Throughout Twain’s “Puddn’head Wilson” disguises are employed not only in the literal sense, but also in a more slippery rhetorical manner. These numerous instances of concealed or confused identity function on the level of narrative and plot certainly, but more subtly, they force the reader to explore the more central questions of race and gender identity. While there are a variety of costumes and literal disguises in “Puddn’head Wilson” by Mark Twain, one cannot ignore that many of the more ephemeral themes of identity in relation to disguise, gender, and race, are explored through the lens of societal expectations in the face of such masking.
Disguises in this story by Mark Twain bring out some of the main themes in “Puddn’head Wilson” and highlight some of the harder to see meanings. In other words, the fundamental question at the end of “Puddn’head Wilson” by Mark Twain still remains an issue of disguise and identity in that there is no way to determine what makes any of the characters “true” to what is expected of them in terms of gender, but more notably, of race.
Although it is a tall order to attempt to separate the literal and metaphorical disguises in this novel by Mark Twain, one of the best examples for beginning the discussion is to examine the way Roxy is presented. Her entire being is comprised of a disguise of sorts since she is neither completely white or black and more importantly, that she is at once very feminine while at the same time quite masculine. Even when she dresses like a man to confront her son and details the very “unfeminine” nature of her independent escapades (stealing a horse and fighting a man), the reader is not allowed to forget that she is also very soft and hyper-feminine. This way of viewing the complexity of her character is outlined at the very beginning of the book when we are introduced to her through a description that implicitly states that she is neither one nor the other of anything.
“From Roxy’s manner of speech, a stranger would have expected her to be black, but she was not. Only one sixteenth of her was black, and that sixteenth did not show. She was of majestic form and stature, her attitudes were imposing and statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by a noble and stately grace.” While she is only black in terms of a number, her identity is revealed (and thus she is “unmasked”) through her language. As if this weren’t a complex enough notion to deal with she also possesses the noble qualities that are valued by white society, especially those in it who can’t seem to talk enough about their aristocratic Virginian heritage. It is at once very simple for the reader to “classify” her, but the result will be different for every reader based on whichever qualities he or she considers to be the most revealing about race—language or stature and appearance.
The fact that it is so difficult to classify Roxy as well as the other characters in “Puddn’head Wilson” by Mark Twain that are developed more fully throughout the novel is also an issue with the character of Puddn’head. Even though he is of a set racial and economic subset, his uniqueness sets him apart for the mere reason that his peers are unable to say he is one thing or another. Puddnhead is, very much like Roxy and the other racially confused characters, outcast and burdened by this lack of ready classification. It seems as though this is the final message Twain wishes to leave his readers of “Puddn’head Wilson” with—that in some ways the inability to classify as the result of disguises, both literal and metaphorical, is the basis (or at least a part of) the problem with understandings across cultures, races, and genders. “Tom” most aptly expresses the problem of classification when he realizes the scope of the “disguise” he has been living—however unconsciously he might have been about it.
When the realization dawns on him that the race classifications have been reversed, he grows lost and uncomfortable as expressed in one of the important quotes from “Puddnhead Wilson” by Mark Twain, “Why were niggers and whites made? 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? . . . How hard the nigger’s fate seems, this morning!–yet until last night such a thought never entered my head.” The point made here revolves again around the idea of the way society shapes characters in “Puddnhead Wilison” and thus determines the disguises or mannerisms they adopt. Just as Chambers is panic-stricken when he is forced to take on his new role (which becomes more of a disguise) so Tom feels displaced and coerced, at least for a few days, to play both roles, to wear both hats so to speak.
In a novel so full of disguises as is “Puddn’head Wilson”, it seems paradoxical that one of the only ways to establish identity and subsequent societal classification is through the use of clothing. While clothes are used to disguise Tom as a woman and his mother as a man, they are more prominently used to identify one as belonging to a certain gender or race (which equates to social standing or class in this case). For instance, after deciding to perform the baby-swap, the only way Roxy can manage it is through a quick switch of clothes. The narrator of “Puddn’head Wilson” describes the scene as a straightforward case of changing. “Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a Negro. He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the children apart–little as he had commerce with them–by their clothes; for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to its knees, and no jewelry.” After this simple switch has been made, Roxy notes, “Now who would b’lieve clo’es could do de like o’ dat? Dog my cats if it ain’t all _I_ kin do to tell t’ other fum which, let alone his pappy.” This brings home the central question of the novel as it relates to gender, race, and disguise; how many of these designations we put on one another are derived from simple cultural practices such as dressing or speaking?
If there are questions remaining as to whether the main question is of a cultural/societal nature in terms of identity (in the race and gender question) it would seem apparent that it is since Twain makes a point of bringing the novel to a close with a plot-based mystery being solved, but perhaps also a more deep and implicit mystery. Puddnhead states in one of the important quotes from the novel, “I have the fingerprints of the court, the sheriff, and every member of the jury. There is hardly a person in this room, white or black, whose natal signature I cannot produce, and not one of them can so disguise himself that I cannot pick him out from a multitude of his fellow creatures and unerringly identify him by his hands. And if he and I should live to be a hundred I could still do it.” By making this assertion, he is claiming to his peers that identity is not based at all in race (because they all have fingerprints and are thus distinguishable from one another). Also, he mentions that the most essential and natural aspect of identity, our hands (which I use here metaphorically to mean to whole self) is unique and that, rather than any of the disguises the characters either consciously or unconsciously take upon, is the sole basis of identity, of an ultimate system of classification that the world presented in this novel might be looking for.
Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Class and Satire in “The American” by Henry James and “Huck Finn” by Mark Twain • Comparison Essay of My Name is Asher Lev, Huckleberry Finn, and Emma • American Literature in Historical Context : 1865 to Roosevelt • Realism in American Literature
