This document provides background information on Mark Twain and his novel Pudd'nhead Wilson, published in 1894. It discusses Twain's life and career, the themes and issues explored in his writing, including race and identity. Regarding Pudd'nhead Wilson specifically, the summary notes that the story transformed from a comedy to a tragedy in drafting, and is set in a slaveholding Missouri town dealing with issues of race, identity and new fingerprinting technology around the time of the Civil War. It also discusses the historical context of debates around race and discrimination in the late 19th century.

1. Mark Twain’s
Pudd’nhead Wilson
(1894)

2. Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne
Clemens) (1835-1910)
• Missouri native, world traveller, spends most
of his career as a writer in NY/Connecticut.
• humorist, regionalist, known for historical
fiction, travel writing, short stories, satires,
dark allegories on humanity
• best known for Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry
Finn
• Regionalist writing captures sound of
Missouri/Mississippi River dialects
• published work spans Gilded Age
– post Civil War America, time of unchecked
increase in wealth for American industry
owners, capitalists
– Rapid increase in inventions, technology
Photograph of Mark Twain, Century Magazine,
December 1893

3. Twain’s writing: In Time and Out of
Time:
• often looks backward in time: before
Civil War, or into Middle Ages, or even
to Garden of Eden
• looking backward often addresses
issues of Twain’s present moment
• Forward looking “cutting edge” interest
in new technology: typesetting
machines telegraphs/telephones, light
bulb… fingerprinting
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s
Court
• Early interest in defining American
culture as distinct from old Europe
(“The Innocents Abroad”)
• Later writings—increasingly dark satirist
of human vanities and pretensions
(“The Mysterious Stranger”)

4. Pudd’nhead Wilson
• written 1892-3, following
Twain’s lecture tour in Europe
(lots of Italian references)
• Published 1894
• Story completely transforms in
the drafting!
– originally a comedy/farce about
the Italian twins—originally
Siamese twins
– Twain claimed that the story of
Wilson and Tom took over—
changed from comedy to
tragedy
• Setting: 1830-1850s, Dawson’s
Landing = slaveholding Missouri
town on Mississippi River

5. Twain’s interests in Twins
• Chang and Eng (1874)
• Tocci Twins (Italian), born 1875
• Twain’s “Personal Habits of the
Siamese Twins” (1869)
– “Chang” Nye and “Eng” Riley—(duo
humorist and poet on tour) introduced
by Twain as Siamese selves, twinned
minds
• Twin-like, interchangeable
characters in Twain’s fiction:
– Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer
– The Prince and the Pauper (look
identical, change social positions for
a time)

7. 1890s Issues in Pudd’nhead
• New fingerprinting technology
– introduced by Francis Galton,
Finger Prints, 1892
– Twain’s anachronismpre Civil
War case

8. Race Issues in the
Courts, 1890s
• Homer Plessy (left)—
challenges segregation on train
on East Louisiana Railroad
– Explicitly defying state Louisiana
segregation law passed in 1890
– Purposefully stages the event to be
arrested (boards white car,
announces his racial identity)
• Plessy challenges arrest on U.S.
Constitutional grounds
• Judge Ferguson, Criminal
District Court of New Orleans
finds Plessy guilty

9. Plessy vs. Ferguson
• Plessy’s case: His arrest violates the 14th Amendment
• Context: post-Civil War “Reconstruction Amendments” to U. S.
Constitution:
– 13th
Amendment (1865): abolishes slavery, except as punishment for
convicted crime
– 14th
Amendment (1868): All born in U.S. are considered U.S. citizens,
served and protected equally by the law.
• (Also no one who participated in a rebellion against the U.S. can be elected
to government office. And former slave-holders can’t sue the Govt. for
money for “lost property.”)
– 15th
Amendment (1870): Equal Voting Rights (*for men): “The right of
citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by
the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude”
• Plessy appeals all the way to the Supreme Court through the early
to mid 1890s

10. • Supreme Court ruling
(1896, 2 years after
Pudd’nhead Wilson’s
publication) :
• Court rules 8-1 against
Plessy
• Institutes national
“separate but equal”
precedent, in place until
the 1950s / 60s
– Not appealed
successfully until Brown
vs. the Board of
Education (1954)

11. “Race” as “Social Class”?
• Racial Discrimination-- same as social class discrimination?
Plessy vs. Ferguson case: Chief Justice Brown presented race difference as a “social” prejudice and
therefore outside legislation:
• “Laws permitting, and even requiring (the separation of blacks and whites) in places where they are
liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the
other.......... The argument also assumes that social prejudice may be overcome by legislation, and
that equal rights cannot be secured to the Negro except by an enforced commingling of the two
races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet on terms of social equality, it
must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other’s merits and a voluntary
consent of individuals....Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions
based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the
difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one
cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially,
the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane....
• Lone “color blind” Dissent of Justice Harlan: “…in the eye of the law, there is in this country no
superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and
neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal
before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and
takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the
supreme law of the land are involved.”

12. Biological Racism
• “one drop rule” (heredity)
• effect of blood inheritance on abilities, behavior
• Fingerprinting and race in 1890s (Galton and
eugenics)
– Eugenics: control of human population by selective
breeding. Anxieties in U.S. about immigrant and black
populations intermingling with people from NW
Europe
• Fear of Mixed Races: provocative, challenging,
difficult to categorize! Leading to social
instability?

13. Twain and Race
• Twain’s representation of racial
stereotypes—controversial
• How is Twain responding to race issues of
his time?
• Mixed Race issues—source of challenge
to social institutions

14. Stage Adaptation
• Dir. by actor Frank Mayo,
1895
• Involves a white actress
playing Roxy’s character
– (remarked on by reviews)
• Play adaptation: Roxy
mistakenly sends the
wrong boy to the
christening—not planned
• Chambers—given a
larger role–love plot with
Rowena

17. Further Reading
Pudd'nhead Wilson Online Archive:
• http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/wilson/pwhompg.html