Uncovering the French: On the Roots and Uses of Twain’s Antipathy

When most people think of Twain, France does not come to mind. Readers think of the Mississippi River; scholars also connect his work to the American West and the global locales of his travel writing. This article contextualizes Twain’s vexed relationship to the French, exploring a complex set of influences, interactions, and experiences. It reads Twain’s antipathy as over-determined by everything from his upbringing in a former French territory to his translation skirmish over “Jumping Frog” to his Protestant-inflected conflict over sexual norms. These created a matrix of historical, personal, and professional factors that made him one of America’s earliest France-bashers. Yet he was also a lifelong follower of French history, language, and culture. Far from playing little role in Twain’s development as an American writer, France and its erased colonial presence contributed to his construction of a new “American” identity on the nineteenth-century world stage.