ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN holds the distinction of being the American novel that has been censured for the longest period of time, for the greatest number of reasons, by the widest range of political, religious, and literary factions. Before it was even available to the public, 3,000 advance sales copies were quickly withdrawn when it was discovered that someone along the chain of production had altered one of the illustrations. For Chapter 32, artist E. W. Kemble had drawn Uncle Silas standing with his shoulders drawn back and his pelvis thrust forward, with young Huck Finn posed before him, apparently gazing at the man’s proffered crotch. Some wag had scratched into the inked plate something that appeared to have been missing from Kemble’s drawing: Uncle Silas now sported a very exposed and very erect penis. The offending books were recalled, and page 283 was sliced out and a replacement illustration tipped in. The few copies that escaped this surgery are now collector’s items.
When the book was released to the public, it was met with savage reviews. One newspaper called it “a gross trifling with every fine feeling.” It was banned by the Concord Free Public Library (Mass.) as “the veriest trash … rough, coarse, and inelegant, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.” Over the years, Huckleberry Finn has been criticized for its crude language, its irreverent treatment of religion, and its casual depictions of child abuse, domestic violence, racism, and murder. It has been castigated both for its empathetic portrayal of enslaved African Americans and for its liberal use of the N-word. The scene of Huck and Jim—a white boy and a black man—lying naked side-by-side on the raft as it floats lazily down the Mississippi has induced atrial fibrillation among racists and among pedophiles. But were it not for a last-minute editorial decision by Mark Twain himself, we might be criticizing the book for yet another reason: bottom-shaming.
The event in question occurs in Chapter 23. Huck and Jim have met up with two traveling con men who introduce themselves as the Duke of Bridgewater and the Dauphin of France (later the King).
William Benemann is the author of Men in Eden: William Drummond Stewart and Same-Sex Desire in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade and Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail.
