Literary articles - Mark Twain 2026

Tom Sawyer, the Gentleman-in-Waiting

Belonging to the Better

In May of 1876, William Dean Howells writes, in a review of the novel published in The Atlantic Monthly, that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is “a wonderful study of the boy-mind, which inhabits a world quite distinct from that in which he is bodily present with his elders,” and that “in this lies its great charm and its universality, for boy-nature, however human nature varies, is the same everywhere” (Howells). But Howells is less entranced by the boyish charms of Tom than he is the perceived universality of the town of St. Petersburg, “some such idle shabby Mississippi River town” undeniably familiar to Mr. Clemens; yet “Tom belongs to the better sort of people in it” (Howells). Tom Sawyer's jejune adventures seem to provoke a defensive brokering on the part of the reviewer. “In a word,” Howells writes, “he is a boy, and merely and exactly an ordinary boy on the moral side.” Tom's childhood, though surely lively, resonates with adult readers because of its benign nature. There is no need for the reader to worry about Tom Sawyer, who “belong[ed] to the better sort of people” than even Twain himself did (Howells).

Thus the “delightful” aspects of Tom's “wild and fantastic dreams” are relegated to a childishness that still manages to fit into a town realistically drawn as a portrayal of the Southwest. And Tom Sawyer, “mischievous, but not vicious” and who “almost never swears” fits into the town, and reminds his reader of their own sleepy hometowns and boy-natures. The challenge for St. Petersburg society is manifested in Huckleberry Finn, “the worthless vagabond” (Howells) and an ostensible outcast. While he tempts Tom and riles up his rebellious side, Tom's temperament still “promise[s] reform.” Howells's claim confirms that Huck's “identity is respected,” and though he is far more of a ruffian than Tom, “he will lead a decent life in order that he may one day be thought worthy to become a member of that gang of robbers which Tom is to organize” (Howells). Of course the publishing of Huckleberry Finn in 1884 would anesthetize the notion of Huck ever pursuing a career under the jurisdiction of Tom Sawyer. Tom's story, Howells placates, is “amusing and exciting” (Howells), but his rebelliousness is sweetly recognized as a facet of his childhood.

The town is judged “in the reader's sense,” on its own, accounted-for morality. “With its religiousness, its lawlessness, its droll social distinctions,” the town achieves the acceptable as a portrait of a rural Southwest river town. “Its civilization qualified by its slave-holding, and its traditions of the wilder West which has passed away” (Howells). Who is this reader Howells is addressing? The reviewer is assuring an audience that the novel is “decent” in a philosophical way; that in the actions and speech of these characters one sees the acceptable virtues of character. This character should be one with whom the audience would also identify. For characters, those traits or thoughts that are not considered socially acceptable are deemed “childish,” or as playing heavily on the “imaginative side.” The sleepy river town of St. Petersburg is redeemed by the “passing away” of the “wilder” Western influences. But Howells is also upholding a modest critique of slavery, which to a Northeastern, genteel reader would doubly intensify the sense of connection between themselves and a small, poor, Southern orphan.

Howells' review of Tom belies the overwhelming sense of contentment, allowed and administered by the reviewer's casual upkeep of a status quo. Howells speaks matter-of-factly about the characters, setting, and plot of Twain's novel. He maintains that Tom Sawyer is, first and foremost, a book that is “realistic in the highest degree, and which gives incomparably the

best picture of life in that region as yet known to fiction” (Howells). The preoccupation with realism “in the highest degree” bespeaks his intent to authenticate a Southwestern tradition that Twain's novel apparently upholds. In presenting Twain as a writer who creates character “with a fidelity to circumstance” and with such obviously juvenile perceptions, Howells validates the novel by assuring the reader that this portrayal fits into a canon that is yet known, while on the literary side, offering some turns of phrase and witticisms that “delight” and “charm” the adult reader. And to an extent, this novel does live up to Howells' critique. In comparison to Twain's later, more daring literature, Tom Sawyer remains well-loved but ultimately humble. That is not to discount its position in the American literary canon nor to undermine its renowned scenes; one may understand that Twain was simply getting his feet wet.

