The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

First published: 1894

Subjects: Crime, family, race and ethnicity, and social issues

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of work: 1830-1853

Recommended Ages: 15-18

Locale: Dawson’s Landing, a fictitious Missouri village on the Mississippi River

Principal Characters:

• David Wilson, a lawyer whose brilliance is misunderstood by the residents of Dawson’s Landing
• Percy Driscoll, a prosperous businessman whose wife dies shortly after bearing his son in 1830
• Roxy, Driscoll’s mulatto slave, who switches her own baby with Driscoll’s
• Tom Driscoll, (the true Chambers), Roxy’s natural son, who grows up as the son of Percy Driscoll
• Chambers, (the true Tom Driscoll), Percy Driscoll’s natural son, who grows up as the slave Chambers
• Judge York Driscoll, the chief citizen of Dawson’s Landing and the brother of Percy Driscoll, whose son he adopts
• Angelo Capello, and
• Luigi Capello, Italian twins who settle in Dawson’s Landing in 1853

Form and Content

With twenty-two chapters, Pudd’nhead Wilson is half the length of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Unlike that vernacular masterpiece—which is narrated by Huck—Pudd’nhead Wilson is a plain third-person narrative set mostly in one place—Dawson’s Landing, a Southern village modeled on Twain’s boyhood hometown. The novel begins on February 1, 1830, when Percy Driscoll’s wife and his slave Roxy both deliver sons. A week later, Driscoll’s wife dies, leaving Roxy to rear both babies. Around this time, a young lawyer named David Wilson comes to town. An odd remark that he makes immediately gets him branded a “pudd’nhead.” Never able to get a legal case, he makes his living as a surveyor and dabbles at collecting fingerprints—a hobby that makes him appear even more foolish.

Roxy is one-sixteenth African by parentage and could easily pass for white, except for her strong slave dialect. Chambers, her son by a white man, so resembles Driscoll’s son that only she can tell them apart. When the babies are several months old, something happens to make Roxy fear that Chambers might be sold “down the river.” To ensure that this never happens, she decides to drown her baby and herself. A better idea occurs to her, however, and she switches the babies. No one else will guess their true identities for twenty-three years. From this point in the narrative, the boys are known by their false names. Roxy’s son grows up as “Tom Driscoll”; unaware of his true identity, he treats Roxy badly and abuses “Chambers”—the white slave whose place he has taken.

Through the novel’s first five chapters, twenty-three years fly by. Percy Driscoll dies in 1845; on his deathbed, he frees Roxy, who then leaves to work on steamboats. Tom is adopted by Percy’s brother, Judge York Driscoll. Later, Tom attends Yale University, returning home with drinking and gambling habits that get him into serious trouble. By 1853, he is burglarizing houses to pay his gambling debts. That year, aristocratic Italian twins, Angelo and Luigi Capello, arrive in town. When Tom publicly insults them, Luigi kicks him. Tom responds by taking Luigi to court, outraging Judge Driscoll because he has not settled the affair “honorably.” The judge challenges Luigi to a duel himself, but no one is seriously hurt. Afterward, the twins’ popularity soars, as does that of Wilson, who has acted as Luigi’s second in the duel. Tom gets revenge by telling his uncle that Luigi is a confessed assassin, turning the judge against the Italians, with disastrous results.

Meanwhile, Roxy returns home, eager to see Tom, but is distressed to hear about his bad habits. After he greets her rudely, she reveals the truth of his parentage and threatens to expose him as a slave if he does not obey her. Demanding a share of his allowance money, she insists that he clear his debts to avoid jeopardizing his inheritance. Eventually, however, Tom’s financial situation becomes so desperate that Roxy lets him sell her into slavery, until he can buy back her freedom. Tom betrays his mother by selling her down the river, but she escapes from a plantation and makes her way to St. Louis to confront him again. Her fierce insistence that he purchase her freedom immediately drives him to rob his own uncle. While committing this crime, he kills the judge with a knife that he stole earlier from the Capellos, who reach the murder scene immediately after he flees. Charged with murder, the Capellos engage Wilson as their attorney.

The murder trial finally brings Wilson to the fore, letting him demonstrate his true brilliance. The evidence against the twins is overwhelming, but Wilson uses fingerprints to prove that Tom Driscoll handled the murder weapon. Even more sensational is his use of prints to prove that Tom is actually the slave Chambers. Tom is later convicted of murder, but he is pardoned so that he can be sold down the river to pay old debts. Chambers is restored to his place as Judge Driscoll’s heir, but his slave conditioning has left him unable to cope with freedom.

Critical Context

Although The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson has long been classified as part of Mark Twain’s “Mississippi Writings,” which include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it has also long been regarded as untypical of his best work. Its somber tone has doubtless contributed to its comparative lack of popularity. Moreover, its frank treatment of the evils of slavery and its tacit admission of miscegenation (Roxy’s implied sexual liaison with a white man) have also contributed to its past neglect. During the mid-1950’s, a resurgence of interest in the novel began, with one scholar even calling the book a “neglected classic.” Since then, it has found its way increasingly into literature courses, while earning recognition as an important contribution to understanding American identities.

Bibliography

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