Pudd'nhead Wilson

1894
Mark Twain
Pudd'nhead Wilson, A Tale
B


While there are traces of Those Extraordinary Twins, including Tom's insult of "philophena" (a nut with two kernels), Twain indeed drew an independent, and equally good, novella out of that short story.  It's a tale without a clear hero or heroine.  Wilson is probably the most admirable person in town, but he's off page for much of the story.  Roxy comes close to being the heroine, but she does some immoral things, like lying and stealing, although as Twain points out, the crimes of the slaves are minimal compared to the abomination of slavery.  Her son Tom is our anti-hero, and yet he is as much a victim as a villain.  His mother switches him with the master's baby.  (They're equally white-skinned, but "blackness" is more than skin deep in that time and place.)  She wants to save him from being sold down the river, but that's what happens after he's pardoned for the murder of his "uncle."  It is a karmic punishment (he'd already sold his mother), but it's not so much his legal punishment as payment of the debts he's run up as a spoiled white man.


This all sounds bleaker than it is.  There's the usual dry Twain humor, not just with the twins, but throughout.  In fact, even the tragedies are told humorously.  (An alternate title is The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson.)  Unlike in many switched-baby stories, the truth is revealed not by Roxy's confession but by the science of fingerprints.  Mr. Wilson turns out to not be such a pudd'nhead after all.