RODERICK RANDOM’S CLOSET STEVEN BRUHM Université de Montréal I IVIeet Captain Whiffle, newly appointed chief of the man-of-war “Thun der,” in chapter 34 of Tobias Smollett’s 1748 Adventures of Roderick Ran dom. Neither warring nor thunderous, Captain Whiffle appears thus: a white hat garnished with a red feather, adorned his head, from whence his hair flowed down upon his shoulders, in ringlets tied behind with a ribbon. — His coat, consisting of pink-coloured silk, lined with white, by the elegance of the cut retired backward, as it were, to discover a white sattin waistcoat embroidered with gold, unbuttoned at the upper part, to display a broch set with garnets, that glittered in the breast of his shirt. . . . But the most remarkable parts of his furniture were, a mask on his face, and white gloves on his hands, which did not seem to be put on with an intention to be pulled off occasionally, but were fixed with a ring set with a ruby on the little finger of one hand, and by one set with a topaz on that of the other. (194-95) For Roderick, this fashion sense bespeaks a “disposition” (195) the impli cations of which are clear to us in the twentieth century, but in case one should miss them Roderick adds to the Whiffle description the “maintaining a correspondence with his surgeon, not fit to be named” (199). We have in this description, then, the modern gay man. According to G.S. Rousseau, Whiffle is “the first authentic description of the enduring male homosexual stereotype in modern culture” (147). And even though that notorious dispo sition is not fit to be named, it inspires no end of naming. Says Roderick’s friend Morgan, “I will proclaim it before the world, that [Whiffle] is dis guised and transfigured, and transmogrified with affectation and whimsies; and that he is more like a [baboon] than one of the human race” (196). Morgan is somewhat vague here about the exact form of his disdain: he ei ther objects that Whiffle is too artificial— “transfigured, and transmogrified with affectation and whimsies”—or that Whiffle is not artificial enough— he is more like a beast than a gentleman. In any event, the Whiffle passage, as one of the inaugurating descriptions of a male homosexual stereotype, English Stu d ies in C a n a d a , 19, 4, December 1993 registers a new phenomenon in the taxonomy of sexualities. As Michael Kimmel has documented, the early 18th century witnessed the transformation of homosexuality from a set of behaviors to a type of individual. Prior to the 18th century, one could engage in homosexual acts, to be sure, but the larger culture did not view those as indicating a different and deviant type of individual. The homosexual, one whose erotic desire was focussed entirely on his or her own sex, was a relatively new phenomenon. The term “homosexual” was not used, of course, but the term “sodomite” seems to have changed its usage from an adjective, describing specific behaviors, to a noun, describing a type of individual. (6) This change is rendered visible not only by Morgan’s rather superfluous proclamation, but by Whiffle’s very appearance. When Captain Whiffle first walks onto the ship, Roderick and his shipmates read the tell-tale signs of his desire, a reading that automatically labels and condemns. His dress and behaviour tell all. Whiffle represents homosexual visibility itself, both as it constitutes a social category, and as it takes on the definitional specificity of identity. The ability to read a surface such as Whiffle’s marks an important de velopment of the relations between homosexual behaviour and homosexual identity. Whiffle’s purported identity equates the homosexual with the ef feminate, an equation that had not previously been made. As Susan Staves has argued, the effeminacy and affectation of the Restoration fop are not to be equated with homosexual desire; rather, the fop of the late seventeenth century was, ifnot altogether asexual, then at least predominantly interested in women (414). Etherege’s Sir Fopling Flutter, for example, is detestable to the masculine contingent in the play precisely because he can gain a...