Huck Finn Gender Quotes

“Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle don’t hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hod the needle still and poke the thread at it; that’s the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t’other way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 11. The differences between boys and girls that allow the crafty Mrs. Loftus to see through Huck’s girl disguise and outsmart trickster Huck.

Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see, but when he straightened himself up like aliberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards. He didn’t ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners – everybody was always goodmannered where he was.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 18. This description of Colonel Grangerford as a stict yet kind overall leader shows the role of the male in a family. At the time men were nearly always the head of the household and the authority figure.

“The idea of YOU lynching anybody! It’s amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a MAN! Because you’re brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a MAN? Why, a MAN’s safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind – as long as it’s daytime and you’re not behind him.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 22. Colonel Sherburn, the wealthy shop owner, challenges and calls out the mob gathered to lynch him after he shoots town drunk Boggs. The same mob who thinks it’s brave to tar and feather a woman.
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