by Emilee Whitesell
Unpublished
"Meaning, if Twain’s views regarding the rights of woman and gender inequality had shifted over the course of his... more
"Meaning, if Twain’s views regarding the rights of woman and gender inequality had shifted over the course of his literary career, this change would inherently appear in the reader’s perception of Pudd’nhead Wilson, based solely on the possibilities of the literary medium per se. One aspect of the novel’s narrative form is its “flexibility,” part of which allots the novel the capacity to be “immediately responsive to patterns of cultural change” (Frye 433). It should be further noted that even though the novel as a literary medium or form is incredibly prevalent today, it has had an historical and prominent association with women, and that even in Twain’s time, women associated with the novel in greater numbers, both as writers and readers. Most of Twain’s male literary contemporaries, with certain exceptions, opted for philosophical prose or experimented with poetry, short story, and essay. When we consider other major contributors to the canon of early American literature, men constitute the majority of the canon’s notable figures, such as Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and so on. Most of the novelists in this canon, also with certain exceptions, tend to be women, notably Harriet Beecher Stowe and Louisa May Alcott. Surely, then, one claim for the novel’s feminist possibilities stems from the novel’s popularity and frequency amongst the female reader and writer. Imagine, for example, the way in which one of Twain’s female contemporaries may have alternatively perceived Pudd’nhead Wilson, particularly if that woman had also read “In Defense…” or had a history of reading female-centric or female-authored novels, as was characteristic of that time. "
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