1Just as the conflict between appearance and reality can be considered “ the one moral point made ” in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (Jack 209), it can also undoubtedly be seen as a central theme in Tobias Smollett’s first novel, The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748). In his seminal study of Smollett’s novels, the late Paul-Gabriel Boucé remarked:
The series of incidents and encounters which occur on [Roderick’s] journey to London is a succession of variations, not devoid of technical ingenuity, on the theme —certainly not an original one but one to which the eighteenth century attributed great didactic value —of the perpetual dialectic of reality and appearance.
3In the course of his travels and adventures, Roderick Random encounters various characters who assume roles, qualities or positions that they do not really possess and his slow and painful education or “ progress ” c onsists precisely in learning gradually how better to decipher and interpret the world in which he lives —in other words, in seeing beyond the veil of superficial appearances and learning how not to trust them. However, the issue of appearances and reality goes far beyond such a somewhat conventional and limited didactic function. It is, it can be argued, the sign that the world depicted in Smollett’s novel lacks stability. The question of appearances is an ambiguous, double-barrelled one: in the novel, appearances are shown to be both what is supposed to reveal a person’s real inner character, and yet also something not to be trusted. The interplay between the positive and negative meanings and roles of appearances reveals therefore a deep crisis at the epistemological, ontological and moral levels which is significantly articulated in Smollett’s work. Furthermore, it can be suggested that the dialectics of appearance and reality is at the heart of Smollett’s literary endeavour and that it is used to articulate an implicit theory of fiction.
4In the universe of The Adventures of Roderick Random, visual appearance and visual perception are of paramount importance in the discovery that one may make of other people’s real character, a central theme in eighteenth-century fiction (Soupel passim). Clothes seem to have mattered a lot to Smollett himself and they prove to be extremely important in the narrative: a person’s dress and countenance are thought to be the true index of his or her inner personality. Smollett is extremely precise about what clothes a man owns and wears —just as he is about what people eat (Runte passim). In his biography of Smollett, Lewis Mansfield Knapp quotes a fascinating list of expensive clothes bought by the young Smollett as he was about to depart for London in 1739. “ This record, ” Knapp explains,
illuminates in several ways Smollett’s status in 1738-1739... It shows what kind of clothing he wore at the age of eighteen on his venturesome trip to London. He was no Roderick Random, limited to “ one suit of clothes, half a dozen ruffled shirts, as many plain, two pair of worsted, and a like number of thread stockings. ”
6No doubt Smollett himself was no picarian character and his status was higher than that enjoyed by Roderick Random in the course of most of the novel. The importance attributed by Smollett to his own clothing —and therefore appearance —cannot be doubted. Knapp remarks that
In addition to large household expenses and numerous benefactions, Smollett spent money freely in other ways. He had his portrait painted by Willem Verelst in 1756, and later (presumably in 1764) by Nathaniel Dance. In both paintings he appears as the well-dressed doctor and gentleman of the period.
8In Roderick Random, both clothing and food are markers of the characters’ social position, affluence or poverty and their reverses of fortune. Beyond the value of this as a historical testimony, clothes are important as the first thing the characters notice about each other. Moreover, contemporary interest in physiognomy had it that an individual’s external appearance should correspond to his or her real, inner self —a notion which conversely raised the question of perception. John Locke’s epistemology of experiential knowledge expounded in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) constituted eyesight as the first of the senses. Visual perception was considered the primary conduit to acquire knowledge. In the “ Essays on the Pleasures of the Imagination ” published in The Spectator (1712), Joseph Addison explains that “ our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our Senses ” and that “ we cannot have a single Image in the Fancy that did not make its first Entrance through the Sight. ” What is transmitted to the mind by means of visual perception is, as it were, inescapable: “ it is but to open the eye and the scene enters, ” Addison remarks (Addison, n° 411, III, 535-8). Thus the force of visual perception and appearance is irresistible and this accounts for the fact that nearly all the characters in Roderick Random attribute such importance to the figure cut by those they encounter.
9For Roderick, dress is necessary to qualify himself and hopefully “ look a gentleman ” (XVIII, 95). When he changes clothes, he expects “ to make a fashionable appearance ” (XVIII, 97) and indeed, “ dressed in [his] new clothes to the greatest advantage, ” he makes “ no contemptible appearance ” so that Lavement’s daughter’s “ opinion of [him] [is] changed ” (XIX, 99). A mere alteration in the way a man is dressed is then sufficient to alter people’s opinion of him and the social code is so strongly imprinted that Roderick is “ never permitted to penetrate [Mr. Cringer’s room at his morning levée] on account of [his] appearance ” (XV, 75). As soon as he is in a position to dress better, he begins “ to look upon [himself] as a gentleman in reality ” (XX, 108) —or even “ a gentleman of some consequence ” and he feels “ [his] pride dilate apace ” (XXXVI, 206), going as far as to praise the “ magnificence of [his] apparel ” (LXVII, 416) after having found his long-lost father. His sartorial elegance, it seems, is enough to confer proper social dignity and prestige on him. He puts on his gayest suit of clothes to part from his friends before sailing away and Banter is “ confounded at the magnificence of [his] dress ” (LXIV, 401). All this explains why the present of “ a chest and some clothes ” by his friend Thomson is so important, as it will enable Roderick “ to support the rank ” to which he has been raised (XXVII, 158). No sooner is he better clad than he begins to feel that his whole situation is greatly altered: it is almost as if he himself was taken in and impressed by the appearance he makes —as though he was deluded by his own visible “ surface ” and had forgotten his real circumstance and current social position. His own appearance exerts a force of conviction even upon himself: he believes he has become what he looks like and what he sees of himself.
10Both reputation and justice therefore depend entirely on outward looks and appearance. “ Appearances, I own, condemn me... ” (XXI, 113), Roderick admits when he is accused of having robbed Lavement of some of his drugs. The impact of what is visibly perceived cannot be gainsaid. Later, a judge mistakes Roderick’s “ confusion for a sign of guilt ” (XXIII, 131). Elsewhere, the justice mistakes Roderick for the thief Patrick Gallaghan: “ You are a thief, your face discovers it ” (XVII, 92). When the justice realises his mistake, he cloaks “ his own want of discernment under the disguise of paternal care ” and releases Roderick. Unable to go beyond superficial impressions, the justice himself thus hides his true self behind a mask. Paradoxically, he therefore reveals himself to be both a victim, and a fabricator of delusion. The world he inhabits is a world of surfaces, void of moral truth and unstable.
11Thus visual appearance often turns out to be misleading as to the real character, honesty, friendliness, etc., of whomsoever one happens to see for the first time. There lies an insurmountable paradox since, on the one hand, appearances are thought to reveal a person’s real character, as we have just seen, but, on the other, they obviously turn out often to be misleading. The characters that inhabit Smollett’s universe are thus alternately both rightly instructed, and cruelly misled by what they perceive in the outward appearance of the others. The world, then, is topsy-turvy: the virtuous man is often accused of vice; the teacher tries to prevent his pupil from writing (II, 5-6); the lack of education is no impediment to acquiring culture, the handsome woman is none other than a harlot. There is indeed “ no trusting to appearances ” (XXVII, 159-60). When Captain Crampley refuses to cast the lead to sound the waters, his ship gets stuck on the sand-bed (XXXVII, 208-209), for danger is invisible and perception and inquiry are the all in all. Crampley’s mistakes are a metaphor for people’s blindness and imprudence for he only trusts visible evidence, against the advice of his crew. In other instances, Smollett resorts to cruel practical jokes based on deception —called burla (literally, “ it deceives ”) in the picaresque tradition — to reflect “ a dangerous, anxiety-ridden world ” (Gibson 572).
12The duality of appearance and reality is effectively illustrated through the metaphor of the raven walking in Roderick’s and Strap’s bedroom at night, which they take for a ghastly figure until its true nature is eventually revealed (XIII, 60-61). In this “ pre-Gothic ” scene, Smollett suggests that misleading impressions may lead to ungrounded fears and a superstitious interpretation of reality. Misinterpreting what one perceives is laden with serious danger since it can make one accept what reason would otherwise condemn. It is therefore crucial not to be mistaken by one’s sensory perceptions so as not to end up behaving in a completely irrational manner. Lockean epistemology, by granting sensory perception a crucial role in man’s understanding of the world around him, simultaneously rendered knowledge relative and uncertain, since it made that knowledge henceforth dependent on subjective reception and interpretation. Locke’s epistemology consequently divorced appearance from morality. Although man was supposed to be what his outward, physical looks revealed, some people could assume a false identity, and do their utmost not to be detected. In that case, the fact of intentionally disguising oneself to deceive other people became a moral issue.
13In the course of their peregrinations, Roderick Random and his friend Strap repeatedly encounter people unknown to them whose character they try to assess from their countenances. Seeing beyond appearances is part and parcel of any roman of education: the travel metaphor, Bony remarked, works in two complementary ways, as the hero learn,s how to decipher the world, while the reader learns how to read (Bony 2000, 117). More often than not, however, it turns out that the two friends are being imposed upon. James H. Bunn remarks that “ at mid-century the population had become sufficiently large and mobile so that anonymity was an adequate mask for deception ” (Bunn 456). The highway man who frightens the two friends out of their wits soon appears to be but a meek, “ pitiful dejected fellow, ” he “ who had but a few hours before filled [Roderick] with such terror and confusion ” (X, 42). Roderick has been the victim of a trick of the imagination. Soon after, the seemingly wise host who quotes Horace and affects to abide by the latter’s principles eventually charges Roderick and Strap with an exorbitant bill for the sumptuous fare he has served them (X, 45), thus revealing his mercenary spirit and lack of honesty, something which —Roderick remarks —the man is not likely to have learnt from Horace. Squire Gawky has “ a martial ferocity in his appearance ” but this is misleading for, though he may have “ altered his externals, ” he has remained the same man (XXI, 109). Later still, similarly, Roderick lets himself be plundered of 18 guineas at cards by the cheating Melinda whereas “ nobody but a mere novice could have been imposed upon ” (XLVII, 285): Roderick’s predicament is his gullibility which is a direct consequence of his failure to see through people’s masks and tricks. He is “ incapable of facing the problems of a morally bifurcated world ” (Goldberg 33).
14When, after having been robbed by the capuchin Balthazar, Roderick Random mistakenly thinks he perceives “ a great deal of sweetness and good nature ” in the countenance of “ a young gentleman richly dressed, attended by a valet de chamber and two servants in livery ” (XLIII, 243), he falls victim again to the discrepancy between show and morality. Having barely arrived in London and looking for directions, Roderick and Strap ask their way to a passer-by. Strap trusts the man, telling Roderick “ that he knew this person to be an honest friendly man, by his countenance, before he opened his mouth... ” (XLIII, 64). Unfortunately, the man sends them in the wrong direction and they have to admit that “ they [have] been imposed upon. ” Yet, although they recognize that “ they [have] already been so much imposed upon by appearances, ” (XV, 77) they keep trusting their eyes and being taken in by the countenances they like. The senses, it seems, have the upper hand over reason: “ I laugh at reason, give me ocular demonstration, ” one of the doctors declares during Roderick’s examination at the Surgeons’ Hall (XVII, 87), which should —but does not —make Roderick realise the danger of simply judging from appearances. Later in the novel, Lord Quiverwit also declares that he wants “ no other evidence than that of [his] own senses ” (LIX, 364). “ Ocular demonstration ” remains the first, not to say the sole means for the characters to assess the world around them.
15The group of friends with whom Roderick mixes in London eventually turn out to be quite different from what they appear to be: “... the supposed young prince was a dancer at one of the theatres, and the ambassador no other than a fiddler belonging to the opera. ‘The Doctor,’ said he, ‘is a Roman Catholic priest,’... ” (XLV, 264). The game of appearances is highlighted here by the fact that some of the people who cheat belong to the world of the stage. Their profession consists precisely in playing roles and the satire comes, of course, from their appearing here in the guises of a prince or an ambassador, thus casting doubt as to the moral perfection of the latter and blurring the conventional borders between different occupations or social categories. The Roman Catholic priest is also denounced as a man of duplicity, as is the capuchin monk who robs Roderick of his money, prompting him to explain: “ Libertine as I was, I could not bear to see a man behave so wide of the character he assumed; I looked upon him as a person of very little worth or honesty... ” (XLII, 241). Catholicism is thus closely associated by Smollett with cheating, hypocrisy and misleading appearances (LXII, 380). The very fact that, in spite of his avowed love for his Narcissa, Roderick himself should have gratified his own sexual appetites with the girl procured by the capuchin marks him out temporarily as an accomplice to that morally degenerate conception of religion and indicates that his “ progress ” is not yet at an end.
16In various instances, Roderick himself turns out to be unrecognizable — for instance when he meets his school-friend Strap the barber in Newcastle and the latter fails to know him (VIII, 32). As Aileen Douglas has pointed out, the mutual recognition only takes place when the two men exchange their names (Douglas, 56). In another instance, after Roderick has been pressganged onto The Thunder, his friend Thomson does not know him, disfigured and bloody as he is (XXIV, 143). That same Thomson incidentally owes his being enlisted on board the ship to his having been mistaken for another Thomson (XXIV, 145)! In these and other instances, deceit is not intentional, of course, but personal identity appears to be unstable, fluctuating and uncertain as when Miss Williams explains that she was once taken for another prostitute, Elizabeth Cary, and that, although she protested that she was not that person, the catch-pole replied that they would “ prove her identity ” (XXIII, 128).
17Even though Roderick is often “ confounded at the artifice and wickedness of mankind ” (XV, 73), he himself is not immune to the vice of deceit. He too happens to disguise his own real identity. Like his coffeehouse acquaintances mentioned above, he is undecipherable and opaque and they do not know who he is really: “ One suspects you to be a Jesuit in disguise; another thinks you are an agent from the Pretender..., ” his friend Banter explains (XLVII, 284). After his illness on the boat, he even counterfeits death to frighten his friend Morgan (XXXIV, 193).
18Smollett often calls darkness to assistance to express the moral message conveyed by this dialectic of reality and appearance, in particular in humorous “ Fielding-esque ” and mock-epic night scenes. In the inn bedroom night scene of chapter XI, the characters are a prey to wrong impressions and fail to understand the situation they are plunged into: Strap mistakes one door for another, which eventually triggers the captain’s fury at finding (supposed) lovers in his own bedroom —and pandemonium ensues (XI, 51-52). In chapter XIX, the lovers mistake the bedrooms of other people for their own, thus comically taking the place of the other characters in their beds. Roderick thus finds himself in bed with Mr. Lavement’s daughter and — theatrical comic conventions permitting —is not even identified by his mistress who thinks that Captain Odonnell —not Roderick —has rejoined her (XIX, 102). In the dark, one does not know who is who. The lack of proper perception actually opens out onto the chasm of a loss of identity, since one person can take the place of another without even being perceived doing so. One becomes another, for appearance is the condition of identity and, in the dark, there is no such thing as “ appearance. ” The same device is used in the coach scene of chapter LIII: the various characters are in the dark and cannot see each other, so they can only guess at the personality of the other travellers from their utterances, e.g. “ the son of Mars ” who speaks in military metaphors, the lawyer who uses a legal vocabulary, etc. A “ sonorous ” appearance takes the place of a physical, pictorial one. When Roderick finds Thomson again, who he thinks has drowned, he is struck by his voice but the two friends only recognize each other “ by the light ” (XXXVI, 202). Yet vocal utterance does not always reveal the true personality of a person, because words can lie —or, as Tristram Shandy put it in Sterne’s eponymous novel, “ little knowledge is to be got from mere words ” (Sterne, IX, xx, 440). “ Appearances have become an absurd nightmare in which the hero struggles in vain, only to plunge into a gulf of stupidity, malice and triumphant ignorance. Words are suddenly emptied of their real meaning and become monstrously inflated with grotesque and dangerous significance, ” Boucé comments (Boucé 1976, 113). The question of appearances thus extends to that of language which, since Locke, had been considered unreliable and susceptible to misinterpretation. “ I think we may be better known by our looks than by our words, and that a man’s speech is much more easily disguised than his countenance, ” Addison reflected (Addison, no. 86, I, 366). Contrary to what Grant asserts (Grant 82), it can therefore be argued that in Roderick Random words can be opaque and appear to be without meaning. Writing itself, therefore, may hide, conceal and distort, or prove either obscure or downright inadequate (LXV, 406), while some people also disguise the truth intentionally by lying and never utter “ one syllable of truth ” (LXIV, 396-97).
19The only way of perceiving what a person feels or thinks is therefore through physical signs. Roderick understands Miss Snapper’s real feelings only when he notices her trembling or perceives the eloquence of her eyes (LIV, 331). Roderick first perceives “ some concern in her countenance ” and then —less genuinely! —makes her “ acquainted with [his] sentiments by the expression of [his] looks, which [he] model[s] into the characters of humility and love ” (LV, 333-34). Yet when Roderick meets Narcissa again in Bath, he understands her true feelings through the involuntary physical, somatic signs of her emotions: “ At the sight of me she started, the rose instantly vanished from her polished cheeks, and returned in a moment with a double glow that over-spread her lovely neck, while her enchanting bosom heaved with strong emotion ” (LV, 337). The body cannot disguise and it affords the proper readability of a person’s character through his or her reactions: “ for Smollett, the body betrays, and above all translates the life of the feelings ” (Boucé 1976, 294). Smollett —who was a doctor — obviously relied on contemporary medical theories of the relations between appearance and physiology or “ inner ‘motions’ and outward expressiveness’ ” (Beasley 44, 46).
20The two interpolated tales —that of Miss Williams at the beginning (XXII), and that of Melopoyn and his tragedy (LXII-LXIII) towards the end of the novel —can be seen as counterpoints to the main story, or variations on its main themes, as are those in Joseph Andrews by Fielding. The theme of appearances finds therefore an interesting illustration in the history of Miss Williams, the repentant prostitute who eventually becomes Narcissa’s maid and Strap’s wife. On the one hand, she explains that it is own physical appearance —her beauty —that is the cause of her undoing: “ Cursed be my beauty, that first attracted the attention of the seducer, ” she exclaims (XXII, 120). It is interesting, in this respect, that she should say that the man who betrayed her was Roderick’s “ exact resemblance, ” the sort of men “ formed for the ruin of our sex ” (XXII, 119), which establishes the importance of looks for both sexes —a notion that is taken up and reversed later in the novel, in the case of the relationship between Narcissa and Roderick, as shall be seen below —but also suggests that Roderick’s own morality has yet to be proven and confirmed. At this level, in any case, appearance stands opposed to the less superficial, but more essential and more valuable quality of moral excellence. On the other hand, however, Miss Williams herself is deluded by her own wrong impressions of the world. “ Women’s minds, Smollett clearly believed, were very susceptible to romantic illusions, ” Robert D. Spector notes (Spector, 81). A reader of Shaftesbury, Tindal, Hobbes, poetry and romances (XXII, 117) —those very same “ extravagant romances ” Smollett denounces in his preface (Preface, xxxiii) —Miss Williams had “ more imagination than judgment ” and “ addicted herself too much to poetry and romance ” (XXII, 118) so that “ the amusing images [of Romance] took full possession of [her] mind ” (XXII, 120). Miss Williams’s downfall was therefore due not only to her looks, but also and essentially to her “ romantic ” turn of mind, that is, her wrong interpretation of reality. She was taken in by appearances and unable to see beyond the surface, her fancy not being controlled by reason and strong moral principles. She is a victim of some irrational delusion that leads to her taking wrong decisions and behaving wrongly.
21Miss Williams’s and Roderick’s meeting is structurally important in the novel because it turns out to be the first serious instance when the delusion of misleading appearances is overcome in a positive way, which points both to the direction the hero, Roderick, should follow, and to the eventual conclusion of the novel. Initially, Roderick is mistaken about Miss Williams who has made him believe she is a rich heiress. He then discovers her in bed with another man and realises that she is not what he thought she was. A prostitute represents the epitome of deceit since her very existence —her “ credit ” —depends on her looks. A contaminated prostitute is “ unable to support her usual appearance, ” Miss Williams explains (XXIII, 137). Significantly, Roderick is deluded by another such woman another time, when he sees “ a very handsome creature, genteelly dressed ” at the theater — the very place of disguise, roles and false appearances, of course — before realizing that she is a common woman, “ the devil incarnate ” (XLV, 258-60).
However, when Roderick meets Miss Williams again, he trusts her thanks to the genuine “ appearance ” of the story she tells him: “ So much candour and good sense appeared in this lady’s narration that I made no scruple of believing every syllable of what she said ” (XXIII, 136). What characterises their new relationship is their mutual sympathy and compassion (XXIII, 138). Having lost all illusion concerning each other, and being at last able to see beyond the surface of appearances, they can establish the basis for a truer kind of exchange and even form “ a thousand projects. ” Sympathy —a key notion in David Hume’s philosophy, which greatly influenced Smollett (Hume passim) —can thus be considered to be a remedy to the falsification of appearances. Whereas the trap of appearances depends essentially on ignorance, sympathy implies a perceptive intuition of the real qualities of the other. Roderick confesses that “ the appearance of distress never failed to attract [his] regard and compassion ” (XLI, 232).
There is therefore some profound ambiguity since appearances are both condemned, and thought to be necessary. Roderick is both a victim of deceit, someone who practices it and, eventually, someone who is finally reconciled to his own proper appearance, that is, the appearance that corresponds to his real original social status. A crucial moment in the negociation of this basic contradiction is his first encounter with Narcissa —whose name, incidentally, suggests that she is Roderick’s ideal double, an innocent mirror-image of himself. When he first presents himself to Narcissa’s aunt, Roderick thinks “ proper to conceal [his name] under that of John Brown ” (XXXIX, 218): he thus denies and hides his real identity. Interestingly, as a narrator, he does not admit to revealing Narcissa’s real name, either: “ [I] saw my mistress approach accompanied by the young lady, whose name, for the present, shall be Narcissa ” (XXXIX, 219) —the supposed “ real ” name of the young woman never being revealed in the rest of the story, incidentally. Both lovers-to-be are thus equally equipped with arbitrarilychosen, fictitious names. This, however, is no obstacle to their mutual perception of each other’s real character that comes out, not of their respective names, but of what appears in their countenances: “ so much sweetness appeared in the countenance and carriage of that amiable apparition, that my heart was captivated at first sight ” (XXXIX, 219). When he goes to bid Narcissa farewell before sailing again, Roderick uses a miniature portrait of himself as “ an introduction to his appearance ” (LXV, 398): not only does his likeness prepare Narcissa for his coming, but it also works as a token of his good, real character. When the two lovers meet again at Bath, Roderick notes that he “ appeared in the character which she always thought [his] due ” (LV, 339-40) so that Narcissa “ could not harbour the least doubt of [his] being the gentleman [he] assumed ” (LVIII, 360). Thus, the moral ideal to which the hero aspires is the reconciliation of his inner-being with his outward appearance. Such reconciliation is the good characters’ all in all, their ultimate ambition, and it is the condition for the dramatic resolution of Roderick Random eventually to be attained, as it exempts the hero of any suspicion of immoral deceit. Thus can order finally be restored. Such coincidence, of course, is also true of Narcissa, whose description at her nuptials reveals her purity and morality (LXVIII, 429) and of Roderick’s father, “ a tall man, remarkably well-shaped, of a fine mien and appearance ” (LXVI, 411) who, tellingly, looks the good man that he is, so that Roderick spontaneously and involuntarily feels natural sympathy towards him even before the latter has recognized his son (LXVI, 412).
Yet the question may be asked: is the restoration of order really compatible with the tenets of the novel? Should not the random succession of episodes and adventures that befall Roderick be seen, not as a structural flaw in The Adventures of Roderick Random, but as a deliberate statement and artistic choice (Beasley 18)? It was because the new, post-Lockean world was so unstable, because perception and knowledge proved so unsure, because reality and identity —as David Hume had shown (Hume, “ Of Identity ”) —were so hard to assess and ascertain, that the novel was becoming the best possible vehicle to express the anxiety caused by such uncertainty. It can be argued that Smollett did not attempt to order disorder: he let disorder reign exuberantly, because order can only be superadded by art, whereas life appears as a maze of illusions, thwarted aspirations, deceptive impressions and flawed perceptions. To be the real metaphor of life that he intended it to be, his book had to renounce any kind of superimposed ordering of experience and offer instead a spontaneous outpouring of imaginative episodes (sometimes inadequately called “ picaresque ”). Thus, “ it is a mistake to look for a formal focus ” in the novel (Grant 44): the sheer variety of styles and profusion of episodes resorted to by Smollett defies all attempts at reducing the text to a single principle of organization.
In this light, the happy conclusion of the novel may seem paradoxical, if not downright contradictory, since, precisely, it suddenly re-orders the world —as has just been seen —and provides an abrupt, unexpected (and “ a-picaresque ”) resolution of the characters’ problems: Roderick finds a father, becomes rich, is restored to his dignity, can consequently marry his beloved Narcissa and finally settles on his paternal estate in his native country. Yet, rather than condemn Smollett —as many critics have done — for writing a conclusion that seems so wide of the general tone of the rest of the novel — in other words, for providing his novel (although he did not use the term) with a “ romance ” ending —one can attempt to suggest an explanation for it. Let us not presume to know better than the author! Thus, one can no doubt agree with David Daiches when he writes that the novel’s happy ending “ represents a degree of wish fulfilment ” (Daiches 118, qtd in Boucé 1979, xxi). As Beasley deftly points out, “ the argument of the ending is a philosophical one; its strategy is that of the satirist who projects a fantasy that repudiates what is and affirms what ought to be ” (Beasley 70). Although Roderick’s experience throughout the novel is that appearances are misleading because the world is corrupt and people cheat by misrepresenting themselves, the ending suggests that in a morally ideal world there would exist no such discrepancy between the inner self and its perceptible projection in the social sphere. Thus, Narcissa, whom Roderick first sees as some unreal “ apparition, ” is eventually joined to Roderick in a mythical, providential conclusion that ironically asserts its very implausibility.
