English > Money as a Mirror in The Tragedy of Pudd‘nhead Wilson and The Professor’s House
Money, even though it is just a piece of paper that is worthless outside of the civilized world, has the ability to bring out inherent characteristics, the good or bad, from people. Money plays an important role in many of the novels we have read this semester, and for the sake of this paper I have chosen two, in which we can find examples of its positive, as well as its negative effects. The faux Tom, in the novel The Tragedy of Pudd‘nhead Wilson by Mark Twain, is not afraid to attain money at whatever cost, even if it means murdering his benefactor. In contrast, Tom Outland, the mystical character in The Professor’s House by Willa Cather, represents the purity and naivety of nature, and is completely uninspired of the prospect of being rich. All the other characters in the novels are somewhere in between these two extremes, nonetheless, they all display ambivalent emotions toward wealth and money.
The desire for money plays an important role in the life of the phony Tom Driscoll. As he was born a slave, according to the general public belief in Twain’s times, Tom’s faith is to live a life of deceit and crime. As a young man, away from home, it is almost unavoidable that he gets into bad company. For him, this means gambling, and this is what causes his inevitable downfall. When he played, often “he won a lot of money, but lost it, and with it a deal more besides, which he promised to raise as soon as possible” (127). Money, for Tom, comes and goes easy, and his real problem is that he does not understand its real value. It is not the presence of money, but rather the lack of it that makes him show his true colors. Greed makes him go to such extremes as to selling his own mother to a slave holder “down the river” (218), or killing his uncle, Judge Driscoll in order to save his own skin.
How the negative personality traits in Tom were intensified by money is also apparent in his general attitude about dishonesty. He thinks that a “little deception could do no harm, and everything would come out right and pleasant in the end, any way (218). Tom deceives everyone around him because the hunger for money is what is in the center of his life. Since he does not have a job, the only source of money for him is the purse of his uncle. Sometimes, to pay his creditors, Tom has to rob houses that makes him not only a liar, but a thief too, and all this is because of money. It is quite obvious in the case of Tom that money does not only have a negative effect on some people in terms of their behavior, but it makes them into a completely different being, one that lies, steals, kills, and most of all betrays.
It is also money that changed the relationship between the two sisters, Kathleen and Rosamond in Willa Cather’s novel. When Rosamond inherited the rights to all the income that derives from the Outland Engine, made her sister incredibly jealous. It is not only the fact that now she has a lot of money, but Kathleen also feels a sudden change in the manners of her sister that really annoys her. She, kind of blaming her sister for this estrangement, reminds her father that “we were never jealous of each other at home. I was always proud of her good looks and good taste” (70). Kathleen feels that it is Rosamond who changed for the worse when she became rich, and she is the only one to blame for their feud. Kathleen, not quite rightfully, but takes no responsibility. She can not deny the envy she feels toward her sister, but at the same time she claims that she does not want her money. Then what is behind her coldness toward Rosie? St. Peter thinks “she couldn’t forgive Rosie’s forgetting Tom so quickly” (73). Kathleen, too, must have had feelings towards Tom, but it was her sister who ended up getting engaged to him.
Money, given its power to change people, brought out the worst characteristics from Rosamond. She has always been a role model for Kathleen; she was the older sister to look up to, but not anymore. Now she acts like a grand dame who does not feel it necessary to share her inheritance with those who were the closest friends and colleagues of Outland. Kathleen goes as far as to call her sister a snake just because she does not conceal her wealth. She admits that “I am envious. I do not think I would be if she let me alone, but she comes here with her magnificence and takes the life out of all our poor little things”. She adds that “everybody knows she’s rich, why does she have to keep rubbing it in?” (69). Kathleen is clearly jealous of her sister; she can not forgive her to have all the money that came from Tom’s inventions, and she feels that it should be distributed equally among all the family members.
Augusta’s bankruptcy can also be used as an indicator of the St. Peter sisters’ characters. Kathleen wants to help the poor woman by having the family buy stocks without her knowing it, but Rosamond is “determined to make Augusta admit her folly” (110) before she would even consider helping. Even the Professor, who tries not to take sides, admits that Rosamond is “altogether too blind for responsibilities of that kind” (110). There is only one instant where Rosamond expresses generosity, and it is when she says to her father: “We think you ought to let us settle an income on you, so that you could give up your university work and devote all your time to writing and research“(48). She refers to Outland as she tries to convince her father, saying ”That is what Tom would have wanted”, as well as pointing out that without Louie’s involvement, the invention would never have “succeeded commercially” (48). It is important for Rosamond to constantly emphasize the fact that without Louie, there wouldn’t be any use of Tom’s invention; it is only because of Louie’s “energy and technical knowledge” (48) that now they can harvest the fruits of Tom’s hard work.
