Chapters 26, 27 and 28

Summary

Huck has supper with one of the Wilks sisters, Joanna who has an unfortunate hair-lip.  She starts to quiz Huckleberry on his knowledge of England and he makes several mistakes, but the other two sisters interrupt her questioning, saying that she is being discourteous to their guest. Huck has a real twinge of conscience about swindling these sweet ladies, and resolves to return their money.  He goes to the Duke and Dauphin’s room to search for it, but hides when they enter.  They are debating whether to leave that night, but the Dauphin wants to stay until they have stolen all the property.

Huck takes the gold and hides it in Wilks’ coffin. Unfortunately, he does not have the opportunity to remove it from the coffin to a better hiding place and the undertaker seals the coffin without checking the contents. The Dauphin decides to auction off the estate and with the money will take the Wilks family back to England.  The slaves are also sold, which involves the separation of a mother who is to go to New Orleans and her two sons who are to go to Memphis.  This causes great grief amongst the slave family, causing Huck more distress.

The Duke and the Dauphin discover the money has gone and Huck blames this on the slaves that they have just sold.

Huck finds Mary Jane stricken with grief, saying that her trip to England is now tarnished due to the fact that their house slaves have been separated from each other.

Huck lets slip that the family will be reunited in a few weeks (when the scam is discovered).  Mary Jane is gladdened by this news and asks Huck to explain. He, therefore, decides to tell her the truth, but asks her to wait until 11.00 p.m. that night in order to give him time to get away. He tells her about the incident in the previous town concerning the play, saying that this town will provide witnesses against the tricksters. She promises to remember him forever and thanks him for his honesty.

During the auction, a mob interrupts bringing in the real Harvey and William Wilks.

Interpretation

Twain continues his attack on the institution of slavery.  Having shown that black people have as strong feelings for family as whites, he illustrates the far-too common practice of breaking up black families and selling them off to different masters.

Basically, there were to types of slave. The vast majority worked on plantations. They were workers in the fields and had no direct contact with their owners.  They received their orders from an overseer and they were treated like machinery.

The other type of slaves was domestic. They worked in the white households and did have personal contact with their masters. Those who had been with a family for a long time became almost like pets, but there was always the threat hanging over them that if they misbehaved, they would be separated from their family and sold to a plantation.

The slaves whom we have come across in this story have been domestic slaves and that is why the separation of the Wilks family slaves caused such grief.

Surprisingly, Twain portrays these white masters in a fairly sympathetic light and one wonders if they would have been as grief-stricken in reality.