89 pages • 2 hours read
Mark TwainThe Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1893A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
Judge York Leicester Driscoll
Jude Driscoll is 40 years old and presides over the county court of Dawson's Landing. He is moderately wealthy, and, at the outset of the book, married, but has no children. Chief among Judge Driscoll's characteristics is that he is a descendant of the First Families of Virginia, the original colonists from England, and maintains the habits, traditions, and social customs of the Virginia Colony. "To be a gentleman—a gentleman without stain or blemish—was his only religion, Twain writes, “and to it he was always faithful." (7) This makes the Judge something of an outsider in Missouri, which is at the edge of the American expansion to the west.
For Twain, Judge Driscoll represents the "old world," the slave-owning society that clung to the customs and values of England and Europe. Tom's ungentlemanly behavior will stun Judge Driscoll and lead him to risk his life in a duel to maintain the family's honor, and Judge Driscoll's inability to see Tom for what he really is will ultimately lead to the Judge's death.
David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson
David Wilson is the hero of the story, and a new arrival to Dawson's Landing when the story opens. By virtue of having been born and educated on the East Coast, he is something of an enigma to the plain-spoken inhabitants of Dawson's Landing. An early sarcastic remark confounds the townspeople, who label him a fool. "The incident was told all over town, and gravely discussed by everybody. Within a week he had lost his first name; Pudd'nhead took its place," Twain writes (10).
For Twain, Wilson's plight represents the constrictions of American society that exist even in the remote outpost of Missouri. Wilson's social standing rests on one seemingly insignificant remark, a less extreme example of the way Black people’s freedom hinges on the trivial matter of skin color. Such is the nature of society, in which a person's worth is ignored in a rush to judgment and exploitation. Wilson will eventually be vindicated, but it will take twenty years and Judge Driscoll's death for the townspeople to change their opinion of the man they call Pudd'nhead.
Tom Driscoll
Tom is the villain of the story, an amoral and despicable man who, given a chance to escape the slavery he was born into, uses his advantages only to feed his addictions and shame others. In opposition to the hero, Pudd'nhead Wilson, Tom exists only to cause trouble for others. His downfall comes about by his own hand, when Tom's addiction to gambling ensnares him in debt, as does his agreement to pay his mother in return for her silence.
Tom shows how lies have a snowball effect, and immorality is a downward slippery slope. Once Tom has gambling debts, he looks for an easy way out, leading him to rob his neighbors. After that, it is much easier for Tom to escalate his dishonest acts rather than face up to his failings. The path to this kind of life is an easy one, Twain points out: one bad decision leads to another and another, and each moral failing makes the next one even easier to excuse.
Roxana
Roxy is 1/16th Black, enough to lead to a life of slavery, although she could, it seems, pass for white outside of Dawson's Landing where she is known. Roxy has a baby with Colonel Cecil Essex. The reader is not told anything about this relationship, though it is obvious that Colonel Essex, a white man, is in a position of power with respect to Roxy. As an enslaved person, Roxy lives under the threat of being sold "down the river," and like every mother, she wants a better life for her son. The modern reader, then, is sympathetic to Roxy's plight and her decision to switch her baby Chambers for Tom Driscoll.
Roxy's decision to switch the babies, more than any other element, drives the plot of Pudd'nhead Wilson. Had meek and docile Chambers been raised by Judge Driscoll, he surely would not have murdered his uncle. Wilson's fascination with fingerprinting would have simply been an interesting hobby rather than the key to solving a mystery.
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By Mark Twain
