This article offers a rereading of Pudd’nhead Wilson’s enslaved character Roxy. It analyzes Twain’s language of textual creation, revision, and violence in Those Extraordinary Twins, and describes how it pertains to Roxy’s storyline. These physical descriptions connect directly to Roxy’s violent circumstances and continuous efforts to enact change—or “revision”—in her life. Pudd’nhead Wilson, in turn, refers to the language of textual creation to illustrate the deeply embedded narratives of enslavement against which Roxy struggles. This article also contends that Roxy’s fingerprint is an important text that embodies the haunting presence of slavery, in both her life and in the antebellum South as a whole. Finally, it discusses how this critical reading of Twain’s language of textual and physical violence can also be applied to Jim’s enforced acts of “inscription” in the concluding chapters of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Two stories at the same time: Silent Narratives of Enslavement in 
