Charles W. Chesnutt, "The Wife of His Youth" (1898)

In-Class Writing and Discussion Questions

1.) The last time I put this author and story on the course reading list, there was wide-spread agreement that "this is another story where we are told everything and there is nothing left to talk about, figure out, or debate." Do you agree with this assertion? Explain.

2.) Could we debate this statement? -- “Did Mr. Ryder make the right decision?  Why or why not?”

3.) Could we discuss this statement? -- “What are the effects (immediate and/or long-range) of this decision?” (What are the ramifications? Does it contradict him and his character and what he has stood for all these years? Or, does it elevate him in their eyes? In our eyes?)

4.) Could we do some research and respond to something another scholar has written?

• “Chesnutt . . . violates expectations -- not just in terms of plotting but in terms of the realist mode itself. The motive may be to return his readers to a condition of wonder, of the rapt attention that can come with seeing things freshly or for the first time. . . . Chesnutt will throw plausibility out the window at times, in pursuit of a more important or larger sort of ‘realism.’”
• Can we apply this to the convenient coincidence of Eliza Jane showing up on the very day that Ryder is to propose to Mrs. Molly Dixon? If so, what is the “more important or larger sort of ‘realism’” that Chesnutt is after here?

Another quote:

• "His is an American reality where the conventional, white, turn-of-the-century audience would find very little that was familiar to it and where, in a sense, anything could happen."
• Why wouldn't the audience find anything familiar? Why is it that "anything could happen"?

5.) THE ENDING: Were you surprised by the ending? Why or why not? Do you think the ending is too contrived?

• One critic said that this is "a story with a twist, somewhat like an O. Henry tale; but the twist has the resonance that a plot twist might have in a Hawthorne romance."

6.) THE THEME: Is Eliza Jane’s return "the return of Ryder’s soul"? Is the transformation that simple?

7.) SPECULATION: What will happen next, after the last page of this narrative? Does Chesnutt offer some forecast here about the future of his people? Or, does he puzzle over that future (as Nathaniel Hawthorne does, for example, when he engages with present-day New England by also looking back to its past)?

8.) THE CANON: Chesnutt is a relative “newcomer” to the "canon" of American Literature. Is his story worth including in the canon? In this course? Does he have something to say that transcends time? Race? Place? Is the way in which he says it worthy of note? Could one say his story "represents the best of what has been thought and said"?