Character Clues
Character Analysis
Clothing
Maybe we should say that this is actually an example of anti-characterization. Say what? Well, considering the amount of time that Mark Twain spends describing the clothing of his characters, you would imagine that clothing would say something important about each character. But sometimes clothing doesn't seem to say anything at all about the characters.
Confused? Consider this: the prince and the pauper switch roles just by changing their clothing. That's seriously it. One change of clothes changes how everyone treats Tom and Edward, but it doesn't really change their actual character. People just treat them differently because they're totally judging based on appearances.
Take Tom's first meeting with Edward, for example: "Within was a comely boy, tanned and brown with sturdy outdoor sports and exercises, whose clothing was all of lovely silks and satins, shining with jewels; [...] Oh! he was a prince—a prince, a living prince, a real prince— without the shadow of a question; and the prayer of the pauper boy's heart was answered at last." (3.4)
So, what makes Edward a real prince? Is it his clothing? Is it his servant? What makes a prince a prince, anyway, besides how people treat him? That's the question that this story asks.
Family Life
Even if you didn't know anything about princes, paupers, or other aspects of 16th-century hierarchy, you can tell where Tom and Edward rank on the totem pole if you pay attention to how their families react to their births.
Here's Tom: "But there was no talk about the other baby, Tom Canty, lapped in his poor rags, except among the family of paupers whom he had just come to trouble with his presence" (1.1). And here's Edward: "On the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him. All England wanted him too. England had so longed for him, and hoped for him, and prayed God for him, that, now that he was really come, the people went nearly mad for joy" (1.1).
Quite a bit of a difference, huh?
Twain doesn't need to tell us how much money each kid's family has. We know Tom is poor as soon as we read that even his family doesn't have the time to care about him. And we know that Edward is rich as soon as we read that his family and everyone in England is excited that he's born.
By using their family lives as tools of characterization, Twain gives us a more nuanced understanding of who Tom and Edward are than if he had simply told us they were poor or rich. The words "poor" and "rich" only tell us if these kids have money or not, but Mark Twain shows us how they are treated as a result of their social and economic statuses.
Speech and Dialogue
With the vastly different ways people speak and The Prince and the Pauper, you almost want a translator. We only get a small peek into the many different dialects of 16th-century London, but those peeks show us a world of a difference between the groups of people who use them.
First there is the basic poor-versus-rich divide. Take a look at this scene, where Prince Edward is speaking to Tom's mom:
"O my poor boy! thy foolish reading hath wrought its woeful work at last, and ta'en thy wit away. Ah! why didst thou cleave to it when I so warned thee 'gainst it? Thou'st broke thy mother's heart." The prince looked into her face, and said gently: "Thy son is well, and hath not lost his wits, good dame. Comfort thee: let me to the palace where he is, and straightway will the king my father restore him to thee." (10.10)
It's pretty clear that Tom's mom is speaking in a sort of broken English, which tells us that she is uneducated, like most poor people. It's also pretty clear that Edward is speaking very formally, since he sounds like he came straight out of the King James Bible. This tells us that he's highly educated, since it costs a lot of money for someone to teach you how to speak like that.
The third dialect we see in this novel is kind of extreme version of Tom's mom's speech. This is called cant, and it's how the thieves speak. Get a load of this: "Bien Darkmans then. Bouse Mort and Ken, / The bien Coves bings awast. / On Chates to trine by Rome Coves dine / For his long lib at last" (17.22).
You can't even tell what these dudes are saying, can you? That's the point. This was a special language used by thieves to hide their plans from the majority of people. Of course, that doesn't tell you anything about these guys that you don't already know: it just shows you that thieves are mischievous and full of tricks. It also shows you that Twain was trying hard to be realistic here, since that's the way thieves really would have spoken amongst themselves.