SOURCE: Fienberg, Lorne. “Charles W. Chesnutt's The Wife of His Youth: The Unveiling of the Black Storyteller.” In Critical Essays on Charles W. Chesnutt, edited by Joseph R. McElrath Jr., pp. 206-23. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1999.

In the following essay, originally published in the American Transcendental Quarterly, in 1990, Fienberg delineates the differences between Chesnutt's The Wife of His Youth, and The Conjure Woman.

I

At the pivotal moment in Charles W. Chesnutt's “The Wife of His Youth” a mysterious old black woman walks through a doorway and tells her story. For twenty-five years she has been carrying this simple tale of the brutality of slavery and of her faithful love; each retelling of the story is a critical act of self-identification. Now she has found the ideal audience for whom the act of listening and re-telling will also constitute an acknowledgement of the past and a...