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PageWho or what were Twain's real targets in A Connecticut Yankee? What does he see as problematic about these people, institutions, and/or attitudes? Does he offer any solutions?
In order to pursue answers to these questions, we can look at such resources as the following: the language of the text itself; primary resources directly connected to the text (including illustrations and ads); other writing by Mark Twain; and nineteenth century responses to Twain and his work.
And yet they were not slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respectworthy; and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no use or value in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be the Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The priests had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state of things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon how unlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter there and become respectfully quiet. The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in a formerly American ear. (pp. 64-5)
Well, the king was out of the hole, and on terms satisfactory to the Church and the rest of the aristocracy, no doubt. Men writ many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man in a State has a vote, brutal laws are impossible. Arthur's people were of course poor material for a republic, because they had been debased so long by monarchy; and yet even they would have been intelligent enough to make short work of that law which the king had just been administering if it had been submitted to their full and free vote. . . . The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only--not from its privileged classes. . . . (p. 138)
The painful thing observable about all this business was, the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. ****
This was depressing--to a man with the dream of a republic in his had. It reminded m of a time thirteen centuries away, when the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted, by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which had degraded them. And there was only one redeeming feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was, that secretly the "poor white" did detest the slave-lord, and did feel his own shame. . . . it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if it doesn't show on the outside. (pp. 171-172)
A man is a man, at bottom. Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks it is a mistake, is himself mistaken. Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed--even the Russians; plenty of manhood in them--even in the Germans--if one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that was ever set up and nobility that ever supported it. We should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe. (p.173)
You se, in a country where they have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man, he is only part of a man, he can't ever get his full growth. You prove your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that's the end of it--he knuckles down. . . . I had the smith's reverence, now, because I was apparently immensely prosperous and rich; I could have had his adoration if I had had some little gimcrack title of ability. And not only his, but any commoner's in the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages, in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupt in all three. This was to remain so, so long as England should exist in the earth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable Georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored the creators of this world--after God--Gutenberg, Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell. (pp. 183-4)
CONNECTICUT YANKEE RESOURCES:
The Yankee Homepage at the University of Virginia
SOURCES ON TWAIN'S ACTIVITIES AS A REFORMER:
Reformer and Anti-Imperialist: Mark Twain Gallery, 1901 --one section of the Mark Twain Site at The Mining Company which includes collections of speeches, texts, photos, and cartoons.)
Go to Mark Twain on the Philippines, a Site Authored by Jim Zwick, Syracuse University
NINETEENTH CENTURY RESPONSES TO TWAIN AS WRITER AND REFORMER:
Mark Twain in Contemporary Political Cartoons, part of Jim Zwick's site: Anti-Imperialism in the United States 1898-1935.
Two "blown-up" copies of cartoons posted by Zwick.
Yankee Reviews Page at the University of Virginia
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