The Identity Problem Of The Bleu Vein Society

In the story of "The wife of his youth" by Charles W. Chesnutt goes into detail about how the blacks were having problems with the society of the whites. This story was written after civil war. Where were a group of blacks who started this society called "The blue vein society". The group of people would get to together talk about how the whites could except them and for the blacks to except them would be a step back for them. The main character of the story is Mr. Ryder. He was in charge of the blue vein society, and everybody in the society look up the him. In this paper I will show how the people of the blue vein society had problems with their identities.

First let me talk about the story. The main characters where Mr. Ryder, Dixon, and Liza Jane. There is a society in this town where they have to be black but you have to seen blue veins to be in this club. Mr. Ryder is a well known person in the town, but he wont tell anybody about his past. Later in the story, Miss. Dixon is a person from the north, she is more educated, more whiter and Mr. Ryder thinks that she is the greatest thing that you could ever see. So he is going

to have party in her and tell everybody that he would like to merry her. In the middle of afternoon Mr. Ryder is sitting in his front yard, and there is a old lady walking by and she asked him if he

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had seem a man. The lady name is Liza Jane. She goes into great detail about her husband. She tells Mr. Ryder how they were merry on the farm, and that they would be together forever. She tells him the whole story, how he was a free man and the owner of the farm was going to sell her husband to another farm to make some money. So Mrs. Jane told her husband about the news and that he had to go and she would find him later. So this man runs away. And now we are back to present time and Mrs. Jane tells Mr. Ryder that she was been all over the south looking for this man and it has been about 20 to 25 years that he had left her. And then Mrs. Jane leaves and Mr. Ryder said that he will kept a look out for this. Later that night Mr. Ryder was having the party. He told his blue vein society friends about the story that Mrs. Jane had told him. He asks them what would they do. His friend said that is most be true love and they would do anything to have something like that. Then Mr. Ryder said that he is the one and this is the lady who has been looking for me all of those years.

""I have no race prejudice," he would say, "but we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the neither millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black. The one doesn't want up yet, but may take us in time. The other would welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step."" C. W. Chesnutt is trying to say that at that time the mixed blood were in the middle and they known that they want to be in the whites society but it will take some time, they just cannot

be accepting over night. The civil war is just over and there are still tension over the slaves and blacks. They known that