Use of AAVE in The Wife of His Youth

African American Vernacular English, usually abbreviated to AAVE, is a common dialect among African Americans. AAVE is the natural accent of many Americans, so it has unsurprisingly been represented countless times in the media. It is even common in different written forms, with some authors writing in predominantly AAVE. Zora Neale Hurston is a prominent example of an author who uses AAVE to bring her readers into her writing. She writes in different styles to represent the region from which her characters originate, but most of her writing takes place in the Southern United States. Charles Chesnutt also used AAVE in some of his stories, including The Wife of His Youth.

AAVE has been appropriated in racist ways by White people, beginning during slavery. Minstrel shows involving blackface, racist dances and impressions, and the imitation of AAVE was at one point a staple of American culture. Because of this terrible history with the racist mockery of AAVE and Black culture, using AAVE in writing is not very popular anymore, including among Black authors. When Chesnutt was writing The Wife of His Youth, the use of AAVE when writing for Black characters was still common. His use of it in this story still had the uncomfortable feeling of mockery in some of the dialogue. 

Taking place in contemporary times, about 30 years after the end of the Civil War, the story centers around a Black man living in a Northern town. He and his social circle pride themselves on ignoring Black culture. He is the president of a Black social club that discriminates based on skin color and he and his friends try to mimic White culture whenever they can. Their mimicry even extends to racism and prejudice against other Black people for having dark skin and speaking with AAVE. Mr. Ryder, the main character, is visited by Eliza Jane, a dark-skinned Black woman. She is described as having impossible dark, blue-brown features. Her voice is almost unintelligible in the way it is written. She speaks not only in AAVE, but as if she is a slave speaking to a White person. She uses words like “Suh” after almost every sentence and treats Ryder as if he is of better character than her. Ryder treats her with an unexpected level of respect and allows her to tell him the story of her previous life and marriage. 

In this text, AAVE is used to show social class. Although it is revealed that Ryder grew up on the same plantation as Eliza and that she is in fact The Wife of His Youth, he has taught himself to speak in a White dialect in order to fit in. Because of Eliza’s skin color and the way that she speaks, she is discriminated against even among other Black people. And although Ryder and his friends may speak in “proper” English, they are all likely code-switching or changing their accents in order to fit in. The Wife of His Youth is a particularly interesting piece because it is not often that discrimination is seen based on speech among different social classes of Black people. I think that although AAVE is not popular for writing dialogue anymore, it can still be effective to see how people spoke centuries ago.