Pudd'nhead Wilson: the Story, Chapters I to X
Chapter Thirty-Six
Syllabus topic 1.5, "Puddn'head Wilson - Mark Twain"
Pages 178 to 181 of 406
In one line
A lawyer ruins his practice with one joke, a slave woman saves her son from being sold by putting him in her master's cradle, and the two boys grow up as master and servant with nobody in the world knowing except her.
The chapters
I, "Pudd'nhead Wins His Name". David Wilson, newly arrived from New York, hears a dog howling and says he wishes he owned half of it so that he could kill his half. The town takes this literally, decides he is a fool, and nicknames him Pudd'nhead. His legal practice never recovers, and he lives by surveying and accounts for twenty years while pursuing two hobbies: palmistry and the collecting of finger-prints on glass slides.
II, "Driscoll Spares His Slaves". Percy Driscoll loses small sums to a thief among his four slaves. He threatens to sell all four down the river unless the guilty one confesses, and three confess at once out of terror. He congratulates himself on his mercy for selling them only within the state, and enters the fact in his diary as a generous act. Roxy, who is the fourth, was the thief and was not suspected.
How the chapter works. Twain shows the threat, the terror it produces, and the master's satisfaction with his own kindness, in that order. Nothing in the rest of the book is possible without the reader believing that being sold down the river is worth any risk to avoid.
III, "Roxy Plays a Shrewd Trick". In chapter III Roxy, having seen how close the four came to the river, dresses her own child in the master's baby's clothes and puts him in the master's cradle, and puts the master's son in her own. The children are five months old and indistinguishable. She practises on herself until she can call her own son Master Tom without flinching, and after a while she almost believes it.
IV, "The Ways of the Changelings". In chapter IV the two boys grow. The false Tom is spoiled, greedy and cruel, and Chambers, who is the real heir, becomes his servant and takes his beatings. Roxy discovers that she cannot treat her own son as a son, because he treats her as a slave.
V, "The Twins Thrill Dawson's Landing". Luigi and Angelo Capello arrive and the town is captivated. This is the chapter headed by the calendar entry that states the novel's theme: "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond."
VI, "Swimming in Glory". Chapter VI is the twins at the height of their popularity, entertained everywhere while the town competes to receive them.
VII, "The Unknown Nymph". A mysterious young woman is glimpsed in Tom's room. She is Tom himself, in the disguise he uses for his thefts, though the reader does not learn that until chapter X.
Pudd'nhead Wilson: the Story, Chapters I to X
VIII, "Marse Tom Tramples His Chance". In chapter VIII Roxy, freed by her master's will and returned to Dawson's Landing after years as a chambermaid on a steamboat, comes to her son for help. She has lost her savings in a bank failure. Tom refuses her contemptuously, and she turns on him.
IX, "Tom Practises Sycophancy". In chapter IX Roxy tells him what he is: not the heir, not white in law, her own son, and a slave whom she put in the cradle. He can be sold if it is known, and from this point she has him.
X, "The Nymph Revealed". Chapter X is where Tom's world collapses. Twain gives him a moment of something like conscience, and then he begins to steal to pay his gambling debts, dressed in the woman's disguise of chapter VII, and to plot.
The three legal facts planted in these chapters
One. A slave is property, and property can be sold. The threat in chapter II is not cruelty for its own sake. It is the exercise of an owner's right, and the diary entry that follows it is a man congratulating himself on not exercising the right fully.
Two. Descent decides status, and appearance does not. Twain states the rule in chapter II in the passage every answer on this book should use:
To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro. She was a slave, and salable as such. Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a negro.
Three. Status passes through the mother. That is why the child of a white father and a slave mother is a slave. The novel does not state the rule as a rule, and it does not need to: the whole plot rests on it, and a law student should be able to name it.
What Roxy's act actually is
Consider it as a lawyer would, because an examiner may ask you to judge her.
In law, at the time, it is a fraud on the estate. She converts one item of her master's property into his heir and removes his heir into slavery. The creditors' complaint in the conclusion is founded on exactly this.
In fact it is a mother saving her child from a fate she has just watched three people beg to avoid. She does not do it for gain and takes nothing for herself.
Pudd'nhead Wilson: the Story, Chapters I to X
And the novel makes her pay for it twice. Her son treats her as a slave, and then sells her down the river himself, which is the crime the book cannot forgive.
How to use this in an answer. Say that Twain sets the law's description of the act against the human description, and that the gap between them is the subject of the novel.
What beginners get wrong
They call Roxy a villain. The novel's judgment is on the system that made her choice worth making.
They forget Tom is not the heir from the beginning. He is put in the cradle at seven months and knows nothing about it until chapter IX.
They skip chapter II. The threat of the river is the premise of everything, and an answer that starts at the substitution has left out why it happened.
A worked answer
Question. Reference to context: "by a fiction of law and custom a negro."
The two-sentence answer. These words are the narrator's, in chapter II of Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, describing Roxana's infant son, who is thirty-one parts white and indistinguishable from his master's child but is a slave nonetheless. Twain has just said that the one sixteenth of Roxy which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro, salable as such, and the phrase concedes that the classification is something the law assigns rather than anything that can be observed.
Why an examiner sets it. Because the whole plot depends on it. If identity were a natural fact the exchange in the cradle could not work, and it works precisely because the only difference between the two babies is a legal label and a set of clothes.
Quick revision
I: the joke about the dog; the nickname; the finger-print records.
II: the theft, the threat to sell all four down the river, three confessions, the master's satisfaction, and the passage on the one sixteenth.
III: Roxy exchanges the babies at five months and trains herself to believe it.
IV: the changelings grow; Tom is cruel and Chambers serves him.
V to VII: the twins arrive and are lionised; the calendar entry "Training is everything" heads chapter V; the unknown nymph in Tom's room is Tom in disguise.
VIII to X: Roxy returns ruined, is refused, and tells Tom who he is; Tom turns to theft and disguise. The public kicking is later, in chapter XI.
Test yourself
1. How does Wilson get his nickname, and what does it cost him? He says of a howling dog that he wishes he owned half of it so that he could kill his half. The town takes it literally and concludes he is a fool, and he gets no legal practice for twenty years.
Pudd'nhead Wilson: the Story, Chapters I to X
2. What happens in chapter II, and why is it necessary to the plot? Percy Driscoll threatens to sell all four of his slaves down the river unless the thief confesses; three confess in terror; he sells them within the state instead and records his own generosity. It is necessary because it establishes what Roxy is trying to save her son from.
3. Quote and explain the passage on Roxy's status. That the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro, salable as such, and that her child, thirty-one parts white, was also a slave and by a fiction of law and custom a negro. It states that status is assigned by law rather than observed.
4. Why can Roxy's substitution succeed? Because the two children are the same age and indistinguishable in appearance, and because status depends on descent through the mother rather than on anything visible. The only difference between them is their clothes.
5. What does Roxy get for what she did? Her son treats her as a slave, refuses her when she is ruined, and later sells her down the river himself.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.