The Wife of His Youth: Metaphors 2 key examples

Here, the narrator describes how members of the Blue Veins Society see the organization as “a lifeboat, an anchor, a bulwark and a shield,” as well as “a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night […] guid[ing] their people through the social wilderness.” These metaphors are all extremely evocative and communicate how deeply the members of the Society appreciate its presence in their lives. As mixed race people, the members of the organization likely feel alienated from both white and Black spaces and therefore feel that the Society is “a lifeboat” keeping them afloat. It also guides their way through a hostile wilderness, as the "pillar of cloud [...] and of fire" guided the people of Israel in the Bible's account of the Israelites' escape from enslavement in Egypt—an allusion that wouldn't be lost on Chesnutt's audience.

While Chesnutt is acknowledging the importance of mixed race societies like this (he was a member of one himself), he is also raising questions about their usefulness here. This comes across in the way he describes how the very people who view the Society as a “lifeboat” or “shield” once viewed it as “a glaring example of the very prejudice from which the colored race had suffered most” and only changed their minds once they were granted admission. Here Chesnutt is subtly criticizing mixed race people who move from solidarity with the (darker-skinned) Black community to comfort with being amongst the more privileged, lighter-skinned—usually higher-class—members of their race.

The simile here—in which the narrator describes how Eliza Jane “looked like a bit of the old plantation life”—immediately draws a connection between Eliza Jane and slavery. This is because she is old, has dark skin, and wears simple clothing (thereby suggesting a lower-class status). Though Mr. Ryder doesn’t yet realize that this is the formerly enslaved woman he married when he was a young apprentice on a plantation, the fact that he immediately sees her and thinks of the plantation suggests that, at least subconsciously, he knows who she is.

The metaphor here—in which the narrator metaphorically describes how Eliza Jane was “summoned up from the past by the wave of a magician’s wand”—further hints at how Mr. Ryder is, perhaps on an unconscious level, aware that this woman is someone he knew in the past. While he tried to create a new identity for himself in the North after the Civil War, he ultimately must face his past—and his history with Eliza Jane—before the end of the story.