18TH CENTURY BRITISH

NOVEL
Assist. Prof. Dr. Emrah ÖZBAY
 Laurence Sterne
(24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768)

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,

Gentleman(1760)
Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is the first post-modern novel, but
he wrote it before the modernist movement. Thus, it ought to be
considered apart from the modern literary consciousness; the biggest
challenge for the modern reader is noticing the experimental aspects of
the novel without placing it in line with the later works of post-
modernism.
Tristram Shandy absolutely impacted the post-modern landscape, but it
first impacted the literature of its era and the era after it. Because of the
two paths to the modern-day influence - the direct and the indirect - the
most effective analysis of the novel is of the novel itself. Tristram
presents his content to the reader using digressions, and these first
appear to be superfluous.
However, these introduce entire narratives, so Shandy's drawing of the
reader's focus to himself allows the expansion of storylines which
recall time spent with the other individuals instead of a heavy-handed
push to other moments. Tristram Shandy thus uses overtly clumsy
narratorial techniques to direct the awareness of the reader throughout
the novel without disruption.
The result of these transitions is a sense of how life and death can exist
at once. A character who dies may resurface as alive in later passages,
and this timeline is held as rational, even linear, through the mind of
Tristram. Tristram threads his memories together not just as a series of
impulses leading from one to the next but instead as an expansion of
specific characters who he holds in his mind, with plot as something
which occurs instead of something which creates individuals.
A key motif of the novel is Tristram's sense of misfortune concerning
his own birth, and the fractured sense of his own self-conception
supports the importance of this motif; from the beginning, Tristram
shows himself to be the result of actions, even as he does not consider
how the character of others may result from temporal and even external
influences. The fictitious Tristram cannot continue to write his
memoirs until he separates himself from his own trauma enough to
consider himself as a person who exists outside of the presence of
mistakes.
Life is a Digression
Those wanting to discover much about the title character of Tristram
Shandy will be disappointed. As with Grandpa Simpson, getting to the
point—if, indeed, the point of the book really has anything to do with
Tristram Shandy—and, what kind of a name is Tristram, anyway will
be disappointed because the point for Sterne is clearly not to write a
book like David Copperfield that tells the life story of a person from
birth through death:
He wants to have fun. If the previous sentence is not the kind of thing
that you find worthy of reading, consider that Tristram Shandy reads
something like that paragraph except spread out over hundreds of
pages. The implicit promise of an author who titles a book after a
character is that you will put the book down having learned
something—usually a great deal—about that character. Sterne breaks
his promise repeatedly, but does so with such great joy and has such
fun that most readers don’t mind.
The Impossibility of Knowing a Person
At every stop along the way, the reader gets subverted in his attempt to
learn who this Tristram Shandy actually is. Some pages of the book are
left blank while others are just blocks of blank ink. Even more so than
the digressions that lead far away from what is expected to be the
point, these stoppages in the flow of narrative can be unsettling and
seem pointless.
In fact, they make perhaps even more a point than the narrative.
Picking up a book—even an enormous book—to get a full portrait of a
human being is as frustrating an endeavor as trying to get a full picture
of any actual human being. Can you know a person? Sterne puts that
question to the particulars of literature: can you really know a
character?
What is a Novel?
The novel was still a relatively new mode of literary expression when
Sterne set to working writing Tristram Shandy. To say that it had not
yet become a victim to critical codification of rules and expectations is
to ignore the fact that many critics still looked upon the novel as an
illegitimate exercise in creative writing. Not enough novels of different
types had yet been produced to create any genres, much less generic
conventions. The door was still wide open and Sterne stepped through
it with the intention of discovering and exploration.
The novel is just as much about the writing of a novel as it is about
absolutely anything else. Since so few writers until the rise of the
postmodern movement followed his lead, one might well suggest that
what Sterne might actually have accomplished is issuing a warning to
other writers about what not to do when they were writing their novels.
By showing what the novel had the capacity to do, Sterne might have
ironically contributed to that developing codification of rules for what
does constitute a novel.
