Tristram picks
up where the last chapter left off, undertaking now "to explain the
nature of the perplexities in which my uncle Toby was involved" in his
attempts to tell the story of his war wound. Toby's trouble was that
the military maneuvers in question were so intricate and technical that
nobody could understand him; indeed he sometimes even confused himself
as well. It occurs to him now to get a large map of the environs of
Namur, which relieves him of his difficulty and also sets him off on
his hobby-horse.
Tristram informs the reader that his book is to be a "history-book" in the same way that Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding
is a history-book--that is, as a history "of what passes in a man's own
mind." He goes on to attribute the obscurity in Toby's battle
descriptions not to any kind of mental confusion, but to a confusion in
language itself: the "unsteady uses of words" that predominates
especially in the technical jargons of specialized fields.
Captain Toby's
obsession with his map grows, and he launches into a detailed study of
fortification and military science that becomes his ruling passion. He
soon grows restless for his recovery. Tristram, after reminding us that
he still means to resume the interrupted conversation from Volume 1,
Chapter 21 (when he cut Toby off at "I think --"), proceeds with the
story of his uncle's sudden desire to leave the sickbed: Corporal Trim,
Toby's servant, had planted the suggestion in his master's mind that
they should move to the country in order to construct a replica, built
to scale, of the battle site and fortifications. This idea pleases Toby
so intensely that he can hardly wait to begin.
Tristram
resumes the scene by the fireside on the day of his own birth, and Toby
finishes his long-delayed sentence by suggesting that they ring the
bell to inquire about all the noise upstairs. The labor has begun in
earnest; Susannah runs for the midwife, and Walter sends Obadiah to
fetch Dr. Slop. Speculating about Mrs. Shandy's preference for the
midwife, Toby suggests that it might be a question of modesty. Walter
challenges him on this point, and Toby defers, admitting that he knows
nothing about women. He alludes to the unfortunate outcome of his
affair with Widow Wadman as evidence of the fact. Walter begins to hold
forth about the right and the wrong end of a woman, but is interrupted
by a knock at the door.
Obadiah and
Dr. Slop have arrived. Tristram reflects on the complications of
calculating time in a narrative where events are happening
simultaneously, or in comparing narrative time with lived time. He
first claims that it has been an hour and a half since Obadiah left on
his errand--plenty of time to return with the doctor. He then argues,
from the other side, that no more than two minutes, thirteen and
three-fifths seconds could possibly have passed. Finally, he offers the
conjecture that years have passed, since all the stories of Uncle
Toby's military career and invalidism have intervened since the
birthday was first mentioned. His imaginary critic remains unpersuaded,
so Tristram closes the matter by revealing that Obadiah actually ran
into Dr. Slop just outside the house, in a collision that sent them
both into the mud.
Obadiah is
sent back out to fetch the doctor's tools, which the doctor has left at
home. Toby has been put in mind of Stevinus, an engineer and writer on
fortifications; he explains the connection, which seems illogical to
everyone else. Walter insults him for his doggedness and stupidity.
Tristram relates that Toby's feelings were hurt, but that he "was a man
patient of injuries." He goes on to tell a sentimental anecdote about
how Toby "scarce had heart to retaliate upon a fly," and attributes
whatever goodwill he himself has learned to the early impression of his
uncle's gentleness and humanity. Walter, seeing Toby's serene
countenance, quickly apologizes, and the brothers are reconciled.
Corporal Trim delivers a sermon on conscience (actually one of Sterne's
own) that has fallen out of the volume of Stevinus. Tristram gives a
minutely detailed visual description of the stance Trim assumes for
this oration. The sermon proves to have been left in the book by Parson
Yorick, who subsequently retrieves it.
Obadiah returns with the bag of surgical
instruments, and attention turns once again to Mrs. Shandy's labor. Dr.
