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Tristram’s Mother (Elizabeth Shandy, née Mollineux)
Widow Wadman is Toby Shandy’s neighbor and love interest. A tenant of Walter Shandy’s, widow Wadman’s house faces Toby’s, and her garden is directly next to the bowling green where Toby and Trim model their fortifications. Widow Wadman falls in love with Toby almost as soon as he moves to Shandy-Hall when he stays in her house for a few days while his own is being furnished. However, she must wait 11 years for Toby’s sieges to end before their romance can proceed. Widow Wadman is a clever strategist, using her feminine charms to flirt with and eventually entrap the innocent Toby: she claims to have something stuck in her eye and asks him to take a look, forcing him to gaze into her eyes until he is hopelessly in love. But widow Wadman’s modesty and Toby’s innocence leave widow Wadman unable to ask the most pressing question related to their courtship: is Toby still capable of performing sexually following his groin injury? Widow Wadman tries every method to answer this question, including sending Bridget to confer with Trim. Her secrecy casts doubt on her morality and innocence, seemingly bolstering Walter’s claims about the sinful nature of women. Toby and widow Wadman’s miscommunication about this sensitive subject eventually ends their relationship, although Tristram never reveals the truth about Toby’s possible impotence.
Widow Wadman Quotes in Tristram Shandy
The Tristram Shandy quotes below are all either spoken by Widow Wadman or refer to Widow Wadman . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 8: Chapters 6-10
Quotes
My uncle Toby’s head at that time was full of other matters, so that it was not till the demolition of Dunkirk, when all the other civilities of Europe were settled, that he found leisure to return to this.
This made an armistice (that is speaking with regard to my uncle Toby—but with respect to Mrs. Wadman, a vacancy)—of almost eleven years. But in all cases of nature, as it is the second blow happen at what distance of time it will, which makes the fray—I chuse for that reason to call these the amours of my uncle Toby with Mrs. Wadman, rather than the amours of Mrs. Wadman with my uncle Toby.
This is not a distinction without a difference.
It is not like the affair of an old hat cock’d—and a cock’d old hat, about which your reverences have so often been at odds with one another—but there is a difference here in the nature of things—
And let me tell you, gentry, a wide one too.
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Book 9: Chapters 26-33
Quotes
—God bless your honour! cried the Corporal—what has a woman’s compassion to do with a wound upon the cap of a man’s knee? had your honour’s been shot into ten thousand splinters at the affair of Landen, Mrs. Wadman would have troubled her head as little about it as Bridget; because, added the Corporal, lowering his voice and speaking very distinctly, as he assigned his reason—
“The knee is such a distance from the main body—whereas the groin, your honour knows, is upon the very curtin of the place.”
My uncle Toby gave a long whistle—but in a note which could scarce be heard across the table.
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Widow Wadman Quotes in Tristram Shandy
The Tristram Shandy quotes below are all either spoken by Widow Wadman or refer to Widow Wadman . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 8: Chapters 6-10
Quotes
My uncle Toby’s head at that time was full of other matters, so that it was not till the demolition of Dunkirk, when all the other civilities of Europe were settled, that he found leisure to return to this.
This made an armistice (that is speaking with regard to my uncle Toby—but with respect to Mrs. Wadman, a vacancy)—of almost eleven years. But in all cases of nature, as it is the second blow happen at what distance of time it will, which makes the fray—I chuse for that reason to call these the amours of my uncle Toby with Mrs. Wadman, rather than the amours of Mrs. Wadman with my uncle Toby.
This is not a distinction without a difference.
It is not like the affair of an old hat cock’d—and a cock’d old hat, about which your reverences have so often been at odds with one another—but there is a difference here in the nature of things—
And let me tell you, gentry, a wide one too.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 9: Chapters 26-33
Quotes
—God bless your honour! cried the Corporal—what has a woman’s compassion to do with a wound upon the cap of a man’s knee? had your honour’s been shot into ten thousand splinters at the affair of Landen, Mrs. Wadman would have troubled her head as little about it as Bridget; because, added the Corporal, lowering his voice and speaking very distinctly, as he assigned his reason—
“The knee is such a distance from the main body—whereas the groin, your honour knows, is upon the very curtin of the place.”
My uncle Toby gave a long whistle—but in a note which could scarce be heard across the table.
