1
The Wife of His Youth

• Charles W. Chestnutt

Background and Discussion Questions
2
Discussion

• How critical or satirical of blacks is Chesnutt
  in his portrayal of them?
• Does he treat them with sympathy, even when they
  behave foolishly?
• Is Chesnutt's satire biting and distant or
  self-involving and tolerant?

3

• There's rarely one source of authority in a
  Chesnutt story.
• Different points of view compete for authority.
• Identify the different points of view and play
  them against each other.

4
Chesnutt's Social Purposes

• How could stories about slavery have any bearing
  on the situation of blacks and on race relations
  at the turn of the century--when Chesnutt
  wrote--and today?

5
Major Themes, Historical Perspectives, and
Personal Issues

• Major themes include the following Chesnutt's
  attitude toward the Old South the myth of the
  plantation and the happy darkey, the mixed-blood
  (monster or natural and even an evolutionary
  improvement) and miscegenation as a natural
  process, not something to be shocked by.
• (sexual relations between people of different
  races, especially of different skin colors,
  leading to the birth of children)

6
Significant Form, Style, or Artistic Conventions

• Chesnutt wrote during the era of literary
  realism.
• What is his relationship to realism, its
  standards, its themes, its ideas about
  appropriateness of subject matter and tone?

7
Original Audience

• Chesnutt wrote for genteel magazine readers much
  less critical and aware of their racism than we.
• How does he both appeal to and gently undermine
  that audience's assumptions?

8
Discussion questions

• What predicaments of post-emancipation life are
  presented in the story?

9
Discussion questions

• What is the unique predicament of those of "mixed
  blood"?

10
Discussion questions

• What stratifications have evolved in African
  American society by the 1890s, as portrayed in
  this story?
• (to stratify means to form castes, classes, or
  other groups based on status, or be formed into
  such groups)

11
Discussion questions

• How do the Blue Veins construct the past in order
  to accept former slaves into their ranks?
• What is the "shadow hanging over them"?

12
Discussion questions

• Characterize the identities that Mr. Ryder and
  'Liza Jane have created for themselves. What is
  gained and lost in their choices?

13
Discussion questions

• Is Mr. Ryder free of "race prejudice"?

14
Discussion questions

• Judge Mr. Ryder's response to his ethical
  dilemma. Does he make his decision before the
  ball or after presenting his dilemma to the Blue
  Veins? What will he do after the ball, in your
  opinion?

15
Discussion questions

• Relate Mr. Ryder's belief that "Self-preservation
  is the first law of nature" to the dilemma and
  outcome of this story. Does Chesnutt sympathize
  with his character, Mr. Ryder?

16
Discussion questions

• Why does Chesnutt omit white society's view of
  the Blue Veins from this story?

17
Comparisons, Contrasts, Connections

• Chesnutt wrote to counter the stories of Thomas
  Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris. Chesnutt
  might also be compared to Paul Laurence Dunbar
  and Frederick Douglass as depicters of blacks on
  the plantation before the Civil War.