Questions of Appearances in Tom Jones [01]

It could also be argued that similar questions of appearance appear throughout the whole history of literature, before and after the eighteenth-century.1 It is not my intention to prove the contrary. A comparative analysis of questions of appearance in different epochs is beyond my concerns here. However, I believe that certain questions of appearance could be —in their recurrence, attached significance, values invested, etc.—, if not exclusive, at least quite 'particular' to the eighteenth century (making possible a definition of something like 'the eighteenth century,' beyond a simple question of dates).2

For example, when the 'author' of Tom Jones states that:
It is not enough that your designs, nay, that your actions, are intrinsically good; you must take care they shall appear so. If your inside be never so beautiful, you must preserve a fair outside also. This must be constantly looked to, or malice and envy will take care to blacken it so, that the sagacity and goodness of an Allworthy will not be able to see through it, and to discern the beauties within. Let this, my young readers, be your constant maxim, that no man can be good enough to enable him to neglect the rules of prudence; nor will Virtue herself look beautiful, unless she be bedecked with the outward ornaments of decency and decorum. And this precept, my worthy disciples, if you read with due attention, you will, I hope, find sufficiently enforced by examples in the following pages. (Fielding III, vii, 128) (Italics are mine)

What the 'author' proposes might not be shared or proposed in the same way, in similar terms, by all other eighteenth-century 'authors', narrators, or writers (think, for example, of the novels of Samuel Richardson), but it belongs to a general concern, 'particular' to the eighteenth century. Certainly, similar questions appear immediately after, for example with Jane Austen. But, even if the questions could seem not just to change but to develop, continue, progress… or like an effect of eighteenth-century concerns,3 it is not less certain —this is, at least, my hypothesis— that they were going to appear as a different set of questions, marked by a difference of what seemed to be in question —(re)marking the appearance of a radical difference. However, we must bear in mind that there 'must have been' a certain development of questions of appearance throughout the eighteenth century, as they were taken and re-elaborated, time and again, by new generations of novelists, critics, commentators, and readers in general.