Slop is told that he is not to interfere unless called for, so he
contents himself with educating the company about recent advances in
the science of obstetrics. We learn about another one of Walter's pet
theories: that the medulla oblongata is the most important part of the
brain, and that it stands in great danger during the process of
childbirth. With strength in numbers, the medical hobby-horses of
Walter and Dr. Slop outpace Uncle Toby's militaristic reflections, and
the latter is unable to regain the floor. The volume closes with a
reminder of certain narrative loose ends still to be picked up, most
importantly: how Toby got his modesty from his groin-wound, how
Tristram's nose was lost in the marriage contract, and how he came to
be named Tristram.
Commentary
In calling his
work a history of "what passes in a man's mind," Tristram draws
attention to the fact that, in writing his own "life and opinions," he
will be portraying mostly a mental life.
This reassurance is important in light of the fact that we have moved
through two volumes without yet arriving at the point of the
protagonist's birth. He addresses our expectations on this point not
only to help us make sense of the work, but also because those
expectations are part of what the work is about--as is the question of
how exactly the mental life figures in the life of a man. Still, the
comparison to Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding
is a provocative one: does Tristram mean that Locke's highly
theoretical book is actually more autobiographical and introspective
than philosophical? Or is he suggesting that his own book, however
personal it may be, will draw out general truths about human nature?
The author problematizes, through considerations like these, the
relationship between a history of an individual mind and a
philosophical account of human thinking in general.
The comparison
to Locke also raises the question of the genre of this text. Sterne's
book could be considered a novel; Tristram's narrative is certainly not
one. Tristram Shandy actually
draws on the conventions of a number of genres, if often only to poke
fun at them or turn them on their heads. Ultimately, the novel recasts
these conventions into a unique structure of its own. Comedy, essay,
and satire are all modes the author regularly takes up. He refers to
other literary works, and also pronounces his own work's independence
from them. The presence of whole documents from various non-literary
disciplines (like the sermon in this volume, and the memorandum in the
first) contributes likewise to the generic heterogeneity of the book.
The inclusion of these texts also develops a thematic concern about the
clash between everyday human life and the world of esoteric scholarship.
We begin to
see more clearly, in this volume, that the novel is weaving together
two major narrative lines: one is the sequence that involves the
pivotal events of Tristram's early existence. The other traces the
story of Uncle Toby, from his soldiering days to his hobby-horse and
eventually to his lovelife. In this volume, the spotlight focuses on
Toby while Tristram hangs suspended in the background, just on the
verge of being born. As Tristram reveals more about his uncle's hobby-
horse, the reader sees the ridiculous behaviors into which his
obsession with fortifications carries him. We also, however, see him as
genuinely kind and sympathetic: the famous anecdote of Toby and the fly
invites us to empathize with him as strongly as Tristram does. Yet the
overly sentimental tones in which the story is presented suggest that
Sterne might be poking fun at the eighteenth-century culture of
sensibility, into which Tristram's tale squarely falls. With the
allusion to Toby's modesty in the first volume, and to his affair with
the Widow Wadman in this volume, Tristram is outlining the trajectory
Toby's part of the story will take.
Conversation,
in these chapters, is governed by dueling hobby-horses. As the male
characters compete for the chance to vocalize their various
intellectual obsessions, the dialogue degenerates, becoming at certain
moments either unintelligible or utterly irrelevant. The real,
consequential event that is taking place upstairs is all but forgotten
in the stupidity and self-absorption of their discourse. Yet pregnancy
becomes a metaphor for these (often abortive) intellectual labors:
Tristram speaks of his father's failure "to be safely delivered of" his
explanation about women, and he discusses Walter's speculative
tendencies in similar terms: "It is the nature of an hypothesis, when
once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself
as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it,
it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or
understand." When Tristram compares Walter's philosophizing with the
labor going on upstairs, we are encouraged to think of Tristram's own
writing project in the same way. The birth at the center of the novel
is a figure for the idea of the "brainchild"--the process of mental
construction that is the major subject of the book, and of which the
book itself stands as an example.
© "Section 2"
Santos, Matilda.
SparkNote on Tristram Shandy. 1 Nov. 2008
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/tristram/section2.rhtml