Slavery, and the Law That Makes the Plot Possible
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Syllabus topic 1.5, "Puddn'head Wilson - Mark Twain"
Pages 191 to 194 of 406
In one line
The plot works because in this society a person's status was decided by descent through the mother and by a fraction of ancestry rather than by anything anybody could see, so two identical babies could be given opposite futures by changing their clothes.
The three rules the novel rests on
Twain never states any of them as a rule. He does not need to, and a law student's job is to name what the novel assumes.
One. Status follows the mother. A child born to an enslaved woman was a slave, whoever the father was. This is why Roxy's son, whose father was a white gentleman of the town, is a slave from birth.
Two. A fraction of ancestry decides classification. Roxy is one sixteenth black. Her son is thirty-one parts white. Both are classified as black and enslaved. Twain's sentence is the whole point and should be quoted in any answer.
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. A slave is chattel, that is, personal property. He or she can be bought, sold, mortgaged, inventoried on death and claimed by creditors. Everything in the Conclusion follows from this.
Why "a fiction of law and custom" is the key phrase
What a legal fiction is. A statement that a court or a system treats as true for legal purposes although it is known not to be true, adopted because some rule depends on it.
What Twain is saying. That the classification of these people as black is not a description of them but an assignment made by law and habit. He puts the word "fiction" in himself, which saves a student from having to argue the point.
Why it matters to the plot. If identity were a natural fact, the exchange in the cradle could not work. It works precisely because the only thing that distinguishes the two babies is a legal label and a set of clothes. Twain's argument is that a system which can be defeated by swapping two blankets was never describing anything real.
The four places the law does the work
The threat, chapter II. Percy Driscoll can lawfully sell four human beings down the river for a small theft, and sells them within the state instead and records his own mercy in a diary. The novel's whole motive force is an owner's lawful power.
The exchange, chapter III. Roxy converts one piece of her master's property into his heir and puts his heir into slavery. In law it is a fraud on the estate; in fact it is a mother acting on a terror the reader has just watched three people show.
Slavery, and the Law That Makes the Plot Possible
The sale of Roxy, chapter XVI. Tom sells his own mother. He can do it because she is saleable and because a sale is a transaction the law will support.
The Conclusion. Tom is convicted of murder and sentenced to imprisonment for life. Then the creditors of the Percy Driscoll estate claim him as an asset wrongly omitted from an inventory eight years earlier, and argue that they should not bear the loss of his services. Twain reports the town's reasoning without adding a word of his own.
Everybody granted that if "Tom" were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him, it would be no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life, that was quite another matter.
The Governor pardons him and the creditors sell him down the river.
What the ending actually says about law
Three propositions, and any of them will carry an essay.
One. Property beat crime. A murderer's punishment was set aside because carrying it out would have destroyed value belonging to innocent third parties. The criminal law simply gave way.
Two. Punishment attached to status, not to conduct. The same man, if white, would have gone to prison. Being a slave, he went to the plantations. The wrong he did made no difference to which happened.
Three. The law's own paperwork decided a life. The creditors' claim rests on an error in an inventory. A clerical omission eight years earlier is what stands between a man and a life sentence, and Twain lets that sit without comment.
Identity, and the nature-and-nurture question
An examiner may set this as a theme rather than a legal question, and the two overlap.
The novel's evidence for nurture. The false Tom, raised as a master's son, is spoiled, cowardly and cruel. The real heir, raised as a slave, is servile. When they are restored to their true positions, the real heir cannot use his freedom: he cannot read, his manners are a slave's, and Twain says he was at home nowhere. Twenty-three years of treatment produced two people, and their birth had nothing to do with it.
The novel's complication. Twain also writes lines that sound like the older view, that Tom's bad qualities came from "the nigger in him", and readers have argued about them for a century. The best position for a student is that these are Tom's own thoughts and the town's assumptions, reported by a narrator who spends the whole book demonstrating the opposite, and that the calendar entry heading chapter V settles Twain's own view: "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond."
Slavery, and the Law That Makes the Plot Possible
What beginners get wrong
They describe the rule as "the one-drop rule" without checking. In this book the fractions are stated: one sixteenth for Roxy, thirty-one parts white for her son. Use Twain's own figures.
They think the pardon is mercy. It is an accounting decision, and Twain makes the reasoning explicit.
They treat the substitution as unbelievable. It is believable exactly because the law's categories had no physical content, which is the argument.
They leave the creditors out of an answer on the law. The creditors are the law's last word in this book.
A worked answer
Question. "How does the law of slavery drive the plot of Pudd'nhead Wilson?"
Step one, name the three rules the novel never states. That the status of a child follows the mother, so a slave woman's child is a slave whoever the father was; that a fraction of ancestry classifies a person regardless of appearance; and that a slave is chattel, capable of being bought, sold, mortgaged, inventoried on death and claimed by creditors.
Step two, show the first two producing the premise. Roxy is one sixteenth black and looks white. Her son is thirty-one parts white. Both are slaves, and Twain writes that the boy is a negro by a fiction of law and custom. Because nothing physical corresponds to the difference, two indistinguishable babies can be given opposite futures by changing their clothes.
Step three, show the third producing the plot's four turning points. Percy Driscoll can lawfully threaten to sell four human beings down the river for a small theft, which is what frightens Roxy into acting. Roxy can be sold by her own son in chapter XVI. And in the Conclusion the creditors can claim a convicted murderer as an asset left off an inventory.
Step four, state the conclusion. The law of slavery is not background in this novel; it is the mechanism. It supplies the motive for the substitution, the means of the worst act in the book, and the ending, in which a murderer is pardoned because imprisoning him would waste value belonging to somebody else.
Quick revision
Three rules assumed and never stated: status follows the mother; a fraction of ancestry classifies; a slave is chattel.
Twain's phrase: "by a fiction of law and custom a negro". Roxy one sixteenth black, her son thirty-one parts white, both slaves.
Four legal events: the threat to sell four slaves down the river; the exchange in the cradle; the sale of Roxy by her son; and the creditors' claim in the Conclusion.
Slavery, and the Law That Makes the Plot Possible
The ending: convicted, sentenced to life, pardoned because he is a valuable asset, and sold down the river.
Nature and nurture: two boys shaped entirely by how they were treated, and a calendar entry that says training is everything.
Test yourself
1. State the three legal rules the plot assumes. That the status of a child follows the mother, so a slave woman's child is a slave; that a fraction of ancestry classifies a person as black regardless of appearance; and that a slave is chattel, capable of being sold, inventoried and claimed by creditors.
2. Quote and explain Twain's phrase about the fiction. That Roxy's child was "by a fiction of law and custom a negro". A legal fiction is something treated as true for legal purposes although known not to be true, and Twain is saying the classification is an assignment made by law rather than a description of the person.
3. Why does the exchange in the cradle succeed? Because the two babies are indistinguishable and the only things that separate them are their clothes and a legal label. Nothing physical corresponds to the difference the law makes.
4. Explain the legal position at the end of the novel. Tom confesses to murder and is sentenced to imprisonment for life. The creditors of the Percy Driscoll estate then claim him as their property, wrongly left off an inventory eight years before, and argue they should not lose his value. The Governor pardons him and the creditors sell him down the river.
5. What does the ending show about the relationship between property law and criminal law in that society? That property won. A man's punishment for murder was set aside because inflicting it would have destroyed an asset belonging to somebody else, so what happened to him was decided by his status as property and not by what he had done.
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.