Howells paints the experience of reading Tom Sawyer as a “simply delightful,” a delicate escape from the droll, unimaginative lives of adult readers; any “terror and superstition” is deemed explicitly “boyish.” He assures his readers that taking up this novel will prove it altogether “instructive,” “well-conceived,” “scrupulous,” and “excellent” (Howells). The audience most affected by Howell's review—to whom this review, published in the Atlantic Monthly, is addressed—is a specific strata of high-minded, middle-and upper-class, educated Americans “who came to substitute art and learning for the stringent moral vision of American Protestantism” (Dawidoff, x). In the early 20th century, Harvard philosopher George Santayana coined this philosophical “habit” the genteel tradition.

The Genteel Tradition

In August of 1911, George Santayana, addressing an audience in California, spoke about the lack of ingenuity he sensed in the way of American philosophical thought. The “youngness” of America, he argued, was being overshadowed by an “old” mentality. He diagnosed the 19th century as holding fast to a number of habits that carried over from the colonial period, comprised as “the genteel tradition.” Santayana, viewing the 19th century in retrospect, saw that this tradition had infected all aspects of life in America. Philosophically, the enterprising and vivacious American people were being sold “old wine in new bottles,” finding themselves content with what was being poured into their glass, yet unaware of what they were ingesting. Like Eucharist wine, watered down and explained only through prerecorded script, deeper meaning of one's action is written off by insubstantial and a ritualistic sense of decorum.

Santayana believed instead that a person's philosophy should “inspire” and “express” their life in ways that would make living more vibrant than if they were without philosophy. Had Americans “been too much engrossed in living to reflect upon life” (Santayana, 38), a lack of philosophy may have been present, and a void could have been filled by purely American insight. But rather than this hypothetical innocence, American philosophy had drawn too heavily from the customs of the past and distilled them into daily truths. America, Santayana says, was like a wise child—young in age but possessing an aged wisdom. The problem with the wise child is that this wisdom is “thin” and “verbal,” and often results in the physical and emotional stunting of the child's development. Thus, the wise child, in possession of old wisdom, found that their “fresh mentality” decontextualized this wisdom, overcooking it into something that was reduced to tradition, a form of conventionality and conformity—something to be despised (Santayana, 39).

As counterparts, aggressive enterprise and the genteel tradition act as distributaries. They run parallel, each splitting off from an original stream that has run through America since its colonization: Calvinism. As Santayana saw it, Calvinism was not only the religion that dominated early American society, but was also the mobilizing force of its organization, government, and attitudes. On its own, Calvinism is “an expression of the agonized conscience,” which is torn between “tragic concern” and “tragic exultation over the situation of one's existence” (Santayana, 41). Santayana comprises the Calvinist doctrine into three succinct tenets: one, sin exists; two, sin exists to be punished; three, it is beautiful that sin exists to be punished. There is a pleasure and a pride an individual takes in their existence, even if they concurrently know that they are depraved and exist to be punished. But there is a bitter-sweetness there that Santayana finds most intriguing about America's Calvinist roots.

The philosopher maintains that the depravity and misery of human existence is also a source of pride. “The scandal” of the Calvinist existence, writes Santayana, “is requisite, since otherwise the serious importance of being as we ought to be would not have been vindicated” (Santayana, 41). Thus, a people in the wake or “on the verge of ruin,” if philosophically inclined, may require this principle of pride and misery. Santayana suggests that early American colonists certainly found their ambitions in the New World as deeply rooted in these tenets, and felt justified by the evident “fruits” of their ethic. Success, or “happy results,” slackened the agony of their conscience.

The nation became numerous; it ceased to be either ecstatic or distressful; the high social morality which on the whole it preserved took another color; people remained honest and helpful out of good sense and good will rather than out of scrupulous adherence to any fixed principles. (Santayana, 42)

Out of a tradition of Calvinism comes the “great American virtue” of “Good-will.” The success of America is internalized by its population, and American egoism begins to allow their conscience not only a break from the agony, but Santayana suggests that even with a full sense of conviction, the individual is both “victorious and blameless” (Santayana, 43). Here it becomes clear how Calvinism, wrung out from the culture of America, leads to a general air of complacency, self-satisfaction, and preservation of a status quo. The pride overrides the sense of depravity perhaps not in the individual, but certainly within the cultural consciousness of the American people regarding their government and global power. As a collective identity, Americans funnel Calvinism's “tragic concern” into the will of aggressive enterprise, and its “tragic exultation” into the intellect, when they should exist concurrently in a perpetual struggle.

