Preview

The Wife Of His Youth Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1841 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Wife Of His Youth Analysis
The Wife of His Youth is one of the most prominent works of Charles W. Chesnutt. He was a significant African American novelist during the Harlem Renaissance. This story is a short story of Charles W. Chesnutt which was first published in July 1898. Then it served as the title of the gathering (The Wife of His Youth and other stories of the Colour-Line.) He is the first African American author to be distirubuted in the “ Atlantic Monthly “. Charles W.Chesnutt was exposed to unjust relationships in both pre and the post-Civil War society.In general,Chesnutt adresses problems that African American people were exposed to and to define their places in the society of America in his stories. He usually analyzes bias among blacks and also between …show more content…
However, with the Civil War their situation has altered. Their lives eventually has altered due to abolition of slavery. However this alteration was not very easy to them. They again attacked by White society in this time their morality was on their agenda.For example,women depicted as “ Jezebels “ and men as “ rapists ” in animalistic way. Moreover,other sterotypes were continued to damage black people such as minstrel shows, superstitious, indolent, country folk images which served to legitimize the financial misuse of black people as field and local specialists. Also these streotypes were supported by the scientific studies which are not real by the White historians, sociologists and anthropologists.In relation to this,the wake of Darwin’s theory of evolution , which asserts that black people are not even a human and they are different from humankind ,yet in a bad way. They are obliged to fade away. Moreover, the wake of Darwin’s theory leads to such idea “ survival of fittest “ which underlines that people who are not white would disappear because of their insufficient socioeconomic status. Also some arguments claims that at once blacks freed from the discipline of slavery ,they had devolved.These thoughts existed to clarify the charged inferiority of women, …show more content…
) In this story we see that Blue Vein is an organization of black people, yet power in the hands of whites. Secondly, the lady Mrs.Dixon is also presents supremacy . Although being a black she is whiter than the main character whose name is Mr.Ryder. Moreover, her level of education is higher than him. Thus, it is a kind a white supremacy because she is superior than him in many fields . Also he believes that if he got married with this lady he also would transform into superior

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    This view that white waged slavery is a sentence worse than being black demonstrates that the upper class did not give a damn for them and saw class as a bigger divide than skin color. This idea that “blackness is widely understood in the mid nineteenth century as a state of becoming” tells the reader that class is a construct where once cannot move in society; conversely, the reality is true (qtd. in Pfaelzer 50). Skin color cannot be changed; but class placement can and should be worked…

    • 1661 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    and the Color Line”, Chesnutt writes unique tales from the era of slavery and segregation. His…

    • 1235 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The story illustrates how, at the time, african americans were fighting to define their place in society and the societal hierarchy. Unfortunately, mixed children were seen as the outer edges of the African American communities and White Societies; regardless of the education they received, economic success, and their placing in the social hierarchy. Chestnut was able to portray the characters in the light of individuality instead of referring to the stereotypes that were imposed on each different race and social class. Ryder was able to show how this begun a new era; one…

    • 388 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mr. Ryder in the Wife of his Youth is the protagonist of the story. He is the leader of Blue Vein Society, light-skinned mulatto man and husband of much dark-skinned woman. Mr. Ryder is an example of the light-skinned mulatto man who dreams to passing as white after the Civil War. Mr. Ryder is the ambiguous man because he does not know his past until his dark-skinned wife appears in his life.…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Marriage for a Femme Fatale is not a promise of love, romance and connection but rather one of unhappiness and darkness. In this film the family home is just a location to which displeasure thrives, and where Mr. Dietrichson hardly notices his wife both mentally and physically. In many noir films marriage life is almost sadistic, in Double indemnity it is clear that marriage and sexuality contrast each other, and that death and pleasure are the same thing. Another aspect of femme Fatale marriages in film noir is the nonexistence of children. In some circumstances the husband of the femme fatale is much older meaning that he may have an older child from his previous marriage, for example Mr.Dietrichson has a daughter Lola (Jean Heather). Phyllis…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In the United States, racism had been for several hundred years; it’s aslo been a controversial subject for people for a long period of time. Whenever we talk about this subject, it always reminds me about the book called “Race and Manifest Destiny” by Reginald Horsman. This book is one of the greatest books about the racism in the United States from 1776 to 1865. During the early years of America’s history, society was categorized by class rather than skin color. In the early of colonial period, black and white workers who worked together everywhere. However, the crisis of the Norh American owners in the early of sixteenth century has changed the system. Black enslavement had become necessary for the American agricultural economy. There is the first formed an equal human being between blacks and whites. From the beginning of the United State nation to 1865, there was always a distance which separated the White people and Black people or Indian people due to the racial discrimination in the society at that time.…

    • 1285 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    1800s religion

    • 662 Words
    • 1 Page

    before the death of slavery in America, negros witnessed a cruel life. their skin color was…

