The Tragedy of Mark Twain, by Pudd’nhead Wilson. STEPHEN RAILTON MCoan ais veers soon earn i trust names and titles. Huck Finn, for example, adventures under a long list of aliases—including Sarah Williams, Gorge Jaxon, Adolphus, even Tom Sawyer—but hardly ever under his real name. Neitheris there anything noble about the “King” and “Duke” who travel with him, Names and titles are even more problematic in The Tragedy of Pudd nhead Wilson and the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins (1894). For most of the narrative, Thomas a Beckett Driscoll and Valet de Chambre unknowingly switch names and the titles “master” and “slave,” while the person whom Dawson's Landing dubs “Pudd’nhead” is, as one character puts it, “de smartes’ man in dis town.”! These labels are eventually straightened out, but how are readers supposed to take the name and title on the outside of the story itself? Though usually referred to simply as. Pudd nhead Wilson (and published under that title in England), the novel first appeared in America as The Tragedy of Pudd nhead Sows) The Rogen oie Unenty af Cao Sey A igh esrved Send ees permidon to opr tox Righ ae emis, Unive of aoa tres founds Dison one Center Suet ste yoy Belo, CA gh FoF Fey " Mark Twain, The Twogedy of Pad head Wik and the Comedy The Estraardinary eins (Hanford: American Publishing Company, +894; rpt. New York: Oxford Un Pres, 1996) p. 49 Allsubnequentreferencesto both novels are to his facsmile of the fire American edition and are cited by page number in the text. 518THE TRAGEDY OF MARK TWAIN 519 Wilson. Itis surprising that no one has thought to question that title before, for at first sight calling Wilson's story a “tragedy” seems as mistaken as calling him a “puddinghead.” A taxonomist of genre would probably call the story a com- edy. Although Twain brings the convention up-to-date with the use of fingerprint evidence, changing or exchanging identities thatare ultimately restored isa clasic comedic motif. When Wi son, in the climactic courtroom scene, reunites Tom and Cham- bers with their true names, he also exposes a murderer and thus reinstates the social order that had been violated by both Roxy's switch of the infants and Tom's killing of Judge Driscoll. Bringing social order out of chaos or disruption is the defi- nitive comedic ending. Of course, the society that prevails at the end is “a slaveholding town” (p. 20), and the restored iden- tities include the “awful difference” between “white and black” (p. 122) that the narrator tells us at the start is unnatural—a fiction of law and custom” (p. $3). Since the status quo is so corrupt, its restoration does constitute a tragedy of sorts That does not explain, however, Twain's decision to call the book Wilson’ tragedy, for Wilson seems the one major character not caught up in the tragic sweep of the narrative. Indeed, if in formal terms the larger plot resembles an Old World com- edy, then Wilson's part of it looks like the classic New World success story. AS a young man he comes west “to seek his for- tune” (p. 23); with “patience and pluck” (p. 28) he resolves to conquer the obstacles in his path. By the end he wins “his long fight against hard luck and prejudice” and is “a made man for good” (p. 300). What is tragic about that? ‘To be sure, Wilson's story is recognizably Mark Twain's ver- sion of the American dream, where the ultimate measure of success is neither love nor money, but attention. In its empha- sis on status, Wilson's happy ending echoes the one that Twain wrote for The Adventures of Tom Sauyer (1876). Although in that novel Tom wins Becky's heart and finds Murrell’s treasure, the Susan Gillman makes a similar point about how Pudd head Wil “disrupts the generic conventions of detective fiction (see “Sure Wdentiier' Race, Science, and the Law in Puddhead Wil in Mark Twain’ “Pudd nhead Wik’: Rac, Conflict, and Culture ed. Gilman and Forrest G. Robinson (Durham, NC: Duke Unis. Press, 1990]. p10)520 NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE narrative focuses on the fact that Tom and Huck have become celebrities Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were courted, admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remember that their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their sayings were trea- sured and repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of do- ing and saying commonplace things” Similarly, although Wilson triumphs both professionally and politically —his career as a lawyer is finally launched and he is elected mayor of the village—it is his popularity that seems to matter most, both to him and to the novel. After “twenty long years” of “obscurity” when “nobody attached any importance to what he thought or did” (Pudd nhead Wilson, pp. 26, 70, 72), he now shines as a star: ‘Troop after troop of citizens came to serenade Wilson, and re- ‘quire a speech, and shout themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips—for all his sentences were golden, now, all were marvelous. (p. $00) ‘Tom's sayings are “treasured”; Wilson's sentences are “golden”; they both end up in front of audiences, not alone with a lover—the greatest desire in Twain’s world is not acquisitive, and certainly not erotic, but narcissistic, literally oral To the extent that it is Wilson's story, Pudd nhead Wilson is about “being somebody” in a democracy, where puddingheads and heroesare popularly chosen. To Aristotle, writing in an aris- tocratic culture, tragedy depicted the fall of a noble man from greatness. Twain’s novel describes the rise of a man to popular greatness, and it calls that tragic. In Tom Sawyer Twain goes back to his own childhood and nostalgically reenacts and rewards his early longings for attention, The story of David Wilson is essen- tially set in the same time and place, the little antebellum vil- lage, but now the story that Twain has to tell is a version of his ® Mark Thain, The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, Jon C. Gerber, Paul Baender, and “Terry Firhing vol 4 of The Works of Merk Twain (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Unis. of California Press forthe Lowa Center for Textual Studies, 1980), p. 232