89 pages • 2-hour read
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Pudd'nhead Wins His Name"
The year is 1830 in Dawson's Landing, Missouri, a flower-filled town of modest homes and well-tended lawns on the banks of the Mississippi River. The town is "a slaveholding town, with a rich, slave-worked grain and pork country back of it ... sleepy and comfortable and contented" (7) and moderately religious. The river is the town's only exposure to the outside world, bringing people, goods, news, and the slave trade to Dawson's Landing, and providing a way for the townspeople to travel to and from St. Louis, the nearest city.
David Wilson, a young lawyer from New York, moves to Dawson's Landing. He is speaking with a few of the locals when, in the course of complaining about a barking dog, he makes a sarcastic remark about wanting to own half of the dog. Whether the remark is a reference to the biblical King Solomon's decision to divide a baby, or Wilson simply wanting the barking half of the dog in order to quiet it, the townspeople fail to recognize the sarcasm and take Wilson for a fool, labeling him a "pudd'nhead." This reputation follows Wilson until the end of the novel, when his strange habit of fingerprinting the residents of Dawson's Landing solves a mystery.
Two more arrivals provide pivotal players for the plot. On February 1, 1830, two boys are born into the household of Percy Driscoll; one of them is the son of Percy and his wife, and the other is the son of their slave, Roxana, and an unknown father.
Chapter 2 Summary: "Driscoll Spares His Slaves"
Having been labeled a fool, David Wilson has no clients and plenty of time to pursue his personal interests. One of these things is palmistry, reading the lines on the palm of a person's hand to see major events in that person's past and future. Another is fingerprinting, which leads Wilson to take the fingerprints of the townspeople, which he keeps on glass slides labelled with the owner's name and the date the print was taken.
In July of 1830, Wilson takes the fingerprints of Roxy and the two babies, Thomas and Valet. In September, Wilson takes them again. These sets of prints will prove pivotal in solving the mystery of Judge Driscoll's murder twenty years later.
That same month, money goes missing from Percy Driscoll's home. Driscoll summons his slaves, including Roxy. When none of the slaves confess to stealing the money, Percy Driscoll threatens to sell them all "down the river" (18). This refers to the practice of selling slaves to work on Southern cotton plantations where the climate, labor, treatment, and living conditions were far worse than in the Midwestern states. "It was equivalent to condemning them to hell! No Missouri Negro doubted this," Twain writes (18). The slaves are so desperate to avoid this fate that they all confess to the theft.
Chapter 3 Summary: "Roxy Plays a Shrewd Trick"
The threat of being sold down the river haunts Roxy, who realizes that her baby, Valet de Chambre, will also face this threat all of his life. Roxy decides to kill herself and her baby to save them both from this fate. She puts on her best dress to drown herself in the river. She wants to put a nice dress on her baby, too, so she takes one of Tom's dresses and puts it on Valet de Chambre, who is called "Chambers." The resemblance between the two babies strikes Roxy, and she devises a plan to switch the babies, so that her baby will be safe from a life of hardship.
From this point until the closing scenes of the novel, Valet de Chambre is known as Tom Driscoll, and Thomas à Becket Driscoll is known as Chambers. There is one glitch in Roxy's plan, however: Pudd'nhead Wilson's hobby of fingerprinting. Roxy fears that, because he has two sets of prints of the babies already, Wilson may one day reveal Roxy's deception, so she visits Pudd'nhead Wilson with the babies in tow. Wilson again fingerprints them, labelling the slides with the names Roxy provides. This done, Roxy stops worrying.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Mark Twain uses his characters as social commentary, exposing the prejudices and biases that underpin 19th century American society. One of Twain's frequently used conventions is the arrival of an outsider, a person who challenges the norms of the society in which he or she intrudes. David Wilson is one such outsider. Born in New York and well-educated, Wilson is foreign to the people of Dawson's Landing. Rather than respecting Wilson's academic credentials and welcoming his perspective, the townspeople are immediately suspicious of Wilson and label him a "pudd'nhead." It is safer for them to sideline and silence Wilson than to be challenged by a new perspective.
Yet these same people rush to embrace anything tied to Europe, which they see as the standard-bearer of class and refinement. Thus Roxy, when she remembers hearing a story about a Queen's child being switched for another, feels vindicated in switching Chambers and Tom, thinking that if it was good enough for a Queen, it is good enough for Roxy.
In these first three chapters, Twain establishes the peculiar snobbery and insular push-pull dynamic that permeates Dawson's Landing: a rejection of anyone who is different, and an embrace of anything or anyone with ties to Europe.
Twain also enjoys poking fun at the ridiculousness of the human condition, the irrational thoughts and motivations that compel us to actions that make little to no sense. When Roxy outfits herself and her baby in preparation for the murder-suicide she is planning, Twain is highlighting the absurdity of this vanity. Roxy's irrational thinking propels the plot forward, as it is only when Roxy puts Tom's dress on Valet that she hatches a plan to switch the children. Similarly, Wilson's bizarre habit of collecting fingerprints will ultimately solve the murder mystery at the center of the novel, providing another example of Twain's habit of pointing out the various ways people are driven by irrational concerns, habits, and ideas that, eventually, reveal larger truths.
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