A character in Tom Sawyer

Becky Thatcher

Name: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Author: Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Becky Thatcher is Judge Thatcher's daughter, the new girl in the village whom Tom Sawyer falls for at first sight.

Also known as: Becky

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Inside the story

Meet Becky Thatcher

Tom first sees Becky in a garden in Chapter 3: a blue-eyed girl in a white summer frock, her yellow hair plaited into two long tails. He forgets Amy Lawrence on the spot and starts showing off. Her father is the county judge from Constantinople, twelve miles away, whose visit to Sunday school leaves the village children staring in silence.

Becky has a will of her own. She is proud and quick to take offense, and when Tom snubs her for Amy Lawrence she spends a recess over a picture-book with Alfred Temple to make him jealous. She can let a grudge run further than she meant it to. She can also own up to it afterward, and when she finally tells Tom the whole story she includes her own part in it.

Character analysis

Why Becky Thatcher matters

Becky gives Tom's romantic daydreams a real person to answer to. Their schoolroom courtship is comic: Tom teaches her to draw a house on a slate and explains that getting engaged takes only a promise and a kiss. Her hurt feelings, though, are written with sympathy. When she learns that Tom was once engaged to Amy Lawrence, she turns her face to the wall and cries, and the novel stays with her through the long, lonely afternoon that follows.

Her story also measures how Tom changes. In Chapter 12 he tries to win her back with handsprings and war-whoops in the schoolyard, and she dismisses him as a show-off. In Chapter 20 he stands up in class and takes a whipping that was meant for her. In the first scene he wants her to watch him. In the second he wants to spare her.

In the novel

Key moments

The last two moments below reveal what happens in the cave and in the final chapter.

Chapter 6
Tom's slate
Tom sees that the only empty seat on the girls' side is next to Becky, and gets himself sent there as a punishment. She pushes away the peach he offers, then gives in and asks to see what he is drawing. Before long he has written on the slate that he loves her.
“Becky Thatcher. What’s yours? Oh, I know. It’s Thomas Sawyer.”
Tom Sawyer, Chapter 6
Chapter 7
An engagement at noon
Alone with Becky in the schoolhouse at noon, Tom explains what being engaged means and persuades her to whisper that she loves him. Then he mentions Amy Lawrence. Becky cries, knocks his peace offering, a brass andiron knob, to the floor, and spends the afternoon blaming herself once he has gone.
“Oh, Tom! Then I ain’t the first you’ve ever been engaged to!”
Tom Sawyer, Chapter 7
Chapter 20
The torn page
Becky tears a picture in the schoolmaster's private book and is sure Tom will tell on her. She could clear Tom of the ink spilled on his spelling-book by naming Alfred Temple, but she keeps quiet. An hour later Mr. Dobbins asks pupil after pupil who tore his book. When he reaches Rebecca Thatcher, Tom jumps up, claims he did it, and takes her whipping.
“he’ll tell about me tearing the picture sure. I wouldn’t say a word, not to save his life!”
Tom Sawyer, Chapter 20
Chapter 31
Lost in the cave
During the picnic, Tom and Becky wander away from the others in the cave and cannot find the way back. As the candles burn down she falls into despair more than once, yet she will not let Tom take the blame, saying he was no more at fault than she was. They share the piece of cake she saved from the picnic.
“It’s our wedding-cake, Tom.”
Tom Sawyer, Chapter 31
Chapter 35
A word to her father
After the rescue, Becky tells Judge Thatcher in confidence how Tom took her whipping at school, and asks him to forgive the lie Tom told to do it. The Judge calls it a noble lie, and Becky goes straight off to tell Tom.
Becky thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that.
Tom Sawyer, Chapter 35