The (Non)Sense of an Ending: Subversive Allusion and Thematic Discontent in Roderick Random

The (Non)Sense of an Ending: Subversive Allusion and Thematic Discontent in Roderick RandomRaymond Stephanson If there be such a thing as true happiness on earth, I enjoy it,"1 says Roderick at the conclusion of the novel. And indeed the ending of Roderick Random is nothing short of paradisal: the hero marries "the divine Narcissa" (p. 343), is reunited with his long-lost father, is given great wealth, and returns to his Scottish birthplace, where the peasants "invoked heaven to shower its choicest blessing on our heads" (p. 434). Clearly the most important of these blessings is Narcissa, who not only seems to offer a haven safe and secure from a troubled world, but also seems to represent and embody the promises of an earthly paradise: "O adorable Narcissa! (cried I) O miracle of beauty, love and truth ... thou wondrous pattern of all earthly perfection" (p. 425). Closure in Roderick Random is about Edenic transformation in which the hero is finally allowed to repose in the still centre of harmony and perfection. Or so it would seem. There would be no problem with the ending (i.e., the last twenty pages from the point where Roderick discovers his father and gets married) were it not for the fact that the rest of the text has been about the impossibilty of such closure, about the certainty of negative transformations and the delusion ofpositive metamorphoses. Earl Strutwell's pose as father-figure and influential agent encourages Roderick and Strap to give "way to our imagination ... till I arrived at the rank of a prime minister, and he [Strap] to that of my first secretary" (p. 312). But appearances give way 1 Tobias Smollett, 7"Ae Adventures ofRoderick Random (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); subsequent page references are to this edition. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 1, Number 2, January 1989 104 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION to a chastening reality in which Random finds himself the carnal object of the sodomitical Earl: fatherly protector is transformed into pederast; "prime minister" becomes catamite. The same lesson of a downward tranformation holds true in the case of the "tremendous voice" of the captain in the darkened waggon, which Strap and Roderick "imagined proceeded from the mouth of a giant" (p. 48). Their "high notion of the captain" (p. 49) is rewarded by a face "very much resembling that of a baboon" (p. 50) and a body "like a spider or grasshopper erect" (p. 50). There are dozens of these appearance/reality conversions in the novel (including the inset tales of Miss Williams and Melopoyn), and they all work in the same way to show that the dream of the imagination, the psychological need and its projection, or indeed any kind of wishful thinking is doomed to a downward curve into an indifferent, discouraging, and unsavoury physical and social reality that is frequently a hell (not a heaven) on earth. Let me frame the problem another way. When Roderick becomes the fortune-hunter his first amorous advances towards "a very handsome creature , genteelly dressed" (p. 258) lead to a kiss, "But, O heavens! instead of banqueting on the ambrosial flavour that her delicacy and complexion promised, I was almost suffocated with the steams of Geneva!" (p. 259). A little later he receives a billet-doux from a Miss Sparkle, an unknown admirer "whom my imagination represented as a lady of fortune, in the bloom of youth and beauty" (p. 300). As the moment of interview is at hand, Roderick's "doubts now vanished, the long expected port appeared , and I looked upon myself as perfectly secure of that happiness I had been in quest of so long" (p. 302). But his imagined "triumphs over the malice and contempt of the world" (p. 303) are dashed when she enters the room: "how shall I paint my situation, when I found Miss Sparkle converted into a wrinkled hag turned of seventy!" (p. 303). Minutes later the needy spinster "flew upon me like a tygeress, and pressed her skinny lips to mine; when ... a dose of garlic she had swallowed that morning, to dispel wind I suppose, began to operate with such a sudden explosion, that ... I lost all patience...