Still in the
parlor, Uncle Toby continues his attempt to redirect the conversation
toward the armies at Flanders. Walter takes the bait, but then lapses
into a state of physical confusion when he removes his hat with his
right hand and then has to reach across with his left to remove the
handkerchief from his right coat pocket. Tristram criticizes his father
for not pausing to switch hands, but Walter has never been one to
retract a decision once he has advanced it. Uncle Toby, in contrast to
Tristram, waits through Walter's contortions with patience and
goodwill. He "whistles Lillabullero," however, at his brother's
argument that babies were more frequently damaged during birth before
the advent of modern medical technology.
The next physical struggle comes
with Dr.
Slop's attempt to untie the knot in his medical bag. Obadiah knotted it
up to prevent it from clattering during transport so that he could hear
himself whistle. Tristram suggests that this knot, too, contributed to
the flattening of his nose. Dr. Slop cuts his thumb with a penknife. He
falls to cursing Obadiah, and Walter offers him the use of one of his
ready-made curses. The curse he produces is actually a Catholic
excommunication document, written by Ernulphus the Bishop. Dr. Slop
hesitates at its vehemence, but then is persuaded to continue with the
excommunication, inserting Obadiah's name wherever relevant. Tristram
offers the opinion that we are all original when we swear, an argument
contradictory to his father's hypothesis that every curse is originally
derived from this one by Ernulphus.
Susannah
appears, announcing that she has cut her arm, the midwife has fallen
and bruised her hip, and the baby is still not delivered. She relays
the midwife's request that Dr. Slop be called upstairs to assist. Dr.
Slop, however, is sensitive about the fact that he has been
subordinated to the midwife, and bristles at being summoned like a
servant. He begins to speak disparagingly of the traditional methods of
midwifery and its rude instruments of "fingers and thumbs." He
concludes his statement, in what Tristram calls "a singular stroke of
eloquence," with a flourish of the newly invented forceps, which he has
finally liberated from the knotted bag. Unfortunately, he also
accidentally produces the squirt, which is tangled with the forceps.
This prompts Toby to ask, innocent of his own sexual innuendo, "are
children brought into the world by a squirt?" Dr. Slop demonstrates the
forceps on Toby, skinning his hands and knuckles in the process. In the
delivery room, Dr. Slop and the midwife debate about whether it is the
child's hip or head that is foremost. Slop remarks that the question is
of no small consequence, suggesting that if the child is male, his
genitalia may be in danger from the forceps.
"It is two
hours and ten minutes...since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived," declares
Walter, "but to my imagination it seems almost an age." He prepares to
deliver a philosophical lecture on "Duration," only to be interrupted
by Toby, who steals the gist of the argument out from under him: "'Tis
owning, entirely, quoth my uncle Toby, to the succession of our ideas."
After a moment of consternation, Walter launches into the lecture
anyway. He and Toby bicker, and the speech is again cut short.
Tristram, sarcastically, regrets what the world has lost in the
unfinished lecture.
Walter and
Toby fall asleep, the others are busy upstairs, and the author takes
advantage of this quiet moment to write the Preface, which deals with
Locke's remarks on wit and judgment. Tristram opposes Locke's ranking
of judgment above wit, arguing instead that they go hand in hand, like
the two knobs on the back of the chair. The brothers are then awakened
by the squeaking of the hinge as Corporal Trim peeks into the room.
Trim informs
the group that Dr. Slop is in the kitchen making a bridge, for which
Toby expresses his heartfelt gratitude. Toby believes Slop is repairing
the drawbridge, and Tristram digresses to tell the story of how Trim
and Bridget broke the bridge during a romantic rendezvous at the
fortifications. The confusion is cleared up when Trim announces that
the bridge under construction is for the baby's nose, which has been
crushed by the forceps.
Tristram describes at great
length his
father's elaborate and melodramatic posture of grief as he sprawls
across the bed. Walter's distress is compounded, we learn, by a history
of small noses in the family, a phenomenon that has had significant
financial consequences. As a consequence, Walter has read deeply in the
literature of noses, adopting it as another one of his obsessions.
Tristram ends by promising a tale from Slawkenbergius, one of the most
eminent authorities on noses.
Commentary
With the
amusing portrait of Walter Shandy attempting to reach his right pocket
with his left hand, Tristram caricatures the doggedness of his father's
philosophical disposition. The visual image of Walter's physical
straining and contortions stands as a figure for the absurd
intellectual gymnastics he constantly performs in defense of his
favorite theories. The episode of the squeaky hinge, similarly,
highlights the fact that Walter Shandy's passion for the esoteric
causes him to neglect more practical matters. The fact that Tristram
still has not fixed the hinge even well after his father's death
reminds us that there are strong resemblances between the father and
the son, even though Tristram may try to downplay them.
Things do not
look good for the child about to be delivered. Tristam has given us
sufficient notice that the baby's nose is in jeopardy. The fact that
Dr. Slop mangles Toby's hand with the forceps, in combination with
Walter's theorizing about brain damage, leaves us cringing in
anticipation of the disaster that is about to take place. The confusion
about heads and hips firmly links the flattened nose with the
possibility of castration. Tristram will deny any such symbolic
circuitousness, asserting the literalness of his story. His characters,
however, continue to reflect from time to time on the event as a
near-miss, keeping the association active in the reader's mind.
In the
discussion of time, Toby stumbles onto the Lockean definition of
duration upon which Walter meant to expound. Sterne is attending here
to the difference between clock-time and mental time. The explanation,
though fairly abstruse, comments on the episode from the previous
volume in which the elapsed time between Obadiah's departure and return
became so utterly indeterminate. Each consciousness has its own pacing
and tempo, set by whatever mental activity is going on at the moment.
The effort to synchronize this tempo with an objective, external time
can create strange effects, as when a short span of clock time "seems
an age." One result of this discontinuity is to underscore the
irreducible separation between individuals--the fact that people live
in such separate worlds that each person is, in fact, a world unto
himself. Locke's theory also lends an authoritative backing to
Tristram's unconventional methodology in the temporal ordering of his
narrative.
Tristram's
elaborate wordplay on the word "bridge" points out that language, which
we typically think of as a vehicle for communication, can actually be
another medium for human isolation. The fact that the word suggests so
many different contexts testifies both to the slipperiness of language
and to the way an individual's private outlook colors his
interpretations. Tristram also reminds us in the digression about the
bridge that the story of Toby's amours is still forthcoming.
© "Section 3"
Santos, Matilda.
SparkNote on Tristram Shandy.
1 Nov. 2008
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/tristram/section3.rhtml