Calvinism is not the only source of the dual mentality within 19th century American society. The influence of transcendentalism as a method of viewing the world contributed greatly to the creation of the genteel tradition, specifically in its solipsistic construction of the individual I/Eye. Transcendentalist method is described by Santayana as a radicalized Protestant spirit that is somewhat different than what was initially inherited (pure Calvinism). Taken too far by the exultant and unrepentant ego, the transcendental method becomes an “instrument of pure romanticism” (Santayana, 46). Autonomous and “calmly revolutionary,” transcendental method concerns itself with the here and now, considers the “Will […] deeper than Intellect” (Santayana, 47). It is self-trust without a system; methodology in place of active philosophy, and inconsistency as a method. Philosophers, Santayana asserts, generally aspire to a system that is “sufficient and right” without actually seeking truth; instead they seek only “victory and the dispelling of their own doubts” (Santayana, 49). Santayana cites Kant as influencing the marriage of Calvinist faith with transcendentalism method—his philosophy thus appeals to those born into the genteel tradition, “feeling it weak,” and “wishing to save it” (Santayana, 47).

The foil of the transcendentalist is the mirror he holds up to himself, looks into, and sees in its reflection himself as Nature, Nature as himself, created by him. Through this leveled plateau of egoism, the genteel tradition has taken hold of American philosophy. According to Santayana, the genteel tradition is that strain of transcendental egoism that “forbids people to confess that they are unhappy,” thus promoting widespread complacency and maintaining a light-hearted consideration of human existence. Poetry and profound religion are inaccessible to those ensnared by the genteel. At its core, the genteel tradition is academic idealism, a whitewashing; it is, “adoring things as they are.” Santayana writes that the genteel tradition in American philosophy holds an “illegitimate monopoly […] over what ought to be assumed and what ought to be hoped for.” Perhaps the most exciting thing to emerge out of American philosophy is that the genteel has been “challenged and (what is perhaps more insidious) it has been discovered” (Santayana, 60). The awareness and recognition of the genteel has resulted in “rare metaphysical preoccupations,” a marriage of Calvinism and transcendentalism, an agonized conscience and the radically subjective criticism of knowledge as it “has subsisted in the academic mind” (Santayana, 62). This egotistical system, the “I,” is at the very center of the universe, anthropocentric, “and inspired by the conceited option that man, or human reason, or the human distinction between good and evil,” a mirror which reflects Man as the Creator, at “the centre and pivot of the universe,” is the legacy of the genteel tradition (Santayana, 63).

Twain Enters the Parlor

This image of the “wise child” strikes one as resembling the persona of Mark Twain. There is an ironic undercurrent to Howells' reverence for “how rapidly Mr. Clemens has grown as an artist” when one is simultaneously aware that he was not born into the “better sort of people” like Tom Sawyer (Howells). A chronically poor Missourian, a river boat pilot, a wild Western reporter—Clemens became famous for his humor rather than his realism. He was the young, relentless ruffian who had never known luxury until the Quaker City voyage. On the Quaker City, Clemens met Mary Fairbanks, the woman who “be[came] his mentor in manners and morals, even in writing” (Kaplan, 45) despite her feelings that he was a “heretic in art” (Kaplan, 46). Simultaneously, he was penning letters about these travels back to a newspaper in California, which was under the immediate editorship of Ms. Fairbanks. This collected material would become his first full-length novel, The Innocents Abroad. Mary Fairbanks' influence is inextricable from the work that followed his voyage. The Innocents Abroad was published in 1869, only two years after his voyage ended. It was a compilation of the travel letters he had written for the Alta California and lectures he had given about his voyage thereafter. At the outset of writing, Clemens envisioned a duo at the narrative helm of the novel. The “I” would be Mark Twain, an upstanding and moralistic persona traveling, of course, abroad. His prodigal sidekick would be much more of ruffian, loud-mouthed, ignorant, and linguistically reckless. In the end, Clemens fused these characters into the singular Mark Twain, in all aspects respectable and yet subversively witty and blunt.

Clemens' refinement process did not end after disembarking from the Quaker City. “I acknowledge—I acknowledge—that I can be most lacerating ‘funny without being vulgar,'” Clemens wrote in a response to a “scorcher” of a letter from Mary, after she reprimanded him for delivering a profanity-laden lecture in 1867 in Washington (Kaplan, 67). He promised to integrate her instruction into what would become The Innocents Abroad, hoping to not only to please her, but to make her proud. Through the lens of Santayana's writings, one imagines Mary Fairbanks in her colonial mansion, vilifying her “wise child” for his vulgarity. Clemens, wise indeed, finds himself being fitted for a coat and tails in her parlor as she watches with a keen and tasteful eye.

While Fairbanks is not directly mentioned in any of his novels, she is present in the persona of Mark Twain. To distill her impact to that of only a teacher is to disregard the complex mother-son relationship she and Clemens surely enjoyed. However, her influence instilled in Twain the wider appeal (and far more lucrative career) he could attain if he met her standards. And so the persona of Mark Twain is perhaps an attempt of “writing up” in the hopes of achieving the attention of those who were unfamiliar with or offended by the hard-drinking, drawling, impious scoundrel, Sam Clemens.

In this way, Samuel Clemens may represent an American masculinity that was, in his time, unfit for the feminine delicacy of literature as an art form. Santayana, in his essay The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy, similarly portrays American philosophy within the framework of the “wise child.” With this dual-minded child, Santayana personifies 19th century America, torn between two philosophies: the “old” is hereditary and intellectual, the “young” is academic, a force of will. This double identity accounts for different facets of American culture. Santayana sees the hereditary, or intellect-based old mentality in religion, literature and morality, while the willful, academic mentality pervades invention, industry, and society. The will in American society is imagined as a skyscraper, an upward thrust of “aggressive enterprise,” the masculine warrior of America, on the frontier and in battle. This is the part of the American consciousness that has been “leaping” forward, while the intellect, “high-and-dry” in its colonial mansion, remains the “sphere,” Santayana writes, “of the American woman,” content with affairs as usual, and is “all genteel tradition” (Santayana, 40).

Fairbanks & Co.

This gendered philosophical binary is overwhelmingly explicit in Clemens' life and work. Beginning with Mary Fairbanks, the author continued to surround himself with women who kept him, in a word, publishable. When he eventually married Olivia Langdon in 1870, she took over all editing duties from Mary. Olivia, whom Clemens called “Livy,” was extremely well-educated and raised within the insular world of the New England genteel. Kaplan reports that she kept Clemens (at least nominally) Christian, startling his visiting friends and family from the West by leading grace before meals.

Twain is famous for remarking that “training is everything,” but there were also inclinations of the genteel instilled in Clemens from an early age. Sam's strict Calvinist mother laid the groundwork for Mary and Livy by catechizing a sense of deep mortal guilt in Twain, perhaps hindering the purely masculine sense of will and enterprise that drove him professionally. Both Livy and Clemens' eldest daughter Suzy were adamant about crafting their patriarch's legacy as a literary genius as opposed to a lowly humorist.

Surely Twain succeeded in establishing himself as a constant and revered fixture of the American canon, but his posthumously published works reveal a man whose awareness of culture and inability to comment candidly on its hypocrisies and stoicism led to his bitterness, depression, and rage. But early Twain was very content to enter the figurative parlor of a literary class that was traditionally and outspokenly content with the level of subversive humor and language they would endure. He was instead able to inject his cultural conscience into that of a young boy, while preserving his own voice as the omnipotent narrator. Twain thereby allows a genteel audience to, as Howells does, dismiss much of his societal criticism as childish impatience, ignorance, and imagination.

Calvinist Legacy in St. Petersburg

The opening of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a cartoonish and frenzied, yet assumedly typical morning in the household. It begins with the search for the novels' namesake:

"TOM!"

No answer.

"TOM!"

No answer.

"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!"

No answer.

The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service—she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll—"

She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.

"I never did see the beat of that boy!"

She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted:

"Y-o-u-u TOM!"

There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.

"There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in there?"

"Nothing." [...]

"Well, I know. It's jam—that's what it is. Forty times I've said if you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch."

The switch hovered in the air—the peril was desperate—

"My! Look behind you, aunt!"

The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and disappeared over it. (Twain, Tom, 11) Unlike Huckleberry Finn, this novel is told in third person rather than first, thus allowing Twain to both construct and comment upon characters from an omniscient narrative perspective. This introduction to Tom begins with his playful hiding from his aunt, avoiding chores and pilfering jam for his own enjoyment. Rowdy and boisterous, Tom Sawyer represents an aspect of general childhood—avoiding adult-ordained duties and rules—but Twain presents this from the confounded, broom-wielding perspective of his older aunt.

Aunt Polly is described solely in these paragraphs as “the old lady” (Twain, Tom, 11). Her first physical description concerns her glasses, which she seems to utilize for “style” rather than “service.” In fact, Twain writes, the spectacles themselves are as good as “stove lids,” and thus perhaps a physical hindrance to her daily life, not to mention the search for her nephew. Thus Polly's introductory feature is verbal (her yelling) and aesthetic (her glasses), two literal feminine embodiments of the genteel tradition.

Aunt Polly's good-hearted rules make her prone to being perpetually outwitted by the youngsters in her care, and her softness for Tom is not so much based in motherly instinct as it is on pity. Tom and his siblings are orphans, taken in by their aunt out of the goodness of her heart. Later, Aunt Polly reflects aloud that Tom “he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow” (Twain, Tom, 12). In this passage one may note a strong Calvinist undercurrent which had been distilled from the original religion into what Santayana would deem the American virtue of “good-will.” But her good-will ironically involved corporal punishment--she perceives her biggest pitfall as being that she “ain't got the heart to lash him” (Twain, Tom, 12). She sees this inability as a disservice to Tom's growing up, and instead resolves to “make him work” as a punishment.

Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. [...] He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's truth, […] Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. [...] he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. [...] I'll just be obleeged to make him work, tomorrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I've got to do some of my duty by him, or I'll be the ruination of the child. (Twain, Tom , 12)

After Tom runs off “up the high-board fence,” his aunt “[breaks] into a gentle laugh,” and wonder aloud if she will “never learn” that she can't keep Tom under her thumb. But aunt Polly is wholly idealistic about her nephew's good intentions, and instead calls herself an “old fool” (Twain, Tom, 12). The old woman's complacency in response to Tom's behavior works two-fold. First, it endears Tom to the reader as a redeemable troublemaker. The approval of the kind-hearted aunt, who took in her own dead sister's three children, establishes for the reader an amalgam of sweetness and pity for these characters. Aunt Polly admits three times that she doesn't have the heart to beat Tom for his misbehavior, even though his misbehavior and her lack of retribution has become a cycle. But his youth and orphanhood allow her both distance from him, as she is resigned to his antics while feeling a sense of responsibility embedded in the closeness of being Tom's only maternal figure.

Rather than reprimand Tom, aunt Polly sees the futility of chasing after him. She knows that Tom will be back soon, and he will be put to work then to atone for his misbehavior. Aunt

Polly's position as a caregiver maintains a hold over young Tom as a defendant child, despite his disobedient streak. While he may not always follow her rules, the threat of punishment keeps Tom from getting into too much trouble. One may perhaps understand the genteel tradition's hold over America culture through the power dynamic between aunt Polly and Tom Sawyer. Her hold over him is, to echo Santayana, “verbal,” insofar as she can only bring herself to scold him. Even the tasks she does assign him, such as white-washing the fence, Tom combats with a surprisingly enterprising cleverness. Her decision to put him to work superficially seems the antidote to his misbehavior, but instead leads to one if his most enterprising moments in the novel. Rather than allow a fellow schoolmate, Ben, ridicule him for completing chores on a beautiful day, Tom makes a grand spectacle of things. He combines a selfish wish to play with a bourgeois ideological outlet: delegation of work.

