Introduction In this essay, I will illustrate Charles Waddell Chesnutt’s work “The Wife of His Youth” acts in American literary realism movement, and his attempt of describing his desire of getting rid of racial segregations. There are some points supporting that this story is involved in realism. Firstly, I will focus on slavery, and the transition before the slavery and after. Secondly, I will check Chesnutt’s depiction of black people. Finally, I will clarify the differences between Mr. Ryder and Liza, and the author’s notion of the social change of the black people embedded in the two characters’ differences. I will conclude that these points support Chesnutt wants to describe the real figure of the black people.
Discussion
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Mr. Ryder is a black person. But he has straight hair, clean cloths, and appropriate manners. He is a genius person even though he has the lack of early education and training in his childhood. I suppose Mr. Ryder is a character that Chesnutt fiercely wants to depicts as a real figure of the black people. Chesnutt has many works, which are mainly related to racism. Stacey argues that Chesnutt tries to mix white and black, and ultimately, his goal is to make any racial label disappeared. Moreover, Stacey mentions “Chesnutt thought about race in these terms might thus explain both his determination not to pass for white and his refusal to condone the sentimentalization of “race integrity” and “race loyalty”” (Stacey, 121). From this critique, I assume Chesnutt tries to erase the racial difference, and describe the black people are clean and appropriate as mentioned earlier. This attempt, which is to make the black people improved than before, must be an indication of the American social change. Therefore, this must be one of the opinions that Chesnutt’s works are in the realism literary movement in the
According to Richard E. Baldwin, the main problem for early black writers such as Chesnutt was their audience. "The problem of the black experience in America arose from the refusal of the whites to perceive black experience accurately, and the artist's task was not simply to present the truth to the white minds, but to change those minds so that they could perceive the humanity of the black and the inhumanities which he suffered in America (Chesnutt, 346)." According to Baldwin, "whites had to be trained to perceive black experience from the black point of view," or black literature wouldn't be understood (Chesnutt, 346). I agree that the experience of the blacks had to be understood by whites in order for black people's experience to change. To me, this is hard to do without giving off the stereotypes that are perceived in the white community. This is where Chesnutt's characters come into play. Are they breaking the stereotypes or upholding them? According to David D. Britt, the conjure "stories are deliberately structured to a...
In all, Tademy does a great job in transporting her readers back to the 1800s in rural Louisiana. This book is a profound alternative to just another slave narrative. Instead of history it offers ‘herstory’. This story offers insight to the issues of slavery through a women’s perspective, something that not so many books offer. Not only does it give readers just one account or perspective of slavery but it gives readers a take on slavery through generation after generation. From the early days of slavery through the Civil War, a narrative of familial strength, pride, and culture are captured in these lines.
Laurence Hill’s novel, The Book of Negroes, uses first-person narrator to depict the whole life ofAminata Diallo, beginning with Bayo, a small village in West Africa, abducting from her family at eleven years old. She witnessed the death of her parents with her own eyes when she was stolen. She was then sent to America and began her slave life. She went through a lot: she lost her children and was informed that her husband was dead. At last she gained freedom again and became an abolitionist against the slave trade. This book uses slave narrative as its genre to present a powerful woman’s life.She was a slave, yes, but she was also an abolitionist. She always held hope in the heart, she resist her dehumanization.
