Pudd'nhead Wilson

Pudd'nhead Wilson is a novel by American writer Mark Twain published on 28 November 1894. Its central intrigue revolves around two boys—one, born into slavery, with 1/32 black ancestry; the other, white, born to be the master of the house. The two boys, who look similar, are switched at infancy. Each grows into the other's social role.

The story was serialized in The Century Magazine (1893–1894) and published as a novel in 1894.

Irony and small-town life

David Wilson makes a joke that is misunderstood by the townsfolk of Dawson's Landing, who take Wilson's words literally. They consider the subtle, intelligent Wilson to be a simpleton.

Technology and subversion

The novel features the technological innovation of the use of fingerprints as forensic evidence. "The reader knows from the beginning who committed the murder, and the story foreshadows how the crime will be solved. The circumstances of the denouement, however, possessed in its time great novelty, for fingerprinting had not then come into official use in crime detection in the United States. Even a man who fooled around with it as a hobby was thought to be a simpleton, a 'pudd'nhead'."

Characters

Roxy

Roxana is a slave, originally owned by Percy Driscoll and freed upon his death. Roxy is black, or 15/16 white. With a fair complexion, brown eyes, and straight brown hair, she looks more white than black, which makes sense based on her ancestry. Since she was born into slavery, she is still considered a slave and is associated with blacks. She identifies as black and speaks the dialect of slaves in the antebellum Deep South. She is the mother of Valet de Chambre and acts as a nanny to Thomas Driscoll. Due to her son's overwhelming percentage of European ancestry and appearance, she switches him with Driscoll's son when the boys are infants, hoping to guarantee Chambers's freedom and an upper-class upbringing.

Tom Driscoll, who becomes Chambers

Thomas à Becket Driscoll is the son of Percy Driscoll. Tom is switched with Roxy's baby, Chambers, when he is a few months old and is called "Chambers" from then on. Raised as a slave, Chambers is purchased by his uncle Judge Driscoll after his brother Percy dies. The judge is childless and sad and wants to prevent the young man Tom Driscoll from selling Chambers downriver. Chambers is portrayed as a decent young man whom Tom forces to fight bullies. He is kind and always respectful toward Tom but receives brutal treatment by his master. He shares diction with other slaves.

Chambers, who becomes Tom Driscoll

Valet de Chambre is Roxy's son. Chambers is black and as Roxy's son, was born into slavery. At a young age, he is switched by his mother with Thomas à Becket Driscoll, a white child of the same age born into an aristocratic family in the small town. From then on, he is known as "Tom" and is raised as the white heir to a large estate. Tom is spoiled, cruel, and wicked. In his early years, he has an intense hate for Chambers, although the other boy protects Tom and saves his life on numerous occasions. Tom attends Yale University for two years and returns to Dawson's Landing with "Eastern polish", which results in the locals disliking him more.

Tom is portrayed as the embodiment of human folly. His weakness for gambling leads him into debt. After his father's death, he is adopted by his uncle, Judge Driscoll, who frequently disinherits him, only to rewrite his will again to include him.

Capello twins

Luigi and Angelo Capello, a set of near-identical twins, appear in Dawson's Landing in reply to an ad placed by Aunt Patsy, who is looking for a boarder. They say they want to relax after years of traveling the world. They claim to be the children of an Italian nobleman who was forced to flee Italy with his wife after a revolution. He died soon afterward, followed by his wife. One of the twins, who is said to have killed a man, kicks Tom because he makes a joke about him at a town meeting. As a result, Judge Driscoll challenges the twin, Luigi, to a duel.

David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson

Wilson is a lawyer who came to Dawson's Landing to practice law but was unable to succeed at his law practice after alienating the locals. He establishes a comfortable life in the town, working as a bookkeeper and pursuing his hobby of collecting fingerprints. Although the title character, he remains in the background of the novel until the final chapters.

Each chapter begins with clever quotations from Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, a project of Wilson's that endears him to Judge Driscoll but further confirms everyone else's opinion of him as a "pudd’nhead".

Those Extraordinary Twins

Twain originally envisioned the characters of Luigi and Angelo Capello as conjoined twins, modeled after the late-19th-century conjoined twins Giovanni and Giacomo Tocci. He planned for them to be the central characters of a novel to be titled Those Extraordinary Twins.

During the writing process, however, Twain realized that secondary characters such as Pudd'nhead Wilson, Roxy, and Tom Driscoll were taking a more central role in the story. More importantly, he found that the serious tone of the story of Roxy and Tom clashed unpleasantly with the light tone of the twins' story. As he explains in the introduction to "Those Extraordinary Twins":

<blockquote>The defect turned out to be the one already spoken oftwo stories on one, a farce and a tragedy. So I pulled out the farce and left the tragedy. This left the original team in, but only as mere names, not as characters.</blockquote>

The characters of Luigi and Angelo remain in Pudd'nhead Wilson, as twins with separate bodies. Twain was not thorough in his separation of the twins, and there are hints in the final version of their conjoined origin, such as the fact that they were their parents' "only child", they sleep together, they play piano together, and they had an early career as sideshow performers.

"Those Extraordinary Twins" was published as a short story, with glosses inserted into the text where the narrative was either unfinished or would have duplicated parts of Pudd'nhead Wilson.

Reception

F R Leavis was influential in his reassessment of the novel.

In other media

thumb|Poster for Frank Mayo's 1895 stage adaptation of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Theatre

Frank M. Mayo produced a theatrical adaptation in 1895 and played Wilson.

Film

thumb|[[Thomas Meighan (Tom/Chambers) and Florence Dagmar (Rowena Cooper) in the silent 1916 film]]

A film in 1916 and a TV movie in 1984 were based on the book.

Homages

The 1993 The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. episode "Brisco for the Defense" is loosely based on the novel, which is featured as the inspiration for the final twist. However, the episode takes place in 1893, a year before the book was published in novel form.