ing relative and hard to determine. Roxy herself has a conflicting identity: she is only sixteenth percent black and physically, she does not look black. She is described as a beautiful, statuesque woman, with a fair complexion and an expressive face: "From Roxy's manner of speech, a stranger would have expected her to be black, but she was not. Only one sixteenth of her was black, and that sixteenth did not show. She was of majestic form and stature, her attitudes were imposing and statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by a noble and stately grace. Her complexion was very fair, with the rosy glow of vigorous health in her cheeks, her face was full of character and expression."(Twain, 32) Thus, the first contradiction is that between Roxy's appearance and her mixed racial origin. There is nothing in her physical description to indicate that she is not completely white. However, her manner of speech immediately betrays her coalesced origin. Other descriptions of her in the novel contribute to these essential contradictions. For example, just before Roxy switches the babies, she puts on a gaudy apparel that denounces the appreciation she has for the lively combinations of colors. Twain obviously hints here at the stereotype according to which the black people had a fascination for colors, and could be bought or bribed by their colonizers with colored beads made of glass. As Twain himself emphasizes, Roxy could easily pass as white among the other people, but due to the racism of the age she was considered "a Negro" and taken as a slave because of that sixteenth part of her which was black: "To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a Negro. She was a slave, and salable as such."(Twain, 33) It is obvious therefore that Twain's intention is to show that identity is something a...