The issue of representing slavery of course includes the question of how to represent the men and women who owned slaves. Pudd'nhead Wilson is also the story of Dawson's Landing's Judges and Colonels, the "gentlemen" who are proud of their "Virginian ancestry" and who father slaves like Roxy and her son. Although MT's text often treats their pretensions and hypocrisies ironically, they are never mocked by the illustrators. The duelling scene here, for example, echoes a lot of contemporary plantation tales in its enshrinement of men who fight by aristocratic codes to preserve their sacred honor.
The Barrett Collection, UVA PS 1317 .A1 1894