    • 662 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Black and white abolitionists shared common assumptions about the evil of slavery, the "virtue of moral reform", and the certainty of human progress"(1). Schor, Garnet,1877, & Lanngston, 1989). This shared understanding provided "the basic for the interracial solidarity" and cooperation so vital in the crusade against slavery"(2). (Schor and Garnet, 1877). But blacks also brought a distinct perspective to the antislavery movement. Their abolitionism was shaped profoundly by their personal experience and racial oppression. Unlike most white abolitionists, they conceived of antidlavery as an all-encompassion struggle for racial equality, and they took a more pragramatic, less doctrinaire approach to antislavery tactics. The contrast between the two abolitionists -- black and white -- become increasingly apparent in the 1840s and 1850s as black expressed a growing militancy, asserted greater independence, and called for racially exclusive organization and initiatives.…

    • 1602 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Slavery, the practice of being possessed by someone as a labor force or for his personal needs, was a ubiquitous workforce in nearly every part of the world. Slaves served as the propelling engine behind the Southern labor force for a long time. These African-Americans first arrived in ships from Africa and progressively started setting in the South, were they worked and served as a labor powerhouse. These slaves were used predominately for plantations, were treated as animals and worked under extremely harsh conditions with no pay. Historians have argued for a long time on whether slavery destroyed the black family. Despite the fact that Eugene D. Genovese states that slaves created there own system of family and values, Wilma A. Dunaway clearly proves that due to the harsh living conditions, the inevitable separation between families and the absolute lack of freedom of slaves, destroyed the black family.…

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The beginning of the 18th centuries there were an augment in pleas to abolish slavery in the United States of America. At the time, there were two sides, northern, and southern debating against, and in favor of slavery respectively. The northerners’ states where slavery was legal, but not economically important and the southerners’ states whose economies were heavily dependent on slavery. According to most northerners, they became to dislike slavery and distrust southern political power. Some became active and organized opponents of slavery and worked for its abolition nationwide. For the abolitionists, it was degrading to the Negros’ intellectual capacity not to mention their humanity, for them to be viewed as an inferior race to that of the…

    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sociology: Black Like Me

    • 1714 Words
    • 7 Pages

    A lack of education led the blacks to poverty and they struggled every day just to survive. They were limited in the paths they could take, forcing many to hustle on the streets or worse. It was not that they chose this, but due to society’s lack of choices for them.…

    • 1714 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    When it comes to non-whites Jacobsen brings into play the prominent ideologies of people in power such as Thomas Jefferson during the antebellum era, “in reason [blacks] are much inferior… in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous” (Jacobsen, 29). This ideology was also very prominent in science at the time but none more outspoken that Josiah Nott who’s attempts to scientifically prove the superiority of Caucasian people by the “intellectual endowments” Crania Americana [whites] had attained. Nott goes on to elaborate on the peoples of east Africa as, “presenting physical characters more or less hideous; and, almost without exception, not merely in a barbarous, but superlatively savage state. All attempts toward humanizing them have failed.” In short Nott pushes his theory of polygenesis to prove that people do not come from one ancestral line instead many and therefore other lines are inferior. Jacobsen elaborates on the bogus science used to further differentiate whiteness by bringing in these ideologies many of these ideas were framed by the law of 1790 which allowed whites to emigrate to the states but for those considered favorable white certain…

    • 1166 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The very first conflict in the story is between the Blue Vein society and the rest of the black population. The society picks its members on a very strict set of standards. According to the members however, prospective members were judged only on their character and culture. Other blacks…

    • 2110 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    As the country matured, objection to slavery increased greatly, ultimately leading to the complete abolishment of slavery. Although slavery was deeply rooted in American society and economics, it was eventually vanquished. While the need for abolition may seem obvious today, the inherent evil of slavery was inconspicuous to many, leading to extended years of debate before the end of slavery. Although slavery has completely vanquished from this country, the effects of bondage can still be noticed today. Similar to how blacks were scorned in the makings of Early America, blacks are victim to harmful stereotyping and discrimination. Blacks are often assumed to be less intelligent and suffer lower economic and educational opportunity. The remnants of the intense racism that plagued slave America are still noticeable today. While the circumstances of Africans have certainly improved since the end of slavery and the civil right movement, improvement is still needed to for blacks to be equal, not just in the words of the law, but the through the eyes of all people. However, the success of abolitionism gives hope: abolitionists were originally few in number and criticized as "ultraists" for their seemingly radical ideas. Still, abolitionism soared in popularity as people became increasingly objected to its existence in America.…

    • 1144 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Slavery and Its Impact on Both Blacks and Whites Slavery and Its Impact on Both Blacks and Whites The institution of slavery was something that encompassed people of all ages, classes, and races during the 1800's. Slavery was an institution that empowered whites and humiliated and weakened blacks in their struggle for freedom. In the book, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, slave Frederick Douglass gives his account of what it was like being a slave and how he was affected. Additionally, Douglass goes even further and describes in detail the major consequences the institution of slavery had on both blacks and whites during this time period. In the pages to come, I hope to convince you first of the mental/emotional and physical damage caused by slavery on black slaves, and secondly the damage slavery caused in the mental well-being of white slave-owners.…

    • 1481 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays