Discuss Mark Twain's portrayal of women in Adventures of Huckleberry Essay

Discuss Mark Twains portrayal of women in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Essay Example plot of land most of the characters represent various members of the male society, there are a significant number of women who play an essential role within the novel. For Twain, there seems to be basically three typefaces of women the harridan, the sweetly stereotypical Victorian housewife and the intelligent. These types are portrayed within the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the characters of Miss Watson as the spinsterly old maid, the one-time(a) Wilks sisters as the properly trained young ladies and the intelligent Mrs. Judith Loftus and Joann Wilks comprising the final set.In the very opening of the book, Twain introduces us to the two most common type of women, the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson. The image we get of Miss Watson is or else grim. She is a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on who immediately took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up (3). While the Widow Douglas is seen as interfering in that she insists on trying to sivilise Huck, Miss Watson is nagging in her criticisms. Miss Watson would say, Dont put your feet up there, Huckleberry and Dont rumple up like that, Huckleberry set up straight and pretty soon she would say, Dont gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry why dont you try to behave? (4). She is such an unpleasant woman to be around that Huck decides hed rather go to the bad place rather than the good place where Miss Watson has announced she will go. This depiction of her makes it not so surprising that she is an old maid rather than a widow.In argument to Miss Watson, her sister the Widow Douglas is an older version of the types of girls that Huck meets while on his adventures. The Wilks sisters have been bred to be so