pudd'nhead wilson: chapter three

Roxy feels a kind of fear that her son will be sold down the river by his master. She even thinks about killing her own son because she doesn't have the heart to see him sold down the river, and live the same fate as she does.

She sees her master's son, who actually isn't any more handsome than her own son but enjoys a totally different fate that her son. She also complains how her son, who has done no sins in his life but has to experience such a terrible life and faces the threat to be sold down the river any time.

It's a very good serious mourning about the fate of a slave. She actually questions the value in the world. She questions why white people can enjoy easy life while the black people have to experience such a difficult life and are prone to being sold down the river. However, she doesn't have any question about the origin of slalvery and so on--she just questions the present condition, without tracing to the origin of the slavery.

Later, she has the idea of exchanging the baby, and there she sees how actually her son is not any different from her master's son. And she believes that her master will not recognize because one time, when she was washing the babies, her master asked about which one his son was.

This scene shows how actually rich people do not really care about their children's detail, especially fathers. They are not balanced in their life. They might be too serious with their daily jobs, but they do not spend enough time giving love to their children, so that they can't even differentiate their children from other people's children.

Later, Roxy realizes how actually the idea doesn't come up from thin air. She previously listened to a sermon in the black people's church about a slave who changed her son with her queen's son. And since the one who told this story is preacher, she thinks it is not a sin. Therefore, she thinks about what she has done as something good and starts seeing it happily. Here, we can get the explanation of Roxy's "brilliant" idea, such brilliant an idea, although rather wicked, is actually infused by someone cleverer--and here, it could be Twain's other criticisim on religious stories, that is, giving bad examples, if not explained correctly (remember Mark Twain's letter to a librarian in Brooklyn library in response to the news about the ban of his book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the library saying that "The Adventures of Huck Finn" is an adult book and no children should read the book without their parents watching and explaining them before it can give bad impact just like what Bible did to him as a child).

What makes the situation very conducive for this baby change is the selling of the three slaves indicted of stealing money. The three slaves are the one who know the difference of the two babies (see, it shows how the slaves spend more time with the two babies and can differentiate one from another). This shows Mark Twain perfect planning on the logics of the story, despite the fact that Mark Twain is known to be someone who is very bad at plotting.

If there is one person whom Roxy is rather afraid of, it will be Pudd'nhead Wilson who has taken the two babies fingerprints. Roxy also knows that Pudd'nhead Wilson is not a "pudding head", he might even be the smartest person in the town. This might be Roxy's brilliance. Only brilliant people can see other people's brilliance. HOWEVER, this is the part that I guess needs explanation. Roxy seems to know the importance of a fingerprint, and she does seem to know that everybody has different fingerprint from other people. I'm not sure myself about it, but I wonder whether it was already a common knowledge in 1830s that people have different fingerprints.