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Book 1: Chapters 1-5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tristram Shandy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth, Fiction, and Storytelling
Language and Comprehension
Travel, Space, and Time
Sexuality and Propriety
Science, Technology, and the Enlightenment
Summary
Analysis
Chapter 6. Having told the reader when he was born, Tristram next explains how he was born. First, however, he urges the reader to be patient, pointing out that he and the reader hardly know each other. He begs the reader to let him tell his life’s story his own way, even if he will make a fool of himself in the process.
Tristram acknowledges his story’s unconventional approach but refuses to compromise, choosing to risk a potentially embarrassing experimental approach.
Themes
Chapter 7. The village where Tristram’s family lives is also home to an old midwife who has developed a great reputation for her work despite only offering her services within a two-mile radius. The midwife is a widow whom the wife of the local parson paid to learn her trade. The widow is a great asset to the community: previously, the closest midwife lived seven miles away. After the midwife learned all the necessary skills, the parson gave her money to acquire a proper license. Tristram muses on licenses and the power of legal language. Referencing the writing of Didius, he considers whether legal language is just another kind of hobby-horse.
As promised, Tristram begins the story of his birth his own way: with a long digression. Despite the apparent irrelevance, Tristram’s narration of the midwife’s background helps to familiarize the reader with the countryside surrounding Shandy-Hall and with the character the local parson, Yorick. Tristram also references explicitly for the first time his preoccupation with hobby-horses. He also alerts readers to his skepticism that any one system of thought or language can explain the world.
Themes
Chapter 8. Tristram believes hobby-horses to be an essential part of human life, and a particular fancy of his. In Tristram’s opinion, any attempt to remove a person from their hobby-horse—to force them to give up their interest—would simply drive them to a different, worse hobby-horse, and so these interests should be tolerated if not encouraged. The one exception Tristram is willing to make is for individuals destined for greatness who instead become distracted by their hobby-horse. Tristram then writes another vaguely-worded dedication.
Expounding on the concept of hobby-horses, Tristram arrives at one of the central ideas of his book, which will continue to guide the story through the characters’ various adventures and misadventures: that a person cannot clearly separate their rational mind from their passions. Though Tristram rejects Enlightenment theories of the rational perfectibility of humankind, he does not return to older religious ideas of human sinfulness. Rather, Tristram rejoices in the playful gray area between rational, systematic thinking and the unknowable and unconscious feelings that govern human activity.
Themes
Chapter 9. The dedication in the previous chapter was not intended for any particular lord, Tristram affirms, but is a “Virgin-Dedication” offered for public auction. Tristram suggests that any lord in need of a dedication can buy it for fifty guineas. He praises his dedication, favorably comparing it to other, poorly written dedications, and argues that the implicit reference to hobby-horses makes it a more powerful piece of writing. Tristram directs buyers to his publisher and says that everything else on the subject of hobby-horses in the book will henceforth be dedicated to the owner of this dedication.
Tristram once again writes a dedication, this time not only self-consciously commenting on the book form his story has taken, but also on the market. In offering to sell the dedication, Tristram subtly critiques the literary market, asking how one can buy and sell ideas.
Themes
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Chapter 10. Tristram affirms that while the parson’s support of the midwife may seem irrelevant to the story of his birth, that is not the case. Though the parson’s wife came up with the idea to support the midwife and received credit for it, Tristram believes the parson should also be honored for his role. This parson had, five years earlier, made a fool of himself in the neighborhood by riding an extremely worn-out and pathetic horse, reminiscent of Don Quixote’s horse Rosinante. Though the parson owned a very fine saddle which would have improve his horse’s appearances, he chose not to use them.
Returning to the subject of the midwife from his earlier digression within a digression, Tristram defends his apparently aimless narrative style with yet another digression. Tristram takes obvious delight in toying with the reader in this manner. The first of many references to Don Quixote establishes the significance of Cervantes’s novel as an inspiration for Tristram’s own book.
Themes
Riding his sorry-looking horse, the parson was laughed at from village to village, but he never took offense. A humorous man himself, he could even laugh along with the onlookers. The parson would give many different reasons for riding this horse, never revealing the true cause. Tristram explains that in the parson’s younger. days, he rode the finest horse around. As there was no midwife for seven miles, people would constantly ask to borrow the parson’s horse, and he would never say no. The frequency of these requests wore out his horses, however, and he had to replace them at an unusually rapid pace.
Tristram explains the parson’s motivation for supporting the midwife in a typically digressive, roundabout way. Doing so allows Tristram to give the reader a much richer description of the parson’s personality, revealing the character’s curious mixture of good humor, generosity, and vanity.
Themes
With his horse-related expenses adding up, the parson found himself unable to be generous in other ways. He realized he had two options: to stop letting others borrow his horse, or to get a horse no one else would want to borrow. Ultimately, he chose the latter, even at the cost of ridicule. Tristram finds this behavior extremely noble, but his intention in recounting this is to show the village’s reaction. When the parson paid for the midwife to be trained, rumors quickly spread that he would once again buy a high-quality horse and was acting out of self-interest. Tristram bemoans this judgment. He explains that the parson has since died and resolves to spend two more chapters on his character.
In classic Shandean style, Tristram’s digression has revealed to the reader much about the parson’s character without actually having any direct relevance to the plot: the reader will never learn whether or not the parson bought himself another, better horse after wisely investing in the midwife’s training. The point of this anecdote, rather, is to illustrate both the parson’s character and Tristram’s conception of noble behavior, which requires being true to oneself even at the cost of seeming ridiculous.
Themes