"What do you call work?” Tom asks Ben after he brags about his leisurely plans. "Why, ain't that work?” Ben falls instantly for Tom's ruse. Turning back to his white-washing with feigned enthusiasm, young Mr. Sawyer “answered carelessly: ‘Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer'” (Twain, Tom, 19). Ben asks Tom to “let [him] whitewash a little,” a request Tom dramatically considers before responding,

“No—no—I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful particular about this fence—right here on the street, you know—but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and she wouldn't. Yes, she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done.” (Twain, Tom, 19-20)

In making the task out to be something exceptional, Tom Sawyer successfully tricks Ben into doing it for him—and for a profit. His enterprising spirit approaches patriotism. In exchange for an apple, the protagonist gives up his chores and gains the day (and a snack). Like flies to a flame, other boys trade their prized possessions for their hand at the fence. The ruse was not only successful in alleviating the boy of his obligations, but “when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth” (Twain, Tom, 20).

While Tom's underhandedness may be seen as immoral to some, “boyish” to others, his enterprising spirit proves enthusiastic and his strategies a capitalistic success. Here, Tom proves himself capable of wisdom, outsmarting both his high-minded aunt and his dim-witted peers. But Tom is not all wisdom—otherwise there would be no need for the likes of Huckleberry Finn. The influence of structure and genteel complacency—even a rigid adherence to rules—are proven to be deeply instilled in Tom.

By the (Good) Book

In another episode, Tom is playing by himself in the woods when he hears an acquaintance approaching. He hazards a line from a commonly-known book: Robin Hood.

"Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow."

Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom. Tom called:

"Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?”

"Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou that—that—"

"Dares to hold such language," said Tom, prompting—for they talked "by the book," from memory. (Twain, Tom , 53)

Here, Tom and Joe perform a ritual particular to boyhood—quoting famous dialogue from a cultural relic. This exchange between the boys codifies their equal status. When Joe recognizes Tom's playful call, he attempts to offer the appropriate response. But Mr. Harper is apparently less well-versed in the exact language of the novel, and hesitates slightly, “that—that—,” and prompts Tom to finish the line for him. Tom grows frustrated at Joe's hesitations. They talk “by the book,” Twain writes, revealing a quality of play that is inherently privileged. Persons who cannot read or who had not read Robin Hood would have been confused by Tom's quotation, thus devising an air of exclusivity to the boys' cavorting. Rather than break character, Joe answers again after Tom's coaching.

"Who art thou that dares to hold such language?"

"I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know."

"Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!"

They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground, struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful combat, "two up and two down." Presently Tom said:

"Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively!"

So they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. By and by Tom shouted: "Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?"

"I sha'n't! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of it."

"Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in the book. The book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor Guy of Guisborne.' You're to turn around and let me hit you in the back."

There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the whack and fell. "Now," said Joe, getting up, "you got to let me kill you. That's fair."

"Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book."

"Well, it's blamed mean—that's all."

"Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and lam me with a quarter-staff; or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and you be Robin Hood a little while and kill me.” (Twain, Tom, 53)

As the boys continue their activities, however impromptu, they maintain fairness and flexibility within the confines of Robin Hood's canon. Certain individuals remain offensive and other defensive, and there are already winners and losers written into their imaginary contest. This strict adherence to roles and character destiny, “two up and two down,” divulges a familiarity with structure and a desire to remain “true” to the written “authorities” (Twain, Tom, 53). Such faithfulness to the canon manifests the framework and propriety that the boys have internalized —a difference that separates them from boys like Huckleberry Finn, who does not attend school nor have a traditional family life. Of course, Tom's family life is less than “traditional” by modern standards, but his aunt has clearly done what she could in tolerating and taming his rebellious nature.