Live and Let Live
One of the most remarkable things about Tristram Shandy is his
generous, forgiving attitude toward others. Despite having suffered
much and having been wronged in many ways, Tristram retains a
nonjudgmental outlook, and his mockery of the world and its follies is
almost always gentle. In part, this comes from Tristram's belief in the
pervasiveness of fate and human nature—two qualities that it is foolish
to resist and that together control much of human life.
It would be madness, in Tristram's view, to try and make Uncle Toby
give up his model forts and take up a more useful or "respectable"
pastime, just as it would be absurd to expect Tristram's father to set
aside his pet theories about noses, names, and medicine. This point is
made early on through the story of Parson Yorick (Vol. 1, Chapters 7–
12), whose friend Eugenius urges him to rein in his jokes and pranks
before he offends the wrong person. The advice, well-intentioned
though it may be, is given in vain, since being a jester runs deep in
Yorick's nature.
For Tristram, the constancy of human nature is a basic truth of life.
Thus, it makes little sense to criticize people for their habits of mind,
which they cannot help. Instead, Tristram takes pleasure in describing
the good aspects of his characters, even though, strictly speaking, they
are no more responsible for their virtues than for their vices. Walter
Shandy furnishes a good example: to judge simply from his words and
actions, he is irritable and a bit pompous but also hard-working and
deeply invested in his son's well-being.
Tristram, in his description of his father, constantly downplays his
grouchiness—"his anger at the worst was never more than a spark"
(Vol. 3, Chapter 22)—and makes light of Walter's know-it-all
tendencies. What is more important, in Tristram's view, is his father's
impressive learning and his zeal in attempting to do right by Tristram,
despite constant disappointments. Nor does Tristram make such
allowances only for family members and other loved ones. Even the
humorless tax collector in Vol. 7, Chapters 33–36 is ultimately
absolved by Tristram, who jokingly describes their conversation as a
peace treaty between France and England.
Because Tristram is such a forgiving fellow, he sometimes finds
himself irked or offended by the judgmental attitudes of others. "Only
keep your temper," he cautions the reader in Vol. 1, Chapter 6, and
both author and audience will be sure to have a pleasant time. By Vol.
3, however, some readers—i.e., professional reviewers—have
evidently failed to keep their tempers, and Tristram chides them for
this shortcoming.
In his view, critics who have nothing nice to say about Tristram
Shandy are wasting his time as well as their own: the novel was written
to be enjoyed as an experience, not looked over for flaws like a horse
at a livestock auction. To the extent that anything really bothers
Tristram, apart from his bad health, it is the critics' tendency to fixate
on small defects. "Their heads," Tristram sneers in Vol. 3, Chapter 12
"are stuck so full of rules and compasses ... that a work of genius had
better go to the devil at once, than stand to be prick'd and tortured to
death by 'em."
Time and Mortality
For the most part Tristram Shandy is irrepressibly cheerful in tone.
Underneath its brisk and bubbling surface, however, is a chilly
undercurrent of death. The novel's emphasis on time and mortality is in
part autobiographical, since Sterne's tuberculosis continued to worsen
as the volumes of Tristram Shandy were published, nearly killing him
in 1762 and ultimately claiming his life in 1768.
Tristram, who is suffering from the same illness, does his best to be
cheerful in spite of his chronic (and likely terminal) condition. Early
volumes repeatedly include a promise to keep writing "if": if "life and
good spirits" hold out (Vol. 1, Chapter 22); if "this vile cough" does not
"kill me in the meantime" (Vol. 4, Chapter 32).
In Vols. 5 and 6 health and sickness become a more pressing
preoccupation: Tristram's dedication to the two volumes apologetically
describes them as "the best my talents, with such bad health as I have,
could produce." Walter Shandy's pursuit of the "secret of health" in
Vol. 5, Chapters 33–36 might be seen as an instance of dramatic irony,
given how elusive any such secret will later prove to Tristram.
Nonetheless, when Tristram tells the tale of Lieutenant Le Fever in Vol.
6, the dying man is more an object of pity than of empathy.
By Vol. 7 Tristram is clearly writing against the clock. The early
chapters proceed at an almost frantic pace: Tristram hurries from one
French town to another, leaving himself no time to appreciate the
sights. Movement, he says, is life and joy; to stop, or even to slow
down, could be fatal.
