The Paradigm of Geneology in Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain is a “genealogical puzzle” of a novel as the one-drop rule subjects characters into a tragic existence. The pseudoscience of race and what makes up whiteness and blackness are prevalent themes in Roxy’s complicated victimhood. Her self-loathing serves as the catalyst of Tom’s and Chambers’s fates as her decisions were based on her internalized racism and her repressed white supremacy.

The term “double-consciousness” was coined by W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk, which describes the internal conflicts of a minority group in an oppressive society. In relation to his own struggles, Du Bois details that the general African-American experience is viewing and evaluating themselves through a white perspective. Although Du Bois’s piece was published later than Pudd’nhead Wilson, Roxy is the perfect embodiment of double-consciousness as “she had an easy, independent carriage — when she was among her own caste — and a high and 'sassy' way” as “she was meek and humble enough where white people were”. She modified her identity depending on who she was with, ultimately using it as a self-defense mechanism to adjust “the twoness… an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body” as she continued to regard herself as alone in a strictly black-and-white society. The problem she faces with her split-identity contributes to her self-destructive behavior and as she projects her insecurities onto Tom and Chambers.

This then leads into the tumultuous relationship between “Tom” and Roxy, where Tom justifies his treatment of Roxy through pseudoscience by citing the alleged biological differences between white and black people. For example, in Types of Mankind, Greeks and chimpanzees were described as true dichotomies, placing black people in-between the two. Considering the time period the novel was written and set in, research such as that would be cited as a credible source.

So, compare Roxy with Tom, who berates Roxy by teaching her “her place” since “things, from a 'nigger,' were repulsive to him, and she had been warned to keep her distance and remember who she was”. The dramatic irony of this scene is Shakespearean in nature (likened to The Comedy of Errors) as the audience knows about Tom and Chambers being switched at birth. As satirical as this scene is, it challenges “the changing status of race relations in nineteenth-century America”. The audience has to question what it means to have a miniscule drop of “black blood” in their bodies and how it does, or does not, qualify a person as black — even as unaware as Tom is.

This “vexed issue of race” is further complicated as the idea of nature versus nurture is brought up from Roxy as she informs Tom that his “cowardice comes from his Negro blood”, which is what made him refuse the duel. This statement reiterates Roxy’s internalized racism, who not only caused Tom’s miserable fate, but continued to reinforce racism by claiming that his drop of black blood contributed to his gambling and violent behavior towards Judge Driscoll. As displayed by this interaction, Roxy revealed the truth about Tom’s genealogy only because it was relevant to the conversation.

Citing a previous research paper of mine, racism is not hereditary, but is rather learned from people who enforce such ideas — or, in other words, is nurtured. This dangerous cycle of exploitation and prejudice becomes inescapable due to the groupthink behavior. Even Charles Darwin’s theories, including Social Darwinism, were harmful because it allowed people to cite black people as lesser beings in pursuit of the “survival of the fittest”. These combined harmful ideologies allowed white people to seek validation for the way they treated African-Americans, so much so that the ideology spread onto them — hence Roxy’s reasoning for Tom’s irrational behavior.

Thus, Tom’s tirade comes to an end when he is made aware of “the race ideology of his slave mother”. This prompts him to “think differently” as he questioned “why niggers and whites were made and what crime did the uncreated first nigger commit that the curse of birth was decreed for him?” and “why is this awful difference made between white and black?”. He also acknowledges “how hard the nigger's fate seems to him this morning” compared to “last night as such a thought never entered his head,” highlighting that a change in social position leads to a different, more sympathetic mindset. However to Tom, being black is worse than death as he tells himself, “A nigger! I am a nigger! Oh, I wish I was dead!”.

The relevance of race was also brought up from Wilson, as he presumed the “drop of black blood in Roxy was superstitious because she thought there was some devilry, some witch business about his glass mystery somewhere… it could have been an accident, but he doubted it”. Wilson’s thoughts demonstrated the idea that people are racist when they are made aware of a person’s race. Otherwise, Roxy and Tom looked and appeared just as white as the other white characters “as they were white as anybody, but the one-sixteenth of Roxy which was black out-voted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro,” qualifying her as “a slave and also salable as such”. The information about their drop of black blood lead people to think differently, which again, was a notion reiterated by Roxy herself.

As a result, Tom’s behavior adjusted accordingly to his newfound race. For example, if Tom “met a friend… his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a shake” because “the 'nigger' in him asserted its humility, and he blushed and was abashed”. The awareness and expectations in being black manifested in Tom, subjecting him to Du Bois’s described double-consciousness. Therefore, he does not “act black” because he is black, but because it is what society expects him to do as a person of black blood. If the characters were to understand this, then “paradoxically, the recognition of racism in their society could have been taken up as a sign of commitment,” but is never outwardly addressed.

Though, out of the cast of characters in Pudd'nhead Wilson, “Chambers” received the worst fate as he was rejected by both white and black people as he could not do his “duties” as a white person nor could he do or commit to the work of enslaved black people. The end of the novel summarizes Chambers as “rich and free, but in the most embarrassing situation”:

“His gait, his attitudes, his gestures, his bearing, his laugh — all were vulgar and uncouth; his manners were the manners of a slave. Money and fine clothes could not mend these defects or cover them up; they only made them the more glaring and the more pathetic. The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the white man’s parlor, and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the kitchen. The family pew was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter into the solacing refuge of the “nigger gallery”— that was closed to him for good and all”.

Chambers does not get his own ending because he was an entirely different matter, while the other characters at least received a definitive summary of what is to come for them. He is just seen as Roxy’s disaster and is left as a failed amalgamation of society’s convoluted and monochromatic view on race.

Though as difficult as it is to make sense of Roxy’s decision, she opposed the common belief of black women not caring for their children as the thought of her son living the same life as her drove her insane. All of this was done out of maternal love, even though her plan backfired as she saw her own son “gradually cease from being her son and saw that detail perish utterly; all that was left was master”.

Unfortunately, and despite the motherly love, Roxy ravaged both Tom’s and Chambers’s lives. She had good intentions for her son, but still enforced racism when convenient. She manipulated Tom and bent him to her will when he, while unaware, was not cooperating with her plan of securing the Driscoll estate. While she was still enslaved, she was not all powerless with her son as she used her role as a slave to her advantage while she “approached her son with all the wheedling and supplicating servilities that fear and interest can impart to the words and attitudes of the born slave”.

Even so, the “morally dissolute” nature of Roxy constituted her as a victim to internalized racism and a racist society. The overall scope of Pudd'nhead Wilson is a commentary on the social construct of race as a modern legal system and as forensic science emerged during the Reconstruction Era. This situation would not have happened if society had not subjected Roxy into a cycle of self-loathing and fear on what could have happened to her son.