89 pages • 2 hours read
Mark TwainThe Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1893A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: "The Unknown Nymph"
Judge Driscoll is eager to be associated with Angelo and Luigi Cappello. He takes the twins on a tour of the town and to a meeting of the Freethinkers Society, of which Judge Driscoll and Pudd'nhead Wilson are leaders. Luigi and Angelo like Wilson, and Wilson invites the twins to visit his home. This unlikely friendship, between the glamorous twins and the town fool, will prove critical to how Wilson solves Judge Driscoll's murder.
Twain foreshadows the coming trouble, and Wilson's role in solving it, by having Wilson, who lives next door to Judge Driscoll, see a young woman in Tom Driscoll's bedroom. Puzzled, Wilson visits the Judge later in the day, but neither the Judge nor his sister Rachel mention having a female visitor, and Wilson doesn't ask. What they do tell Wilson, however, is that Tom Driscoll is on his way home from St. Louis. Wilson is suspicious, and with Tom coming home, the scene is being set for the murder to come.
Chapter 8 Summary: "Marse Tom Tramples His Chance"
A flashback informs the reader about Roxy's life since leaving Dawson's Landing eight years prior, when she received her freedom. Rheumetism has cut short hher work as a steamboat chambermaid. When she goes to the bank to withdraw her life's savings, she discovers that the bank, and her money, have vanished. Roxy has no social safety net and no security. In her desperation, Roxy goes back to the only place she knows, setting a chain of events in motion.
Roxy is excited to see Tom in Dawson's Landing, and hopes he will give her some money. Twain writes, "She would go and fawn upon him slavelike ... and maybe she would find that time had modified him, and that he would be glad to see his long-forgotten nurse and treat her gently." (50) Roxy discovers that Judge Driscoll provides a monthly allowance to Tom so that he will stay in St. Louis and spare the Judge the embarrassment of his gambling addiction and debts.
Roxy asks Tom for a dollar, but when Tom says he will never help Roxy. She then threatens to tell Judge Driscoll everything she knows about Tom. Tom assumes that Roxy has somehow learned that he is once again in debt from gambling and gives her a dollar to keep quiet. Roxy tells Tom that she knows enough to have him put out of the Judge's will and threatens to tell for five dollars. Tom kneels before Roxy and offers her five dollars. Tom's secrets make him vulnerable to blackmail, and Roxy, desperate and broke, takes full advantage.
Chapter 9 Summary: "Tom Practices Sycophancy"
Tom and Roxy now engage in a dangerous dance of threats and blackmail. Tom begs Roxy to tell him what information she has on him, and Roxy tells Tom that he is not Tom Driscoll but Valet de Chambre, her son. When Roxy starts to leave the house, Tom panics and calls her back. Roxy insists that Tom call her Mammy, and threatens to ruin him if he does not give her half of his monthly allowance from the Judge.
Tom also admits that he has been wearing disguises and stealing from the inhabitants of Dawson's Landing when he was supposed to be in St. Louis, which Roxy uses to tighten her hold on him. Before parting ways, Tom asks Roxy who his real father is, and Roxy tells Tom that his father was Colonel Cecil Essex, continuing, "You ain't got no 'casion to be shame' o' yo' father, I kin tell you. He wuz de highest quality in dis whole town -- ole Virginny stock. Fust famblies, he wuz." (63)
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Several important pieces of the coming murder mystery are established in these chapters. The groundwork has been laid for Tom and Roxy to each get their comeuppance, and for the Italian twins and Pudd'nhead Wilson to be involved in making that happen.
It is obvious now, too, that Roxy and Tom, mother and son, share a predisposition towards dishonesty. While Roxy's deception in switching the babies might have been based on her desire to save her child from suffering, she created a monster by allowing Tom to live without discipline, self-respect, or concern for others. Tom's deceptions benefit only Tom, who treats the people who care for him with contempt. His frequent vows to reform are both short-lived and self-serving.
By the end of Chapter 9, Roxy and Tom have taken one another hostage. Roxy is dependent on Tom's money, which Tom "earns" by keeping his disgraceful behavior out of his uncle's sight. Tom steals to repay his gambling debts, but in confessing that to Roxy, he has only given Roxy more knowledge that can get Tom kicked out of the Judge's will. But without the Judge's allowance, Tom can no longer pay Roxy. So while Tom may be the biological son of a Virginia gentleman, he is also Roxy's son, and the two share a penchant for deceit that makes them dependent on one another, and will prove their undoing.
Twain's revelation at this point in the story that Tom's real father was the highly respected Colonel Essex is meaningful. Essex might have belonged to the First Families of Virginia, a group of early settlers with ties to English nobility, but his son Tom is purely of the New World, lacking in gentlemanly qualities and willing to do whatever it takes to finance his misadventures.
Related Titles
By Mark Twain