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
In “The Wife of His Youth,” Liza Jane also delineates deceptive in having social equity. She was married to a slave in the civil war. Her husband was a light skinned slave who managed to escape the slavery and he vowed to come back and get her. Nevertheless, he left his life, and created a new name and life to become allowed into a white society. Liza Jane the wife always knew her true identity in the story. Even in the period of of slavery, she accepted her past and worked as a housewife, meanwhile her husband worked in the plantation. While this life was troubling, she stayed hopeful to maybe come back together with her husband after the civil war ended. Liza Jane searched twenty five years for her husband Sam Taylor. She stayed a loyal housewife and had hope in her husband thinking that he will return looking for her. Mr. Ryder was going to give a ball, there were various seasonings why this was an suitable time for such an occasion. Mr. Ryder can be suitable the president of the Blue Veins. The original Blue Veins was a civilization of colored people gathered in a certain Northern city shortly following the end of the
The characters are torn between who they are and who they need to be. Racial passing further perpetrates discrimination within American society, especially within the black community. Mr. Ryder’s actions further perpetrates the notion of race as a social and cultural construction. Mr. Ryder does not want to be accepted as black and he must live up to his principle through disassociation with the black culture. Mr. Ryder’s hope for a better future meant erasing his “blackness” and identify with his “whiteness”. Eliza’s narration of her slave life awaken his moral conscious. The path Mr. Ryder wishes to obtain is unrealistic in a post-American society because he cannot erase his past. In a post reconstruction era it was vital to connect in a time of instability. Mr. Ryder’s re-telling of Eliza’s story is connecting their fragmented family. Mr. Ryder’s acknowledgement Eliza, despite knowing the fact that he must go against his principles, he proposes that individuals must unite as a family if they want to promote change. Chesnutt short story proposes that black Americans need to unite in the struggle to end racial and social
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick
The main character is completely alienated from the world around him. He is a black man living in a white world, a man who was born in the South but is now living in the North, and his only form of companionship is his dying wife, Laura, whom he is desperate to save. He is unable to work since he has no birth certificate—no official identity. Without a job he is unable to make his mark in the world, and if his wife dies, not only would he lose his lover but also any evidence that he ever existed. As the story progresses he loses his own awareness of his identity—“somehow he had forgotten his own name.” The author emphasizes the main character’s mistreatment in life by white society during a vivid recollection of an event in his childhood when he was chased by a train filled with “white people laughing as he ran screaming,” a hallucination which was triggered by his exploration of the “old scars” on his body. This connection between alienation and oppression highlight Ellison’s central idea.
Students today should be informed about the racials tensions and struggles that black people faced in the 1930s. To Kill A Mockingbird explains the difficulties of the racial divides of that time. In the book there were several different racial
Walker and Marshall write about an identity that they have found with African-American women of the past. They both refer to great writers such as Zora Neale Hurston or Phillis Wheatley. But more importantly, they connect themselves to their ancestors. The see that their writings can be identified with what the unknown African-American women of the past longed to say but they did not have the freedom to do so. They both admire many literary greats such as Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, and Jane Austen, but they appreciate these authors' works more than they can identify with them.
Valerie Martin’s Novel Property is an engrossing story of the wife of a slave owner and a slave, whom a mistress of the slave owner, during the late 18th century in New Orleans. Martin guides you through both, Manon Guadet and her servant Sarah’s lives, as Ms. Gaudet unhappily lives married on a plantation and Sarah unhappily lives on the plantation. Ms. Gaudet’s misserableness is derived from the misfortune of being married to a man that she despises and does not love. Sarah, the slave, is solely unhappy due to the fact that she is a slave, and has unwillingly conceived to children by Ms. Gaudiest husband, which rightfully makes Sarah a mistress. Throughout the book, Martin captivates the reader and enables you to place yourself in the characters shoes and it is almost as you can relate to how the characters are feeling.
In Charles Chestnutt’s “The Wife of His Youth,” Liza Jane is a woman who is determined to find her long lost husband, Sam Taylor. When he ran away from slavery and escaped up north, he left his wife behind. He changed his name to Mr. Ryder, to forget his past with slavery. Soon he became involved with a group called the Blue Veins, which were a group of people who believed in the preservation of light skinned blacks. In this group he was known as the dean. The Blue Vein society thought that dark skinned blacks were dirt and ignorant. Many years went by and Liza still felt that Sam was in love with her and that they would be back together.
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
The twentieth century was a time of tremendous change that commenced with WWI and the Great Depression. While WWI brought countless deaths, the Great Depression affected both urban and rural Americans. Yet, underlying these devastating events was the abuse of black Americans. Both whites and blacks had to cope with the major occurrences of the time, but blacks also faced strife from whites themselves. During the early part of the twentieth century, white Americans Russell Baker and Mildred Armstrong Kalish gained kindred attributes from their families, especially in comparison to that of Richard Wright, a black American. The key differences between the experience of whites and blacks can be found within the mentality of the family, the extent to which they were influenced by their families in their respective lives, and the shielding from the outside world, or lack thereof, by their families. Through the compelling narrations of these three authors, readers can glimpse into this racially divided world from the perspective of individuals who actually lived through it.
Over historical progression, African Americans have faced a surfeit of injustices that are addressed throughout numerous works of literature. One of the most frequently discussed themes in African American literature related to these injustices is social issues in an interracial community. With various literary techniques, the central topic of social issues due to race portrayed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s A Red Record and Alain Locke’s The New Negro address the social issues of racial brutality, inferiority and social controversy in an interracial society.