thinking about the uncanny in puddnhead and hbtc

Prof. Parham made a comment in class today that really brought some themes together for me. She said that Tryon hearing Rena’s voice as he slept and dreamt of Rena was an example of the uncanny, of realizing that what we think we know is actually completely unknown or unfamiliar. I was thinking about this before (for my paper) and this brought up an new set of ideas. I had been thinking of the idea of the uncanny as the ability to pass (because you’re physical appearance enables you to be seen as the same). I don’t know if that makes sense but to restate it, I understood the ability to pass as what was uncanny and not the revelation that one has been passing. To push this idea further, in Puddnhead, I interpreted Puddnhead Wilson’s thoughts about Roxy’s appearance (“to all intents and purposes, Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro”) as a moment in which he looks at her and sees something familiar but in the same thought understands her unfamiliarity.
However, after Prof. Parham’s remark in class today, I’m beginning to understand that revelation is key to the uncanny. Because without the revelation, there is no disruption of what was previously believed to be true.

“Tom” and “Rowena’s” death clarified

I think that the society that Tom and Roxy live in refuses to acknowledge people of mixed race on a social level and instead chooses to get rid of them. They do this by reaffirming the view that blacks/ mulattoes are inferior and need to be expunged when they commit, what they view as a crime, the act of passing whether it be intentional or not. This is why they will continue to be killed in novels when they take on the lifestyle as a white person. This is the only logical ending given then time period that these books take place in. I personally wouldve preferred that they live (you know in the power to my ppl sort of way) but as frustrating as this is…it is sadly enough in line with the way people thought back then and rationalized punishing black passing for white through death.

Why do rena and tom die?

In another English class that I’m taking we watched Spike Lee’s Bamboozled. As a result of that movie we had a lot of discussions in class about stock characters in films and what they’re purpose was etc. One of the stock characters we learned about was the “tragic mulattoe”. This is the character who is a product of a mixed race relationship and he or she dies in the end for his or her “sin” of being of mixed race. I think this conversation becomes important when thinking about the two books we’ve read and their main characters. As we know both Tom and Rena are of mixed race backgrounds and end up dying in the end. I find it particularly enlightening to think of this stock character with respect to “just how white” the characters are. In Puddnhead wilson Tom is 1/32 black. As we didcussed in class, Twain gives us the impression that that’s not black at all. Well, maybe that’s not the right wording. Basically he calls the one drop rule stupid. As for Rena, she’s less than 1/8 black and can pass very easily for white. However, we are told in the book that in North Carolina “all people of mixed bood were called ‘mulattoes’” (145).
So, okay the point of my whole post is, what were the authors doing when they made these characters die at the end? (Well effectively make Tom die by selling him down the river) Were their deaths because of their “sins” like the stock character? Or was a different reason. Was it that the world was not ready for people of mixed race and these characters are taking on the sins of their communities?