Insofar as Tom may represent the “wise child,” of Santayana's frustration, his male enterprise has no mentoring figure. The only true authority in his life is that of his old aunt, whose rules are “thin” and “verbal,” and without insurmountable threat. Tom's enterprising spirit is thus compromised by his innate obedience to general structure, as seen in these passages. Furthermore, even his apparent recklessness remains attached to a general awareness of his boyhood. In church, though distracted from the actual words of the sermon, he has a general knowledge of the proceedings. When he distracted by a fly and feels the urge to trap it in his palms, he waits until the congregants are sufficiently distracted before he acts, thus highlighting the already-instilled sense of decorum to which he has been forced to conform.

Earlier in the novel, Tom trades with other Sunday school friends for tickets they earned by memorizing sections of the Bible. While he has earned no tickets of his own merit, he has traded his possessions for them, and accumulated enough to exchange for a small pocket-sized Bible—itself a great reward to the other children. Tom decides to show off his black market reward the day that his crush, Becky Thatcher, and her father, the new town Judge, attend their first Sunday service. His decision to impress Becky and her father with false piety and intellect bespeaks Tom's knowledge of the social status quo.

Tom's ability to memorize lines from Robin Hood ironically reveals an ability to memorize. His mind, while not always interested in what it was being forced to listen to and process, unwillingly picks up the pattern of the church service and the general structure of proceedings. After Sunday school one weekend, Tom sits in church:

The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer, he only endured it—if he even did that much. He was restive all through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously—for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the clergyman's regular route over it—and when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly. (Twain, Tom, 35)

Tom's general complacency in church strikes one as rather audacious. It may be true that he would rather not be in attendance at all, but indeed he is there and he “endure[s] it” (Twain, Tom 35). Tom seems to take pride in the monotony of churchgoing. This lends itself to Santayana's notion of pride and misery in Calvinism, itself a double-edged sword. Of course, Tom's preference for a structured church service without “new matter” is not directly correlated to Santayana's exposition of the joy and sorrow of Calvinist existence, it does communicate a societal habit of churchgoing and church-hating. The “duty” of attending church is nevermore felt so miserably than in Twain's depiction of Tom, young and restless, in a Southwestern church in the summertime.

There is some irony to the notion that Tom seems pious in this scene, for his general knowledge of the church service is itself structural; he knows “the ground of old” and can “detect it[s] […] whole nature,” yet finds additions and liberties taken “unfair” and “scoundrelly” (Twain, Tom, 35). Furthermore, there is great irony in the notion that newness is “scoundrelly” to Tom; he hardly pays attention regardless, but his ear catches on novelty and immediately abhors it. Such complacency bespeaks a rather hastiness to Tom's nature, and is perhaps tied to the part of him who plays Robin Hood by the book. Though he is miserable, Tom relishes in the continuity of the service and the prayers, and even waits until their conclusion to trap the fly that caught his attention.

Insofar as Santayana's notion of the genteel tradition is concerned, one can trace the roots of genteel sensibilities already fixed to Tom Sawyer. Despite his willfulness and his “aggressive enterprise,” his sense of well-being is ratified only by the good-will shown to him by his aunt Polly. He is, of course, indebted to her kindness; had she not taken in Tom and his siblings, they too would be orphans like Huckleberry Finn, without structure or a matriarch to impose it. Aunt Polly's gentility comes through in both her acts of “good-will” and in the satisfaction she receives from the knowledge that Tom does have the ability to fit into the social order he was raised within.

Even Twain himself once remarked that Tom Sawyer was only interesting in boyhood, because he had the temperament necessary to grow up to be a normal person by society's standards. Thus Tom's youth redeems his rebellion for the adult reader, as Howells poses; his rebellion is thwarted by his reliance on structure and his faithfulness to specific authorities. Tom comes to symbolize another aspect of Santayana's argument. The philosopher argues that whatever disguises or does not recognize the genteel tradition, but rather diverts the attention away from society and onto the self, does not necessarily unmoor it. Rather, the focus is placed on how things “ought” to be. Tom's harmless rebellion from these norms makes him certainly an “adventurer,” but one, as Howells says, of childish ideals. Thus the mood of the genteel tradition finds itself pleasantly permeated throughout The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, itself perhaps not exemplary of all aspects of the genteel but it is indeed upon its bookshelf.