The Voice of Her Laughter: Mark Twain's Tragic Feminism

In an 1865 letter to his brother Orion, Mark Twain confesses to having a “call to literature of a low order—i.e. humorous.” He continues by admitting to his feckless brother that he was made, not to pursue any honest trade or profession, but to “excite the laughter of God’s creatures.”1 In this comic manifesto, Twain positions himself as a prophet of sorts, delivering his message to an audience whose conversion is signaled by laughter. For Mark Twain, as for every working comic, laughter is the only result that matters, the final moment in a moral and economic exchange where the audience pays for its pleasure by yielding to the will of the comic. In his autobiography, Twain recalls an early performance in San Francisco which illustrates this dynamic. Twain began his routine by telling and retelling—with his signature deadpan affect—“a silly and pointless and unkillable anecdote” five times, until finally the audience “recognized the sell and broke into a laugh.” Twain glories not only in his victory over the common sense of the audience (he has, after all, convinced them to laugh at a joke that’s not funny), but also in the sound of the laughter: