I really enjoyed reading Pudd'nhead Wilson not so much because of the storyline, but because of Twain's writing style. (I don't remember Huckleberry Finn being so much the same way, but it's also very possible I've forgotten in six years since I read that).
Twain's voice in Pudd'nhead Wilson expresses, if taken at face value, a pro-slavery account very sympathetic to the slave owners not uncommon from a white male in Missouri. When read ironically, however, there is a completely different message on slavery.
Take, for instance, the passage on p. 13, in which Mr. Driscoll "rewards" his slaves for their honesty in admitting they had committed a petty theft. Instead of selling them all down the river, he opts to sell them within the town — still treating them like property, and still uprooting their existences, but just to a lower extent than he had the capability to.
"The culprits flung themselves prone, in an ecstasy of gratitude, and kissed his feet, declaring that they would never forget his goodness ... He knew, himself, that he had done a noble and gracious thing, and he was privately well placed with his magnanimity; and that night he set the incident down in his diary, so that his son might read it in after years and be thereby moved to deeds of gentleness and humanity himself."
Declaring Mr. Driscoll's selling of his slaves as magnanimous, rather than a more moderate "not completely cruel", creates a very interesting tongue-in-cheek discourse on the delusional nature of slaveholders at the time.
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ReplyDeletelike your interpretation of how a reader could view Twain's voice as both pro-slavery and as ironic. It is my belief that the individual reader must ultimately come up with his or her own opinion on the matter. However, I personally believe that when this book was published in 1894 (almost 50 years after the Civil War), Twain is trying to portray that slavery is still an issue, at the very least, in America.
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