The post-emancipation world gave many African Americans the opportunity to begin lives outside the constricted and oppressive milieu of both the old South and the new post-war South in which a renewed form of oppression was instituted with thr Jim Crow era. In the North, despite the discrimination and segregation that existed there as well, African Americans established themselves as both working-class and professional people and were often successful in overcoming much of the prejudice that was relentlessly directed against them.

One of the themes of "The Wife of His Youth," however, is that it was much easier for lighter-skinned people to do this. There was not merely the phenomenon of "white passing" but also the fact that white people were less likely to discriminate against even light-skinned African Americans who were not trying to pass than against those with a darker complexion. And, as Charles Chesnutt's story indicates, even within the African American community, a subtle prejudice was carried out based on skin color.

The members of the Blue Vein Society are described as "more white than black." Though the members deny it, claiming that membership rests only on education and accomplishments, it's obviously not a mere coincidence that the Blue Veins tend to be very light-skinned. Such people have the advantage of being favored, or less discriminated against, by the white citizens, but the same dynamic seems to exist among some African Americans as well, at least subliminally.

The forced separation of married couples among enslaved people was, of course, one of the most tragic consequences of the system of slavery. Yet in the scenario presented in Chesnutt's story, it's as if freedom has paradoxically made the circumstances of such separations worse by giving some individuals separated from their spouses the chance to raise their social status while others cannot. Once divided from each other, one member of a couple can establish a new life denied to the other. And there would be nothing legally to keep them together if, as alluded to in the narrative, it was a "slave marriage" which was not considered valid after Emancipation.

This is the premise of Chesnutt's powerful tale. The social gulf between Mr. Ryder and Liza Jane is perhaps emphasized in the most forceful way by their difference in speech. It was typical at that time (1898) and even later for both black and white writers to convey non-standard speech—in what today seems an exaggerated and possibly demeaning manner—as a literal transcript of a dialect's unusual pronunciation.

But the pathos of the situation is enhanced by this contrast and by that presented at the sumptuous ball of the Blue Veins, in which Ryder introduces Liza Jane as the "Wife of his Youth."