Huckleberry Finn is a novel obsessed with race, however, it is also a novel obsessed with the absence of race. Huck and Jim find happiness only on Jackson’s Island, the site of their first meeting, where the two manage to briefly transcend race altogether. Because of their unusual circumstances, Huck and Jim momentarily turn their white boy/black slave identities upside down, an achievement Twain portrays as deeply desirable.
Huck and Jim are uniquely suited to the blurring of race and identity that occurs on Jackson’s Island. Both are intelligent, despite their lack of formal education; both question conventional wisdom and view events from a skewed angle; and both are good at heart and tend to empathize with people, including those who are unlike themselves. In addition, both are outsiders in society. As a slave, Jim is viewed as less than human by whites. While Huck is infinitely more privileged because of his whiteness, he is nonetheless an outlier due to his poverty, his drunken, violent father, and his frequent homelessness. Because of their smarts, their inquisitiveness, their compassion, and their mutual alienation from society, Huck and Jim are far less likely than other characters in the novel to view race as a rigid mold into which people are poured at birth.
The correct answer for the question that is being presented above is this one: "b. Mary had heard herself mentioned to Miss Bingley as the most accomplished girl in the neighbourhood; and Catherine and Lydia had been fortunate enough never to be without partners, which was all that they had yet learnt to care for at a ball"
