Journal #10

While reading Charles Chesnut's "The Wife of his Youth", I had no idea it would end with Mr. Ryder being the character in his story. From the beginning, I felt a sense of white supremacy from him because he was a member of the elite Blue Veins. But by the end of the story I found out that he actually stays true to himself as a loyal and humble gentleman. He never married once and waited several years to be with the wife of his youth, and when he revealed his fair skinned guest at the ball, I was shocked about his decision that he could have had any woman he wanted such as the beautiful Mrs. Dixon. But instead he compromised his values  of the Blue Vein Society in order to be with the woman he loved, which gives Mr. Ryder a lot of character. Even though the story of the woman who has been searching for her husband for 25 years certainly impacted him, I don't think it altered his decision. I was surprised when he did not choose Mrs. Dixon to take his hand in marriage because she was much younger than he, and seemed to be almost irresistible. A man that decides to go against what society believed to be taboo by marrying a former slave, and being the leader of the white dominated Blue Veins, all while staying loyal to the wife of his youth, deserves the title of a true man.