Monday, April 17, 2017

Nostalgic Shift in Twain’s Works (Week 9)

Image result for pudd'nhead wilsonLike The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain’s 1894 short work Pudd’nhead Wilson relies a great deal on nostalgia for its success. However, whereas The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn relied on childhood nostalgia and a longing for a state of confirmed innocence, Pudd’nhead Wilson reaches for nostalgia of a time when, for many of the people present, life was not anything to be longed for. Published around a time when Regionalist writing was sought after and so-called “Plantation Romances” were rampant, Twain’s short work seeks to play off these successes and in traditional Twain fashion, shed light on what was a morally fraught period of time in both society and literature.
At the beginning of the novel, the short, lighthearted quips regarding how Pudd’nhead got his name establish the extremely particular tone of this work. This work is definitely a departure from his other pieces of humor writing – the humor is very much still present, but in a more calculated, subdued manner than with his two famous boy protagonists. This shift is in part due to Twain’s struggles with his bad faith history of slavery. Twain recalls his views of slavery when he was a boy, and how excused it was – the changing, maturing views of Twain regarding slavery conflict with his memories of his childhood because he is nostalgic for a time which he now knows is wrong. I believe that this uncomfortableness gets channeled into Pudd’nhead Wilson in order to satirize the Plantation Romance form, and question nostalgia entirely. How is one supposed to be nostalgic for such a time?

Image result for pudd'nhead wilson

That said, in classic Twain fashion humor is still utilized to set up the story. When the town is described, Twain writes “Dawson’s Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich slave-worked grain and pork country back of it. The town was sleepy and comfortable and contented. It was fifty years old, and was growing slowly—very slowly, in fact, but still it was growing. The chief citizen was York Leicester Driscoll, about forty years old, judge of the county court. He was very proud of his old Virginian ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately manners he kept up its traditions. He was fine and just and generous. To be a gentleman—a gentleman without stain or blemish—was his only religion, and to it he was always faithful. He was respected, esteemed and beloved by all the community.”
The dichotomy of right and wrong is immediately hinted at here with the establishment of a description of slavery right next to the seeming pinnacle of moral righteousness. Nostalgia is utilized in that all seems like a time of prosperity, and it just seems so easy to be morally good in a time such as this. If Mr. Driscoll found it so easy to be a gentleman, why could not the readers do the same? Ultimately, Twain’s work relies heavily on a contemplative nostalgia rather than his usual childlike nostalgia to work through his own childhood traumas regarding slavery, and this is firmly established in the first few pages of the novel.



 Images taken from: http://homes.lmc.gatech.edu/~heneghan/11foreigners/PuddheadA.htm
http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/wilson/pwplayhp.html

All outside information is taken from class materials in Dr. Beringer's ENG 405 class.

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