46 pages • 1 hour read
Mark TwainA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
While The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916, after Twain’s death, he wrote various drafts throughout the Gilded Age, which spanned approximately thirty years, from the 1870s to the early 1900s and 1910s. Extreme wealth inequality, widespread poverty, and power consolidated among a small but mighty ruling class defined the period in the United States and Europe. Twain’s vivid depictions of human suffering in industrial settings of time, as well as the effects of imperialism, can be interpreted as a critique of this time period. It is impossible to determine Twain’s original intent of the novel due to intervention from his literary executor. However, as seen in his more famous novels such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Twain frequently employed political commentary in his work. Therefore, had he been alive to have more direct oversight over the manuscript’s publication, it is possible that we would be presented with a more robust political commentary.
Many of the events described in The Mysterious Stranger are evocative of issues associated with the Gilded Age. This association is prominently displayed in Chapter 6, when Satan takes Theodor to the French factory. A particularly pressing issue of the Gilded Age was poverty and wealth inequality.
By Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain
A True Story
Mark Twain
Letters from the Earth
Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain
Roughing It
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain
The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Mark Twain
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Mark Twain
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner
The Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain
The Invalid's Story
Mark Twain
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
Mark Twain
The Prince and the Pauper
Mark Twain
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Mark Twain
The War Prayer
Mark Twain