the contrast between Mr. Ryder and Liza Jane, and what that means for the larger contrast between the communities within the black population that they represent. The image of Mr. Ryder is one of wealth, rectitude, influence, culture, and “whiteness.” Liza Jane is depicted as old, shabby, poor, from the past, and very black. We are meant to see Mr. Ryder's eventual embrace of her as an embrace of his own black identity.

N/A

The narrator suggests that the stories of other members of the Blue Veins actually parallel "Sam Taylor's" and Liza Jane's, revealing that the legacy of slavery and war are not so easily expunged from one's psyche or mode of living.

N/A

1. "...time works great changes" (Mr. Ryder)
2. "...all of them still felt, in their darker moments, the shadow hanging over them" (Narrator)