It is with a kind of serene self-abandonment that, late in the volume, he
finally does slow down and resume living life to the fullest. The hectic,
clattering carriage is traded for a plodding mule. Ever the jester,
Tristram claims he can now relax because he has outrun Death. It
would be more accurate, if also more sobering, to say he has made his
peace with death and is now ready to enjoy the rest of his life, however
short it may be.
In the final two volumes Tristram keeps up at least the appearance of
good cheer, but he cannot help dropping a few hints as to his
deteriorating condition. In a side remark in Vol. 8, Chapter 6 he
casually mentions that he has, just a few months ago, "[broken] a
vessel in [his] lungs" during a fit of laughter, losing a half gallon of
blood in the process.
Then, in Vol. 9, Chapter 8 the notions of time and mortality are
sounded directly in a short but wistful monologue: "Time wastes too
fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my
pen; the days and hours of it ... are flying over our heads like light
clouds of a windy day, never to return more—every thing presses on."
Finally, as if from sheer exhaustion, Tristram proposes leaving his
narrative incomplete, trusting to future writers to take up the pen and
continue the story. His weakness, he confesses, is the result of further
acute blood loss and a "most uncritical fever" (Vol. 9, Chapter 24)—
symptoms of worsening and possibly end-stage tuberculosis.
In the last 10 or so chapters, the narrator practically staggers toward the
finish line, telling his story with unusual directness and concision. In
most narrators these qualities would be laudable, but in Tristram—who
never met a digression he didn't like—they are more than a little
worrisome.
One of Tristram's main rhetorical defenses against the encroachment of
death is his unusual view of time. Like the English philosopher John
Locke, Tristram adopts the notion of time as "duration," i.e., the "train
and succession of our ideas" (Vol. 2, Chapter 8) as opposed to the
linear "clock time" of the external world. He seems to come by this
perspective honestly, since Walter, his father, is of a very similar
persuasion.
In fact, the novel's longest single exposition of the Lockean view of
chronology takes place in Vol. 3, Chapter 18 where Walter sets out to
educate Toby about the nature of time. The "train" of ideas in a
person's head is, he implies, a more authentic and useful way of
reckoning the passage of time than the customary "minutes, hours,
weeks, and months."
For Tristram, at any rate, rushing back and forth between the past and
the present affords a kind of freedom from the steadily ticking clock of
mortality. At moments, however—some of them already listed above—
Tristram cannot avoid the awareness of time's inexorable passage in the
real world. This painful realization underlies, for example, his lament
in Vol. 4, Chapter 13 where he complains of being "one whole year
older than I was this time twelve-month." Tristram may achieve a sense
of timelessness in telling his life story out of order, but ultimately he is
still living—and thus dying—faster than he can write it all down.
Wisdom and Foolishness
Tristram loves to play the part of the "wise fool," and he frequently
summons up the trappings of a traditional court jester to symbolize this
role. In Vol. 1, Chapter 6 he warns of his tendency to "sometimes put
on a fool's cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along."
In fact, such moments of foolery are not transitory and intermittent but
grow to take up much of the novel: after asking to be credited with "a
little more wisdom than appears upon my outside," Tristram seems
bound and determined to maximize the outward display of foolishness
in his novel.
As if to reinforce this impression, he will wager his fool's cap in Vol. 2,
Chapter 2 and invoke the "cap-and-bell" a third time in Vol. 3, Chapter
18. Motley, the multicolored fabric of a jester's outfit, is also
symbolically included in Vol. 3 in the form of two marbled pages
without any printed text. In Vol. 9, Chapter 12 Tristram will even
worry that his work is growing too wise and, therefore, insufficiently
foolish.
He promises to insert "a good quantity of heterogeneous matter"—i.e.,
a few chapters of miscellaneous nonsense—right away, simply in order
"to keep up [the] just balance betwixt wisdom and folly." Yet for all
this focus on foolishness, Tristram manages to deliver some striking
insights about human nature and to advance a view of life remarkably
free from bitterness, envy, or fault-finding. For these reasons he might
be considered a deeply wise character.