At a deeper structural level, however, the happy, unrealistic conclusion might be interpreted as a proper lesson —provided by the author, Smollett, for his readers —in the assimilation of the fictional mode. Indeed, the happy ending is yet another illusion, yet another mirage that hardly corresponds to the representation of the moral depravation that dominates in the “ real ” world, as Smollett has been at pains to demonstrate in the forerunning chapters of the book. It is therefore up to the reader to make sure that he is not taken in by this misleading appearance of perfect happiness eventually attained by the hero and his friends as they set up their new abode in an idealized Scotland. For indeed the brutality of society and the harsh reality of the world denounced by Smollett have not changed (Douglas 66).
What is at stake therefore in the concluding chapters of Roderick Random is nothing short of an ironical reflection on the very nature of fiction, which is brought about by what Skinner —who goes as far as to argue that Smollett “ is barely a novelist at all! ” (Skinner 20) —remarks is “ a recurrent tension between the contrasting dynamics of satire and romance in Smollett’s fiction ” (Skinner 37). David K. Jeffrey even underlines that “ the form, the structure, and the imagery of Roderick Random are those of a classical romance ” (Jeffrey 614). Fiction, Smollett suggests, is not the same thing as reality. It presents metaphorically something that appears to have the attributes of life (Beasley 74), that superficially “ looks like it ” but which works according to other rules —those set by the author. It is the ideal locus, therefore, where the dialectic of appearance and reality can be articulated. As Baudouin Millet has shown, the English novel, especially after the publication of Joseph Andrews by Fielding, was no longer concerned with its previous attempts at denying its fictitiousness (« fictionalité »): on the contrary, it asserted it plainly (Millet passim). Even though Smollett —contrary to Fielding or Sterne —was no great abstract theoretician (notwithstanding his attempts at defining what he was about in the preface of The Adventures of Roderick Random, the dedication of The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom and an article in the Critical Review) (Smollett 1763, 13-14), he suggested in Roderick Random that the deep epistemological crisis that blighted his characters’ lives was also central to the very existence of the new genre that he and others were busy investigating and creating. Extravagant romance, he thought, was to real life as much an imposition as the false representations to which Roderick repeatedly fell a victim. For the novel (or satire, as he wrote in the preface) to fulfill its didactic role, the reader should consequently learn, like Roderick, to discern truth from falsehood and see beyond the veil of appearances and the alluring images of the imagination. It is not only, as Boucé writes, that “ the novel does not passively reflect a reality that would be given once and for all, but it seeks to discover it, through the sensuous apprehension of writers ” (Boucé 1979, xvi), but also that the reader’s active cooperation is required for such a discovery eventually to be made and confirmed.
The Adventures of Roderick Random is as it were held, as by a pair of pliers, between the two opposed poles of romance and novel (on this question, see Bony, 2004, 163-76). It is “ neither wholly picaresque nor wholly a novel of learning; but, partaking of both, it achieves its own form ” (Golberg 39). The whole novel is characterized by a “ bifurcated technique, ” “ a play between the excesses of the romance genre with its exaggerated and fantastic views ” and the harsh vision of real-life experience, “ a contrast between the world of unfettered imagination and the actualities of life ” (Spector 93-94). This “ bifurcated ” technique is particularly in evidence in the tension between Roderick’s own adventures and their mythical conclusion. Gerald J. Butler talks of the “ Janus-faced novel ” and explains that “ if the novel is ‘two-faced’, this means the real face gives the lie to the assumed one, the mask ” (Butler 136). Paradoxically, then, as in a sort of ironical twist that is also a test to the reader’s sagacity, and despite the objections to the romance genre expressed by Smollett in its preface, The Adventures of Roderick Random ends on what can be seen as the (romantic) mask of the novel, offering a dream-like, idealized, almost abstract vision of what is not, and cannot exist in real life. It is as though one genre was hiding behind the disguise of another.
