Compare and Contrast Mrs. Molly Dixon and Liza Jane.

Liza Jane

Liza Jane is an older black woman who was born as a slave. Before the Civil War, she was married to a freeborn man by the name Sam Taylor, whom she helped to escape when she learned he was to be sold into slavery. She visits the house of Mr. Ryder to ask about her husband, who has not returned for her as he promised. Mr. Ryder discourages her, but she refuses to give up her search for Sam and leaves him with the picture of her husband as a young man. At the end of her story Mr. Ryder, influenced by her fidelity and love for her husband, introduces her “as the wife of his youth.”

Molly Dixon

Molly Dixon is a beautiful, educated, well-mannered, and fairly young widow of mixed race whom Mr Ryder falls in love with. The ball, where Mr. Ryder acknowledges his former wife, is organized in Molly’s honor, and she is the first to say that the man in the story should acknowledge the wife of his youth.