As opposed to the other family members, we can say that Louie is the only one whose basic personality wasn’t at all changed or affected by the money. He is a Jew, and as such, money making is in his blood, at least this seems to be the general belief about Jewish people. He personifies this stereotype flawlessly in the novel as the one who helps Tom’s invention to commercial success. Wealth, however, does not have a negative effect on him; he stays true to himself unlike his wife, Rosie. The way Louie spends his money is irritating to other people, especially to Scott, who, as an act of jealousy, blackballs him from the “Arts and Letters” (147). It just shows the generosity of Louie that when Rosamond tells him that he was blackballed because of Scott, he dismisses the claim saying that “well, if he did, it wasn’t very nice of him, certainly. But are you sure Rosie? Rumors do go about, and people like to stir up family differences” (147). Even the Professor, who would have all the reasons to despise Louie for turning Tom into “chemicals and dollars and cents” (112), has the general opinion of him as “an absolutely generous chap”, adding that he “never known him to refuse to give either time or money” (111). St. Peter clearly embraced him as his son in law, but not yet as a friend.
The two characters most neutral to the power of money are Tom Outland and Pudd’nhead Wilson. Wilson, even though he has been without clients and business prospects for decades, never once had thoughts of doing anything unlawful in order to get money. When the Italian twins came to town, all the townspeople went to see them, listened to their exotic tales with the hopes of getting something valuable out of them. Pudd’nhead was the only one who accepted them as they were, without any particular interest, and also he was the only one who believed in their innocence when no one else stood by them. Indirectly though, but we find out about the little, petty possessions the other towns people had in their houses, when we learn about the thief that raided them during the night. People are missing little teaspoons and other objects, while curiously enough Pudd’nhead never reports any stolen items. Is it because he has nothing of that sort; he is not the acquisitive type who collects all sorts of objects. He lives in the world of ideals, just like Tom Outland, and not in the world of materialistic possessions like many others.
Outland is the only one in Cather’s novel who is unwilling to compromise his integrity in exchange for wealth. He comes across as a simple young man who is utterly disinterested in money, and only feels sorrow for those who are slaves to their materialistic desires. When he was in Washington D.C. on a quest of trying to get the Smithsonian Museum interested in his discovery of the “Cliff City”, he stayed with a couple who “spent their lives trying to keep up appearances, and to make his salary do more than it could” (209). Tom doesn’t dislike people like these, he just can’t understand their motives of trying to be something they’re not.
Tom, as opposed to all the other characters in the novel, does not want to have any sorts of material possession more than what is necessary for his everyday subsistence. When he first met his best friend, Rodney just won a lot of money on poker, but was too drunk to keep an eye of his prize. When he offered half of his winning to Tom the next morning, he only wanted a good breakfast out of him, but that he “wanted quick” (163). This non-materialistic world view is so distant from most character’s outlook that even his closest friend, Rodney, does not understand him. Rodney, thinking that this is what Tom wanted, sells all the artifacts they dug out on the Blue Mesa, like they were common, everyday objects. Tom’s fury surprises him, and Rodney says, what is one of the most important messages of the novel, “I meant to realize on them, just as you did, and that it would come to money in the end. Everything does – he added” (220). This sentence mirrors the author’s disappointment in people as she portrays them as being inherently greedy and would do anything for money. Only Tom, and to some extent the Professor are exempt under this rule.
There is a major distinction between the Professor and the other family members that makes him comparable to Tom, and it is the fact that they both valued their friendship and ideas more than anything that could be attained with money. St. Peter’s disillusionment in people, and particularly in his own family, is often apparent from his words. After his return from a shopping “orgy” in Chicago, he says to his wife that “too much is certainly worse that too little – of anything” (135), suggesting that he does not approve of his daughter’s materialistic behavior. At the same time he hints to his wife that Rosie “had a faultless purchasing manner”, and wondered “where a girl who grew up in that old house” learnt it (135). The Professor does not feel that he might be at fault of why his daughters became such acquisitive women.
The truth is that even though he does not acknowledge it, he too, is materialistic, although to a much lesser degree than the others in his family. He admits that if it was not for Lillian’s inheritance, “they could not have been happy” (233). This was just a “small income from her father – only about sixteen hundred a year, but had made all the difference in the world” (233). Money is important to the Professor, because without it he could not enjoy his little pleasures, such as his fine wine, sail boat, exotic French garden, and even his old house with its third floor study.
The interesting thing about money is that it represents diverse things for every one, but it can also change people’s behavior, even their entire personality. Some people, as we have seen in these two novels, like to have money just for the sake of it, like Louie Marsellus, while others feel it is necessary for purchasing their everyday necessities with it, such as Tom Outland. The fake Tom Driscoll is the prefect opposite of Outland, and even of Louie. He is driven by greed, and the fear of losing his inheritance, as well as the fear of becoming a slave drives him into theft and eventually leads him to murdering his uncle. He is the worst a human could be.
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