ABSTRACT
In Chance, Joseph Conrad takes his cue more directly than in any other of his novels, excepting Romance, from Scott. Like Scott, in Chance he uses the tropes of romance and even of philosophical romance, as Miles understands it, in order to reinscribe rather than destabilize the dominant social order, creating what Miles calls 'anti-philosophical romance'. If the hysterical laughter of Marlow and others in Chance undoes their masculine control of each other and women, the laughter of Flora complicates things further. Crucial difference between Chance and its precursors is the importance attached to Flora's story within Marlow's narrative. Flora's predicament in the first half of the novel is not comic; rather Conrad, via Marlow, draws attention to the at times comic failure of others to comprehend and narrate it. As Flora's fate turns, she accrues the restorative power of comedy, domesticating its initial tendencies to irony and sarcasm through her own resolution in domesticity.
