Thoughts on Reconstruction As Reflected in "The Wife of His Youth"
Fundamentally, Charles Chesnutt's "The Wife of His Youth" is about the process of reconciling two people's life stories, which, having once been intertwined under slavery, had since diverged, especially after the Civil War. Mr. Ryder, who before the war had run away from slavery in Missouri, had by some unspecified method escaped to the North, where he had gotten a job and worked his way up to a middle-class life. His wife, on the other hand, had spent the same 25 years traveling around the country looking for him, supporting herself by working as a cook. The story is set in the city that Mr. Ryder had moved to at the time they finally encounter one another again. Their reunion captures in microcosm the ideal but also some of the difficulties of repairing the damage done by slavery. Charles Chesnutt Mr. Ryder (originally known as Sam Taylor) was a mix of Black and white and had been born free, but upon being orphaned had gone to work for a slaveholder. His wife, Liz...