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Aunt Sally, one of the leading mother figures in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is Tom Sawyer's gullible and lovable aunt. Aunt Sally, one of the few mother figures who is actually married, and her husband Silas live down the river from Hannible at Phelps. When we are first introduced to Aunt Sally, she is already the victim of a trick, for Huck, who's goal is to help Jim escape, visits her pretending to be her newphew -Tom Sawyer. Aunt Sally cannot even recoqnize her own newphew and welcomes Huck with open arms -"She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands, and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over"(278). When Tom arrives to help Huck, he pretends to be Sid, another one of her newphews, and together they start stealing supplies from the unsuspecting aunt.
To cover their theft up they play all sorts of tricks and pranks on her including; taking items like sheets, spoons, and pies away and putting them back again so she thinks she is always miscounting things; letting snakes and rats loose in house so she gets distracted, etc. At one point when Huck pretends to find a lost spoon, Aunt Sally thinks she has things figured out - "It's just as I suspected. So you had it in your pocket all the time; and like as not you've got the other things there, too. How'd it get there?"(315). Huck, however, plays right into her hands and uses religion to appease her -"I was studying over my text in Acts seventeen, before breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put my Testament in..."(316). Huck realizes that if he associates himself with religion he will be commended instead of punished and, consequently, feigns religous enthusiasm.When Huck and Tom's shenanigans are finally exposed, the last impression of Aunt Sally we are left with is of a confused and bewildered person - "Aunt Sally she was one of the most mixed-upest looking persons I ever did see..."(359).
Despite her gulliblity, Huck commends her for her motherly capacity - "And then when I went to bed, she come up with me, and fetched her candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean and like I couldn't look her in the face;"(349). In the end, Huck feels guilty that he took advantage of her because her intentions were so good and she was so loving towards him.
Since Aunt Sally was a mother figure and such a loving character, she can be associated with the following real life figures:
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