The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line, published in 1899 by Charles Chesnutt, all concern the reappearance of a racially significant relative into the protagonist's life. These protagonists are on "the color-line:" many of them are of mixed race and, if they're not capable of passing as white, they at least hold some valuable distance from the stereotypes of black slaves working on a plantation. Their status is threatened when they are associated with a blacker relative or friend. The uncontrollable visitations cause a lot of worry to the protagonists, who rarely explicitly admit that their discomfort has to do with race. Chesnutt's stories were intended for a white audience. He writes elsewhere that his literary goal was to outline and detail his points undetected. The narrator's voice is strangely uninflected, and makes no argument: William Dean Howells, in his review of "The Wife of his Youth," writes that "the story was notable for the passionless handling of a phase of our common life which is tense with potential tragedy; for the attitude, almost ironical, in which the artist observes the play of contesting emotions in the drama under his eyes..." A prejudiced reader would immediately shut down any outright argument in favor of blacks. Race is not a vocalized issue in the stories, but sneaks in to change the established emotions and alliances of what began as a simple, naturalist narrative. Likewise, the feelings of panic that the characters experience is only gradually revealed to be related to race. Even after this addition, the stories never lose their traditional narrative tension, and that's what makes them so enjoyable to read.
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