The Black and White Curse

The essays “The Black and White Curse”, by Arthur G. Pettit, and “Sure Identifiers”, by Susan Gillman, both analyze Mark Twain’s novel Pudd’nhead Wilson. These essays contain many differences and also some similarities in the analysis of Pudd’nhead Wilson. By examining the authors’ claims of the novel, methodology, and their theories of literary criticism it is easy to see how they agree and disagree when interpreting Mark Twain’s novel Pudd’nhead Wilson.

Authors Arthur Pettit and Susan Gillman both analyzed Pudd’nhead Wilson, however they both have different views on what they believe Mark Twain’s message to be. While both of the essays assess Pudd’nhead Wilson, the authors have different claims about the novel. Pettit believes that Pudd’nhead Wilson showcased Mark Twain’s opinions about color and race. In his essay he writes, “The ultimate outcome was chaos; but in the process of making a shambles of Roxana, Mark Twain let slip some revealing opinions about color” (Pettit 322). Pettit deems that Mark Twain uses Roxana’s character to reveal his beliefs about color. The chaos Arthur Pettit talks about is the confusion of Roxy’s character; most significantly the fact that she looks white but acts black. Pettit believes that Mark Twain’s own views about color made a shambles of Roxana since Twain did not know whether she should be perceived as a white woman or black.

Similarly to Arthur Pettit, Susan Gillman also believes Pudd’nhead Wilson to be chaotic; Susan Gillman calls the novel a “tangled textual skein” (Gillman 447). However, Gillman dedicates the confusion of text to the environment Mark Twain wrote it in. She believes that by dissecting the circumstances surrounding the novel the text will become clear. Susan Gillman confirms her belief about the novel when she says, “Rather, I would argue, Mark Twain’s tangled textual skein must be anchored in, and perhaps unraveled by, the context of the cultural circumstances that produced it” (Gillman 447). Gillman argues that it is the circumstances not Mark Twain’s subconscious that affected the novel. Some of the circumstances she believes shaped Twain’s writing of the novel are historical events, political happenings, and the law during the time he wrote it and also the time in which the novel was set.

The claims that the authors make can be classified into schools of thought. The approach they take to analyzing the novel depicts their affiliation with a theory of literary criticism. Arthur Pettit uses a Freudian approach to analyzing Pudd’nhead Wilson. It is the way that Pettit focuses on Twain’s subconscious that classifies his style of literary criticism as Freudian. After Pettit talks about the text of the novel including Roxy’s persona he continues to talk about why Roxy was created this way. Arthur Pettit’s main conclusion is that Mark Twain’s secret desires and subconscious blended Roxy. He states that Twain “ managed to endow Roxana with uninhibited mannerisms of his black dream woman, while at the same time satisfying the popular demand for the Tragic Mulatto who must appear to be white” (Pettit 333). Again Pettit talks about Twain’s dreams which are his subconscious thoughts. The constant examination of Twain’s subconscious is what classifies Arthur Pettit’s analytical essay as a Freudian work of literary criticism.

Other than the shared idea that there were forces that shaped Mark Twain’s writing of Pudd’nhead Wilson, the authors do not share the same theory of literary criticism. Susan Gillman believes that it is laws, medicine, and historical events that affected Twain. These beliefs prove her to be a New Historicist. When referring to the satirical way Roxy and Tom are considered black even though there have more white blood in them, Gillman says that the novel “mirrors problems in American race relations during both the antebellum period in which the novel is set and the 1890’s when it was written” (Gillman 447). Susan Gilman contributes both the time period the novel was written about and when it was written by Mark Twain as the cause of the racial plot. Since it is the environment, not Twain’s subconscious, that is attributed to the causation of Pudd’nhead Wilson, Susan Gillman’s essay about Pudd’nhead Wilson can be called a New Historicist’s approach to literary criticism.

After analyzing the claims the authors made and which theory of literary criticism they fall under, comparing the similarities and differences of the methodology between the writers is another way to show their two approaches to Pudd’nhead Wilson. Whether it be disorder do to Mark Twain’s confusion of Roxana or his environment both of the authors use a certain method to prove their claim about Pudd’nhead Wilson. Pettit divides his essay into two parts; one analyzes Mark Twain’s color confusion of Roxy and the other examines Twain’s subconscious. In the first