The Californian’s Tale Themes

Mark Twain’s “The Californian’s Tale” is a story about the harsh realities that too often befell Americans who, lured by the nineteenth-century notion of Manifest Destiny, headed West to seek uncertain fortune. The journalist John O’Sullivan coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny” in 1845. As the philosophical justification for westward expansion, Manifest Destiny held that the Christian God sanctioned Americans to expand their dominion—with its twin attributes of capitalism and individualism—all the way across the frontier…

Throughout the story, Twain emphasizes the dichotomy between masculine and feminine space. Importantly, he wrote in the nineteenth century, when the notion of gendered space for men and women created an ideology of “separate spheres.” Men dominated outside the home in the harsh, competitive public sphere of work, politics, and violence. Women, by contrast, tended to the domestic sphere of household management, child-rearing, and moral guidance. Under the control of a nurturing female presence, the…