Smollett’s World of Masculine Desire in The Adventures of Roderick Random

This essay argues that Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Roderick Random—often characterized as a “robust adventure story”—puts male-male relations at the center of the world it describes. Tracing homosocial relations in the novel, it reveals that male relations are given an intensity that they rarely have in other fiction of the period. Smollett’s fear of giving in to male desire means that he only gives in to it more intensely than ever. That is what makes Roderick Random’s world of masculine desire so truly robust.