Analysis of 
"The Wife of His Youth"
by Charles Chesnutt

     There is a saying that “You can run from the past, but it always catches up with you.” — Debbi Mack. The Wife of His Youth by Charles Chesnutt describes how Mr. Ryder, the main character in the story has spent twenty-five years as an unrecognizable man. He ran away from slavery, changed his identity, and transformed himself into someone new. By looking into who Mr. Ryder is, what he could have been, and the man he used to be, we can understand why he decides in the end to be faithful to the wife of his youth. 

​     The story introduces our character as Mr. Ryder and doesn’t use his first name, this shows he is an important man. He is the leader of the Blue Vein Society, a group of prominent mixed-race individuals (Chesnutt 1). He feels very strongly that his mixed race should be preserved. “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 (Chesnutt 3). From this statement, we can see that he has no plans to associate with the black race.  

​     He has a good job and lives in a nice home (Chesnutt 2). He is neatly dressed and has good manners (Chesnutt 2). He is passionate about poetry (Chesnutt 2) and has worked hard to educate himself (Chesnutt 2). He is a single older gentleman (Chesnutt 2) who decides to propose to one of the Blue Vein members, a lovely younger lady, Mrs. Molly Dixon (Chesnutt 3), who is more educated than him (Chesnutt 2). Mr. Ryder plans a ball in her honor that he says will be the “epoch in the social of Groveland”, the city in which he lives (Chesnutt 3). This shows us that he has high standards.  He is living a prestigious lifestyle and embracing his mixed-race heritage; this is who Mr. Ryder is.  

​     When we meet Liza Jane, the wife of his youth, we get a glimpse of what he could have been if he had not transformed himself. She is a former slave who is simply dressed (Chesnutt 4), a very black lady, with no teeth (Chesnutt 4), and looks old from years of hard work (Chesnutt 4). Her speech is very hard to understand and sounds uneducated. Mr. Ryder says she “looked like a bit of the old plantation life summoned up from the past...” (Chesnutt 4). 

​     Liza Jane tells us who Mr. Ryder used to be. He name was Sam Taylor, a free man (Chesnutt 5) who ran away to keep from being sold into slavery. He swore he would come back for her and buy her freedom (Chesnutt 5). Liza describes Sam as not a hard-working person; Liza expects to support him when she finds him (Chesnutt 6). She believes they will be reunited and that he would have never married or chosen to forget her (Chesnutt 6). It is apparent that she loves him because she has been looking for him for 25 years (Chesnutt 6). He does not reveal himself to her at first but asks for her address (Chesnutt 7). This leaves the door open but gives him time to consider the choice he must make. 

​     When Liza leaves, Mr. Ryder goes inside and looks thoughtfully at himself in the mirror (Chesnutt 7). This action shows self-reflection and gives us a small clue about who Sam and Mr. Ryder are. By staring in the mirror after seeing Liza Jane, he is looking at his past self and his present self.  His past has caught up with him and Liza is a dedicated woman. She is searching for the love of her life and plans to do what it takes to find Sam.  

​     Mr. Ryder’s guests arrive at the ball, and they are the who’s who of the Blue Vein Society; among them are doctors, teachers, some lawyers and other very successful people (Chesnutt 7). He saves his toast for last and begins a powerful speech about his encounter with Liza Jane that afternoon (Chesnutt 8). It is apparent that he is not going to ask Mrs. Dixon to marry him. Instead, he is setting up his dear friends for their approval of his decision to honor Liza and their marriage (Chesnutt 8.9). He quotes from a poem they all know, and it says, ‘This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.’ (Chesnutt 9).  He stirs them up with the emotional story of how Liza Jane has been looking for her husband for 25 years and then he brings her in to meet them. He introduces her as the wife of his youth (Chesnutt 10).

     We see that Mr. Ryder has worked very hard to change the person he once was on the outside, but the thing about Mr. Ryder that did not seem to change was his desire to be true to himself and to do what was right.  In the end, his past caught up with him and he had a decision to make. He accepts who he was and who he is now and invites his past to meet the present.  This proves that after all the hard work to transform himself, Sam was still there inside him. The Sam who made a promise to the wife of his youth and kept it in the end.