Questions of Appearances in Humphry Clinker [01]

On a first impression, on a first reading, Humphry Clinker is not a novel about appearances. For one, its plot doesn't seem to revolve around appearances. None of the narrators, as main characters (though not all the 'main' characters are narrators, and even to call some of them 'narrators' could be problematic, but we will get back to this) could be said, for example, to be concealing something (or putting on an appearance), worried about appearances, or their life and/or future to depend much on appearances (that is, especially if we compare them to other main characters/narrators such as Evelina, Moll Flanders or Roxana, in their respective novels).

What is Humphry Clinker, then, about? Here it is not my intention to offer, or even attempt, a definition of the so-called 'main topics' of a novel, since every novel contains (or refers to) more 'issues' than anyone could easily —in a few words— define. Also, I believe that, to define the 'main topics' of a novel could have the effect of limiting (prescribing) the possibilities of its multiple readings; after all, new readers could even 'discover' issues that until then seem to have been overlooked. But I'm not implying that every possible topic, theme and/or issue could be found in any novel, more or less in an equal degree, nor that novels cannot be said to contain a certain emphasis on certain 'topics,' that could be called the 'main' ones. What I'm trying to point out here is that a critical reader could very well decide to focus on topics other than the so-called 'main' ones or the until then critically recognised ('approved') ones; like I'm trying to do here, since very few critics seem to have recognised the importance (or even acknowledge the existence) of appearances in the eighteenth-century English novel as a topic worth discussing. That doesn't mean, however, that it is not (or cannot be) a topic, or that it's one the main ones (even if, of course, I believe it's at least one of the main issues in the eighteenth-century novel; if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be trying to prove it —even if that is not the whole point of my research, but an important assumption of it, that requires to be proved or sustained).

But, all the same, if you still want to have at least a general idea of what Humphry Clinker is about, one could say that it takes the form of a mixture of epistolary and travel novel. The novel is composed, basically, of letters, written by the members of a family from Wales, in their travels around Britain. Therefore, it could be said that the purpose could have been to 'paint' or compose —as if by multiple exposition— a 'picture' of the state or situation of Britain during the reign of George III. In such a big 'picture,' then, it could be difficult to perceive the role, as well as the importance, of appearances. Questions of appearances don't clearly jump out of the picture, towards us. However, they do appear, and could be said to bear some weight, some 'visible' importance, in the ideology I'm trying to define and deconstruct.