What Is Mark Twain's View Of Racial Equality

1894: segregation laws are being formed, racial tensions are high, and signs of the gap between blacks and whites are everywhere. Against this backdrop, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson is published as a novel. Almost two decades after slavery has been outlawed and two years before the historic Plessy vs. Ferguson case declares segregation legal, Mark Twain takes a stand against the widely accepted belief of white superiority. Twain portrays blacks as equal to whites as he argues that regardless of race, love blinds people to the truth. At a time when whites were generally viewed as superior to blacks in all regards, Twain advocates racial equality by making all characters susceptible to poor judgement because of love. Furthermore, Twain questions

racial categorization by creating characters with mixed racial backgrounds. By giving the characters the same faults, Twain highlights the similarities between characters as human beings and not as blacks and whites.
Judge Driscoll is a white “person of most consequence to the community” who is blind to Chamber’s faults because of his desire to love a child of his own (75). Because the judge is an older man who did not have children of his own, the “longing for the treasure of a child had grown stronger and stronger as the years slipped away” (11). This strong longing leads him to indulge Chambers and blinds him to Chamber’s flaws, particularly his laziness, narcissism and greed. Other citizens of Dawson’s Landing view the way Chambers parades around town, flaunting his “Eastern fashion” as a “peculiarly wanton affront” but the judge himself does not criticize Chambers (71). Pudd’nhead Wilson correctly observes that “a devil adopted by an old couple is [always] an angel to them” (296). Chambers is always an angel to the judge even when others can see the devil he truly is.
The unconditional love that Roxana has for her son Chambers causes her to disregard the hurt and pain that Chambers has caused her.
Chamber’s love for himself leads him to ignore the loving actions of others and the cruelty of his own actions.
Using the experiences of four different characters of various racial backgrounds, Twain proves that all people are swayed by love.