The nieces of the recently "diseased" Peter Wilkes interested me for some reason or another. While they are generally good and easily lovable, I feel that they are more significant than what Huck portrays. Or, maybe just Hare-lip?
Mary Jane, the eldest, is first described by the young man on his way to Rio as a red-head. When Huck sees her for the first time, he says despite her unfortunate hair color, she was the most "awful" beauty. I think that Twain was evoking sympathy from his readers for her unfortunate hair color as a sort of "poor, ugly orphan" and then as incredibly beautiful in order to win the audience to her side and contrast her with the disgust of how the King plans to rob this unfortunate beauty. She is beautiful and helpless at this point, the typical damsel in distress, only she has no idea. She is quick to welcome the King as her uncle, insists that Huck be treated with kindness for he is a stranger and foreigner, and obedient to Huck when he tells her his plan. She does what she is told and has unyielding kindness.
She, and her two sisters, are also very caring of their slaves, not wanting their "family" to be split up. I think the morality of this is hard for the reader to cipher. On the one hand, she does not want the slaves to be sold and hugs and cries with them and honestly misses them. On the other hand, the are SLAVES and her slaves. Maybe she doesn't have any say in what they are but can only blindly love them and be as kind to them as possible? I'm not sure if she is just stupid and kind. I don't know where to place her.
The "Hare-lip" as Huck refers to her, questions Huck's stories and seems pretty intelligent and harder to convince. She is not so welcoming as Mary Jane and gets scolded for it. She surprisingly obeys Mary Jane in apologizing the most beautiful apology to Huck after she has made him, a stranger, feel uncomfortable. Is this what women are supposed to do: obey and be a good hostess? Was Twain suggesting the silliness in that by shedding light on her inquisitive nature? More so, does the Hare-lip obey Mary Jane because of the power she holds being the oldest and being "handsome?"
The girls act as they are "supposed" to act, fishing for compliments at dinner, giving the money to her "uncle," mourning at the uncle's tomb at night. Actually, they seem to go above and beyond what they are supposed to do, becoming exaggerations of women in society and appropriate behavior according to discourse. I guess these characters are just another example of the strangeness of roles in society and how when done to the utmost extreme, one can get duped out of a lot of money and give a lot of love and kisses to a complete rapscallion stranger.
Could the reference to the unfortunate hair color indicate some level of discrimination on Huck's part towards the Irish? This would help illuminate another type of discrimination that was extremely prevalent in the 1840's and when Twain was writing in the late 1800s.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused as to why the one daughter I called "hare-lip". Why does Huck refer to her as this? Is it because he feels threatened by her questioning?
ReplyDelete@kcarlson: My version of the book has illustrations, and she's drawn with a cleft lip. "Hare lip" was probably a slang term for it.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the comment on where the sisters' morality lies with the slaves is an interesting one. I think that it just has to do with the definitions of the time. By today's standards, this would be horribly hypocritical and racist, but back then they would be considered nice people. I don't know if Twain specifically wanted to draw attention to that weirdness, but it does speak to the mindset of the time the book is set.
Jill, consider, too, that these portraits are Huck's. So whatever stereotypes they reflect are those that Huck has adopted. We'd also somehow have to figure out if Huck is exaggerating, if he's even prone to exaggerating, through other examples. That's a tough one. And even harder to figure out where Twain is. Katie asks a good question, though!
ReplyDeleteGreat topic to pursue since, with the exception of Roxy, the female characters in most of the tales aren't major, but they still say something about Twain's take on gender roles.