“The Wife of His Youth” (1898) was Charles W. Chesnutt’s proclamation of the death of the plantation myth of the black man as defined and constructed by the dialect tales, stories which appealed primarily to white readers. Chesnutt had found success with his own dialect tales mainly through the publication of three in the widely read Atlantic Monthly between 1887 and 1889. “The Wife of His Youth” would be the fourth story of his that the magazine published, and the eight-year gap since his last proved he was now a very different writer.
“The Wife of His Youth” was Chesnutt’s first Atlantic Monthly story that was not a dialect tale, that did not feature his popular character Uncle Julius, and that was set in the North. Such was the extent to which this story represented a change in direction for the author that he also used the title for his second collection, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line published in 1899. Chesnutt modeled the characters and the surroundings on his friends and society in Cleveland, particularly the Cleveland Social Circle, which the Blue Veins Society resembled. Nevertheless, Chesnutt’s race was not mentioned in connection with the story at all, but the significance of the race question the story posed was clear: an advertisement for the story as printed in the Cleveland Ledger on December 13, 1899 warned readers that it required “something more than a careless reading.”
Contemporary reviews were nearly all positive. One reviewer called the story “marvelously simple, touching and fascinating,” and writer William Dean Howells called it “an altogether remarkable piece of work.” J. Saunders Redding said it was similar to Hawthorne, explaining that it “might have been conceived and executed by the author of Twice-Told Tales.” The influential W.E.B. Du Bois stated that “Chesnutt wrote powerfully, but with great reserve and suggestiveness, touching a new realm in the borderland between the races and making the world listen with one short story.”
Chesnutt was pleased with the reception, writing to his editor, “I have been hearing from my story every day since its publication... I have had letters from my friends and notices in all the local papers... and taking it all in, I have had a slight glimpse of what it means, I imagine, to be a successful author.”
He was bolstered emotionally and financially enough by his writing that he closed his court-reporting business in 1899 to pursue his dream of being a full-time writer.
