Acknowledgments and Willful Ignorance

        "The Wife of His Youth" posed many controversial two-sided "love"-in-the-context-of-society questions. At first, I completely--and accidentally--ignored the title of the reading which, according to other students' presentations today, I wasn't the only one. So when it came down to figuring out that Ryder had been 'Liza Jane's  husband whom she had been searching for for 25 years, I didn't make the connection until he proposed all the reasons why "Sam" may not have found her or made the effort to do so. Some of his reasons including: he had outgrown her by moving up in society, he had died a long time ago, ". . .time works great changes" and she may not recognize him, or he may have married another woman (Chesnutt 701).
      The story becomes painful to read when she insistantly pleas that her Sam would never do such a thing because he was so very fond of her. It gets even harder to bare when she insists that he must still be looking for her, too. My heart sank when he simply took down her address at the end of their conversation instead of acknowledging her as the wife of his youth. As I read on, I realized why he had done such a thing, other than the many reasons he had already proposed to her. It all becomes clear during the dinner at his ball when the toasts are being made. He recounts the conversation he had had with the old woman just hours earlier and asks his audience, including Blue Vein members and the woman Ryder was hoping to propose to that very night, what the man in the story should have done. His prospective bride-to-be is the first one to suggest that he should have acknowledged her and the rest of the guests follow in agreement. It's then that he introduces 'Liza Jane. My big question is, if they had agreed that he should have gone on being willfully ignorant of her existence, would he have introduced her still?