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akademiskacademic quarterkvarterVolume 03. Fall 2011 • on the webThe Transgressive Literacy of the ComicMaidservant in Tobias Smollett’s Humphry ClinkerKathleen AlvesKathleen Tamayo Alves is an assistant professor ofEnglish at the City University of New York. She iswriting a book on representations of servant literacyin eighteenth-century British novels.Following the eighteenth-century narrative tradition of linguisticallycomic servants like Henry Fielding’s Mrs. Slipslop, TobiasSmollett engages with the possibilities of social ascension the literateservant represents in his servant characters’ inadvertent punning.Smollett considers the literate servant, who can blur distinctionsbetween ranks, as an unfavorable product of the increasinglycommercially saturated culture of eighteenth-century Britain.The servant who can read and write is an emerging phenomenonof modernity, an actively political subject that must be suppressedto conserve distinction and social order. Considering theethos of conservatism and polite sensibility towards the end ofthe period, I suggest that the novel’s comic representation ofservant literacy operates as an ideological mechanism that reinforcesdistinction.Humphry Clinker’s epistolary narrative comprises a range ofvoices in Squire Matthew Bramble’s family sharing their own experiencesin the family expedition through England and Scotland.Winifred Jenkins’ entries have long been considered (along withher mistress, Matt’s sister, Tabitha Bramble) to be the major comicrelief in the novel, prone to folk expressions and mangling wordsthat result in puns and double entendres (Lewis, 2006).Volume03 281