The natural counterpart to the "wise fool" is the "foolish sage," a
person who pretends to great wisdom by virtue of an extensive (or at
least lengthy) education but who fails to recognize the shortcomings of
mere book-learning. Walter Shandy, whom Tristram gently mocks for
his insistence on consulting his library for solutions to all life's
problems, is a mild version of the foolish-sage archetype.
More outwardly learned and, at the same time, more inwardly foolish
are the religious scholars whom Walter consults about his son's baptism
in Vol. 4, Chapters 26–29. These men, who pride themselves on their
familiarity with Christian doctrine and canon law, cannot even answer
a simple question without launching into a dissertation on the most
trivial aspects of baptism. By vaunting their wisdom, they unwittingly
underscore their own folly.
Foolishness, in Tristram's view, is an unavoidable feature of human
nature. Everyone, no matter how kind (Uncle Toby) or intelligent
(Walter) or practical-minded (Mrs. Shandy), has their share. The
appropriate response, he argues by example, is not to ignore one's own
foolishness or try to hide it from others but to embrace it and hope to
accumulate a little wisdom as a by-product.
SYMBOLS
Dr. Slop
Dr. Slop symbolizes the imperfections of the medical profession.
Readers expect Dr. Slop to be perfect in executing his duties, but he is
depicted as a forgetful doctor who does not take everything into detail.
For instance, when Dr. Slop is called upon to help Susannah deliver, he
forgets his medicine bag! The act of forgetting the medicine bag
signals the possibility of medical professionals neglecting the basics of
their duties as caretakers. Additionally, Dr. Slop accidentally breaks the
newborn baby's nose. Therefore, Dr. Slop is a symbol of medical
imperfections.
Tristram Shandy’s Nose
Tristram Shandy is the main narrator of this book, and he has a large
nose. The large nose is a result of the accidental break up when he was
born under the care of Dr. Slop. Tristram's large nose symbolizes the
unfortunate misfortunes that affect an individual without a wish.
Tristram does not understand why he has a large nose, and people
make fun of him, which makes him very uncomfortable. However,
self-acceptance is the only cure for self-denial.
Mr. Shandy
Mr. Shandy symbolizes parental challenges people undergo as they try
to give their families the best. Mr. Shandy has a child with a deformed
nose, and he is thinking about giving him a proper education. However,
Mr. Shandy gets so consumed in his writings and forgets that his child,
Tristram needs him most. Most parents are consumed with their jobs
and other duties, thus, forgetting that their children need their utmost
attention.
Accidental circumcision
Tristram's accidental circumcision represents his miserable life.
Despite being born in an unfortunate condition, Tristram is having an
ill-health, and he spends most of his life traveling from one country to
the other seeking medical care. As he narrates his story, Tristram says
that his best moment during the medical trips is when he could dance
with the village girl when he visited southern France. Consequently,
the accidental circumcision symbolizes the suffering of Tristram in his
entire life.
Shandy’s impotent bull
The impotent bull symbolizes the unfruitful romantic relationship
between Toby and Widow Wadman. When Toby first stayed in
Wadman’s house, he realized that the widow fell in love with him.
Toby was confused, but he later realized that he loved her too. Toby
got married to Widow Wadman. Unfortunately, Toby later realized that
Widow Wadman was attracted to him only for sexual satisfaction.
Therefore, there was no true love between Toby and Wadman because
the primary motive for the marriage is sexual satisfaction and nothing
else.
 Characters
Tristram Shandy
Tristram is both the fictionalized author of The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy and the child whose conception, birth, christening,
and circumcision form one major sequence of the narrative. The adult
Tristram Shandy relates certain aspects of his family history, including
many that took place before his own birth, drawing from stories and
hearsay as much as from his own memories. His opinions we get in
abundance; of the actual details of his life the author furnishes only
traces, and the child Tristram turns out to be a minor character.
Walter Shandy
Tristram's philosophically-minded father. Walter Shandy's love for
abstruse and convoluted intellectual argumentation and his readiness to
embrace any tantalizing hypothesis lead him to propound a great
number of absurd pseudo-scientific theories.
