Where It All Goes Down
Missouri Side of Mississippi River, town of Dawson's Landing; 1830-1850 (ish)
Missouri Side of Mississippi River, town of Dawson's Landing
If you're a fan of Twain's Tom Sawyer or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you'll find yourself right at home in the setting of Pudd'nhead Wilson. Like his better-known novels, Pudd'nhead takes place in that most classic of Twain settings: a river-boating town in the American South.
Or, to be more exact, as our exacting narrator, explains:
The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi [river], half a day's journey, per steamboat, below St. Louis. (1.1)
Okay, got it.
Missouri and Mississippi may be real, but this Dawson's Landing place came straight out of Twain's imagination. The novel opens with a little tour of the place:
All along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick sidewalks, stood locust-trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing, and these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrance in spring when the clusters of buds came forth. (1.3)
Pretty nice, huh?
But, wait, it gets even better:
The hamlet's front was washed by the clear waters of the great river; its body stretched itself rearward up a gentle incline; its most rearward border fringed itself out and scattered its houses about the baseline of the hills; the hills rose high inclosing the town in a half-moon curve, clothed with forests from foot to summit. (1.4)
Lovely, picturesque—who wouldn't want to live here?
Um, we're about to find out.
Immediately following these descriptions, we're given a hint of the town's dark side:
Dawson's Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich slave-worked grain and pork country back of it. (1.6)
It's probably not an accident that this little tidbit about slavery's presence in the town comes right on the heels of all those flowery depictions. Make no mistake, the narrator seems to be saying that there's something sinister lurking beneath this pleasant facade.
Other readers have picked up on the contrast between the nice, comfortable setting of the town and this info that a segment of its enslaved residents are toiling in uncomfortable circumstances (to put it mildly).
On top of that, the appearance of this place is probably due in large part to the labor of its slaves. As critic Peter Messent points out, this contrast in the setting is a perfect example of Twain's use of irony, or "the gap between what things appear to be and their underlying reality."
If we may be so bold as to tinker with the words of another literary giant, "there's something rotten in the state of Missouri."
1830-1850 (ish)
If you're paying attention (now would be a good time to stop texting, ahem), figuring out the time period of Pudd'nhead Wilson is a cinch.
We're told in the first chapter that our story begins in 1830 when Tom and Chambers have just been born. Then, in chapter 5, we take a huge leap forward in time. Tom and Chambers are all grown up and it's now around 1850. Talk about time flying.
1830-1850: this span of time happens to be smack in the middle of period known in U.S. history as the antebellum period. The antebellum period is just a fancy way of describing the time before the American Civil War (the word does have a nice ring to it, don't you think?).
What comes to mind when we think back to the time prior to the Civil War? Ding, ding, ding, that's right: slavery. Without a doubt, one of the most striking features of this period of time (both in real life and the novel) is the legal practice of slavery in a number of U.S. states.
You're probably familiar with at least some of the conditions of slavery, but check out this refresher if you so desire. As this site explains, all forms of slavery involved people being thought of as property—a terrible situation, indeed. Of course, as we see in the novel, not all conditions of slavery were created equal, with some slaves working in fields on plantations and some working in the supposedly better conditions of houses.
However, as the novel also makes crystal clear, these situations were far from stable. Slaves like Roxy always faced the threat of being "sold down the river" into far more brutal conditions. From the get go of the story, this state of affairs is evident when Percy Driscoll goes berserk and issues this very threat:
"[. . . ] I will not only sell all four of you, but I will sell you DOWN THE RIVER!"
It was the equivalent to condemning them to hell! (2.36)
And, thanks to the evil Tom who later sells his own mother Roxy down the river, we get a taste of what life could be like during this time:
"[. . .] de overseer he had me out befo' day in de mawnin's en worked me de whole long day as long as dey 'uz any light to see by; en many's de lashin's I got 'ca'se I couldn't come up to de work o' de stronges'." (18.11)
Being worked from morning 'til night and still being beaten? Not very nice.
If you had a machine to travel back in time, this is one period you might want to avoid.