University of Basra 5/11/2022

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Tobias Smollett: Myth and History in the Adventures of Roderick Random

By

Sara Ammar

Supervisor

Prof.Dr. Jinan F.B Al-Hajaj

Tobias Smollett is considered to be one the leading novelist and satirists of the 18 th

century, his picaresque mood of writing made him a unique and distinguished writer. Smollett’s

writing is characterized by bitter satire and coarseness which set him in an unparalleled position

among eighteenth-century writers. Smollett’s first novel The Adventures of Roderick Random

had the greatest impact on his novels, novelists were amazed by this newcomer and their

reactions ranged from laughter to scornful irritation (Basker et al, 2018).

In 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” consists 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-barreled 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 presented in Smollett’s work. Clothes also mean a lot to Smollett himself and they

prove to be extremely important in the narrative: a person’s dress is thought to be the true

reflection of his or her inner personality (Knapp, 1929).

In the novel, it is noted that both clothing and food are indicators of the characters’ social

position, a signal of poverty and bad 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. The theme of emergence thus finds an interesting

example in the story of Miss Williams, a repentant prostitute who eventually becomes Narcissa's

maid and Strapon's wife. Gender - A concept picked up later in the novel and reversed in the case

of Narcissa and Roderick's relationship. Initially, Roderick is mistaken about Miss Williams who

has made him believe she is a rich heiress. A contaminated prostitute is “unable to support her

usual appearance,” Miss Williams explains”. But when Roderick met Miss Williams again, he

trusted her because of the true "look" of the story she was telling: Appearance traps inherently

rest on ignorance, while empathy implies a keen intuition for the other person's true qualities.

Narcissa's name, coincidentally, is an innocent reflection of himself as she is Roderick's ideal

double. [His name] under the name of John Brown" Assumed "Real Name" By the way, the
young woman is never revealed in the course of the story. But this does not prevent them from

mutually recognizing each other's true personalities as captivating at first sight, evident not from

each other's names, but from what they see on their faces. Baying farewell to Narcissa before

sailing again, Roderick uses a miniature portrait of himself as an "introduction to his arrival"

When the two lovers reunite in Bath, Roderick notes that he "appeared in the role she had always

thought fit for [him]" , so Narcissa was [He] is the Lord who accepted ”. Such a reconciliation is,

all things considered, their highest goal of a good character, and the condition for the dramatic

resolution of Roderick Random to finally be achieved (Dobios, 2009).

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: 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.

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 (Shields, 2005).

On a deeper structural level, the happy, surreal ending can be interpreted as a real lesson in the

assimilation of fictional modes. , the happy ending is yet another illusion, another mirage that

hardly fits an explanation of the moral depravity prevalent in the "real" world. It is, therefore, the

reader's responsibility not to be deceived by this misleading appearance of utter happiness that
the protagonist and her friends ultimately achieve when establishing a new abode in idealized

Scotland.

When The Adventures of Roderick Random was published on 21 January 1748, this raucous

novel by the Scotsman Tobias Smollett marked a major breakthrough in its author’s career and in

the history of fiction. Yet until Roderick Random, he had not succeeded in publishing anything

more than two short poems and a pair of verse satires in the style of Juvenal. When his career

stalled in its first year, Smollett was forced to turn elsewhere, resorting to a two-year stint as a

surgeon’s mate in the navy and a period of fortune hunting in the Caribbean before returning to

London in 1744. Still, his progress was frustratingly slow. Suddenly in 1747, brimming now with

raw life experience acquired abroad, inspired by new trends in publishing and the enormous

commercial success of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Henry Fielding’s Joseph

Andrews (1742), Smollett turned to the novel, with stunning results (ibid).
References

 Basker,Jetal,(2018).TheAdventuresofRoderickRandom.file:///C:/Users/hp/Downloads/

Introduction-to-Tobias-Smollett-The-Adve.pdf

 Dobios, P. (2009). Perception, Appearance and Fiction in The Adventures of Roderick

Random by Tobias Smollett. https://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-anglaises-2009-4-page-

387.htm

 Shields, J. (2005). Smollett’s Scots and Sodomites: British Masculinity in “Roderick

Random.” The Eighteenth Century, 46(2), 175–188.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41467969

 Knapp, C. (1929). The Classical Element in Smollett, Roderick Random. The Classical
Weekly, 23(2), 9–11. https://doi.org/10.2307/4389352