Puddn´head Wilson

Mark Twain’s novel Pudd’nhead Wilson as a critique of 19th Century hierarchies based on racial segregation

Mark Twain was born on November 30th of the year 1835 in Florida, Missouri. His first job was as a printer and 1856 as a steamboat officer. After brief service in the Civil War he started writing as a journalist and later as an author. His first popular book was “Innocents Abroad” (1869), followed by “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” (1876). “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson” (1894) was one of his last novels. After this novel was published Twain had to experience a series of painful experiences within his family life. For the following years Twain´s literature became rather dull and negative. One of his last published works was “What is Man” in 1906.

The novel “Pudd´nhead Wilson” by Mark Twain was

written in 1893 and published 1894. The time it was published

in was a very difficult period of American history, namely the

period of Post-Reconstruction. The reintegration of slaves,

African Americans, had failed and certain laws were set up in

order to maintain the divisions between b

“Tom rained cuffs upon the head and its shield, saying no word: the victim received each blow with a beseeching ‘Please, Marse Tom!’... The last one helped the pure-white slave over the door sill,...Then he flung himself panting on the sofa again, and rasped out the remark, ‘He arrived just at the right moment; I was full to the brim with bitter thinkings, and nobody to take it out of. How refreshing it was! I feel better.’” (46)

sixteenth did not show. She was of majestic form and stature; her attitudes were imposing and statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by a noble and stately grace. Her complexion was very fair, with the rosy glow of vigorous health in the cheeks, her face was full of character and expression, her eyes were brown and liquid, and she had a heavy suit of fine soft hair which was also brown … To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteenth parts and made her a negro. She was a slave, and saleable as such.” (12,13)

of the “free thinker” in the society of Dawson’s Landing. This is Twain’s support of a mythic American notion of individual freedom, and a critique against the mass, that doesn’t think for themselves. We remember that Wilson fails as a lawyer, right from his start in Dawson’s Landing. He doesn’t fail as a lawyer because of his lack of ability, but because he is seen in a certain way by the town.

Some topics in this essay:
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