In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, to my mind, most of the women are not terribly
strong in character or intelligence, except for Mary Jane, and the minor character of
Mrs. Judith Loftus.
We can credit the Widow Douglas with
being a "decent" person in taking Huck in, but in trying to "sivilize" him, she does not
know much about attempting to change one's character, as seen with her "failure" with
Huck. At the end of the novel, Huck chooses to travel down the river, rather than
returning to the Widow Douglas. Huck wants to “light out for the territory ahead of the
rest” which indicates that her kind of "civilizing" isn't for
him.
When Huck thinks of the Widow, he admits that her
expectations of him wore at him (were "raspy"), but that she was
his idea of a decent woman. I think it is important to remember
that Huck thinks he is a "low-down" person because he believes it
is wrong to wish Jim free. Huck, ironically, is Twain's hero in that he does
not accept the biases of society; but Huck is highly critical of
himself. So we can perhaps question the "true" goodness of the Widow—and if nothing
else, how "good" she is for him.
We don't meet Miss
Emmeline Grangerford as she is dead when Huck meets up with the family, but she was a
young woman who seems to have been excessively morbid in her poetry and art work. While
Huck admires the work she left behind, we find that she was not interested in poetry or
drawing for the sake of the art…"just so it was
sadful."
Miss Watson is a highly religious woman, but
hypocritical in her belief that she can righteously own and sell another human being
(Jim). We may be able to forgive her in that after Jim runs away and before she dies,
she feels badly in how she has treated him, setting Jim free in her
will.
Aunt Sally Phelps (Tom's aunt) is particularly
gullible as Tom, in particular, takes advantage of her seeming naivete and/or perhaps
her lack of intelligence. Huck feels bad about misleading Aunt Sally (who believes Huck
is Tom), but Tom—the thoughtless young man that he is—thinks nothing of lying outright
to his aunt (who think he is his cousin Sid). They almost have Aunt
Sally jumping through hoops, and Huck finds later that it is all for Tom's
entertainment. Aunt Sally doesn't have a clue.
On the other
hand, Mrs. Loftus is very smart. Whereas Aunt Sally would never
have caught on, Mrs. Loftus shrewdly discerns that Huck is not a
girl when he shows up at her home dressed as one— looking for information about his
"murder." She watches how he threads a needle, notices his good aim when trying to kill
a rat, and that he throws his legs together to catch something in his lap, rather than
opening them to let the skirt catch it for him. She never gets the truth of Huck's
identity from him, but Mrs. Loftus is extremely observant and seemingly
intelligent.
Lastly, Mary Jane Wilks, one of the sisters
that the King and Duke try to rob of their inheritance, is kind and trusting, and is at
first taken in by the King and the Duke. However, when Huck tells her what the two con
men are up to, she is quick to follow Huck's directions in finding a way to "save the
farm," so to speak, catch the King and the Duke, and allow Huck to escape from the men
unharmed. She even agrees to defend Huck if he is caught by the law. Mary Jane is a
quick-study in understanding Huck's plans, and a woman of her word in that she keeps
Huck's revelations to herself as promised.
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