Varying concepts of law are an essential part in many of Mark Twain\u27s works. Twain\u27s position as an observer and critic of society is often reflected by the way he represents law and justice in his stories. His dislike of injustice and cruelty caused him to focus on these legal problems as a way of revealing and attacking various injustices in society. My thesis examines Twain\u27s perception of law as he exposes it in Roughing It, Pudd\u27nhead Wilson, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\u27s Court. The general objective of my study is to examine Twain\u27s philosophy of law and how his ideas are reflected in his literature. The specific aim of study is to explore Twain\u27s tendency to present law and politics with multiple views which sometimes suffer from seeming to embody contradictory opinions.
The first half of my study examines Twain\u27s view of American frontier law by centering on Roughing It and Pudd\u27nhead Wilson. Roughing It exhibits Twain\u27s early views of lawlessness in the west and includes his suggestions for a commonsense approach to law. The areas of law covered include: desperadoism, juries, and government. Twain\u27s approach to these subjects frequently oscillates between criticizing the lack of law and finding fault with established, but poorly administered law.
Pudd\u27nhead Wilson continues Twain\u27s critical approach to law and justice with the location changing to the antebellum southwest. The regimented code of law in this novel fails to secure justice because it suffers from existing within the framework of slavery, which is supported by antebellum aristocractic privileges and traditions. Pudd\u27nhead Wilson demonstrates how traditionally entrenched laws and customs prove unyielding even to creative and innovative methods (fingerprinting and crime detection) for securing justice. The pessimism concerning law in this novel differs from Roughing It\u27s tone of youthful speculations and suggestions for law in a new frontier.
The second half of my study examines Twain\u27s political comparison of democracy to monarchy and despotic rule. The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\u27s Court reveal many of Twain\u27s thoughts concerning justice and government. His criticisms of the appalling injustices in these supposedly outworn and alien systems suggests the inherent injustice in law and government, not merely historically, but even in Twain\u27s nineteenth century America. Twain examines man\u27s inability to find solutions to injustice and inefficient government, and Twain\u27s moral outrage often results in multiple and contradictory presentations. Democracy and technology in A Connecticut Yankee initially appear to be solutions for oppressed people, but the inability of the common man to accept and use these innovations properly, ultimately results in failure and destruction in the novel\u27s ending. Twain\u27s inability to envision or propose a consistent system for securing justice reveals his changeable and unresolved approach to the difficult issues of law, government and justice