Elizabeth Shandy (Mrs. Shandy)
Tristram's mother. Mrs. Shandy insists on having the midwife attend
her labor rather than Dr. Slop, out of resentment at not being allowed
to bear the child in London. On all other points, Mrs. Shandy is
singularly passive and uncontentious, which makes her a dull
conversational partner for her argumentative husband.
Captain Toby Shandy (Uncle Toby)
Tristram's uncle, and brother to Walter Shandy. After sustaining a
groin-wound in battle, he retires to a life of obsessive attention to the
history and science of military fortifications. His temperament is gentle
and sentimental: Tristram tells us he wouldn't harm a fly.
Corporal Trim
Manservant and sidekick to Uncle Toby. His real name is James Butler;
he received the nickname "Trim" while in the military. Trim colludes
with Captain Toby in his military shenanigans, but his own favorite
hobby is advising people, especially if it allows him to make eloquent
speeches.
Dr. Slop
The local male midwife, who, at Walter's insistence, acts as a back-up
at Tristram's birth. A "scientifick operator," Dr. Slop has written a book
expressing his disdain for the practice of midwifery. He is interested in
surgical instrument and medical advances, and prides himself on
having invented a new pair of delivery forceps.
Parson Yorick
The village parson, and a close friend of the Shandy family. Yorick is
lighthearted and straight-talking; he detests gravity and pretension. As
a witty and misunderstood clergyman, he has often been taken as a
representation of the writer, Sterne, himself.
Ironies

Irony of Autobiography
Tristram acknowledges this irony throughout the novel, even as he
continues the ironic behavior. This usually might disqualify the style of
irony, but Tristram gets so carried away with himself that this method
of irony remains as such; Sterne deliberately adjusts the style of the
novel when Tristram notices that his autobiography centers on other
people.
Moreover, Tristram never sees how the plot of his novel gradually
adjusts itself using flashback to become a narrative of Tristram's Uncle
Toby. The novel is narrated by Tristram, a precocious gentleman who
is eager to preserve his own life; in demonstrating this eagerness, he
ironically captures very little about it.
Irony of Birth Name
The full name of Tristram Shandy is The Life and Opinions of Tristram
Shandy, Gentleman, without the comma when typeset. He endeavors to
put forth his opinions yet cannot move beyond the opinions of others.
Rather than seeing this concept as an un-ironic statement on how
society affects us all, the reader witnesses how the opinions of those
around him infringe upon Tristram's ability to have original opinions.
He accepts his father's negative perception of Tristram's name and
bearing to such an extent that he begins the novel with the wish that the
center of his being might be changed.
The irony of "Tristram Shandy" is that this name roots the novel and
often brings Tristram's narration back to himself, yet these words
emblematize the entirety of the plot which Tristram neglects to provide
otherwise.
Dramatic Irony of Yorick's Death
Laurence Sterne places the death of the character Yorick relatively
early in the novel, but the characters progress through the rest of it in a
flashback, unaware of his future demise. The presentation of Yorick's
headstone develops the dramatic irony that allows Tristram's narrative
to center even more sharply on Uncle Toby.
Verbal Irony of Shandy's Self-Perception
Tristram Shandy continually grapples with the fact his writing is
abnormal, and his tone ranges from bashful to giddy as he reminds the
reader what he requires that they experience through his words. The
result of this is a web of verbal irony that enmeshes over- with
understatement and demonstrates the perceived lack of control in
narration which, in moments without irony, Tristram fully understands.
The purpose of the irony is to divorce the recognition that the book
shies away from the narrative techniques that were used at the time
from the sense of mastery over the novel's plot through rereading
which accompanied many other 18th-century novels.
Situational Irony
The birthing technique used to bring Tristram into the world leaves his
body damaged, and this ruins the pristine strength of a son his father
had desired. Tristram's mother, as a woman in the 1700s, delivered
Tristram in an atmosphere of danger, and the convoluted wishes of
Tristram's parents vis-a-vis birthing procedures lead to a discrepancy
between what could have gone wrong - the mutual death of Tristram
and his parents - and the defect which instead results, causing the most
extant sign of marred being to Tristram.