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 16. Tristram argues that many decisions that seem rash have in fact been carefully considered. Walter’s decision to dress Tristram in breeches is one such decision that Walter has discussed at length with Mrs. Shandy in his “beds of justice,” which Tristram promises to explain in the next chapter.
Tristram’s discussion of decision making again reflects his interest in the mysterious mechanisms of the mind. Walter has self-consciously developed his own such mechanism in the form of the “beds of justice.”
Themes
Chapter 17. The ancient Goths traditionally debated every matter of state twice: first drunk, then sober. They did this to maximize the passion of their arguments and the caution of their reasoning. Walter is a water-drinker, however, and so requires a different approach. He gradually developed a system in which he spends the first Saturday and Sunday nights of each month arguing with Mrs. Shandy in bed. Tristram similarly writes half of his most difficult passages while full and half while fasting, improving the quality of his writing through its variation and reaching the Shandean median he has promised his readers.
Tristram and his father share an interest in human thinking. They are especially interested in altered states and the differences in perspective they can prompt. Walter, however, being sober, must come up with a more complicated system than the Goths in order to create such states for himself. Ironically, it is difficult to see what difference there is between Walter’s two nights of arguing with Mrs. Shandy, who is always equally unwilling to debate her husband and consistently defers to him. Tristram’s description of his own method is similarly ironic: no such median exists, and his book veers from subject to subject by design.
Themes
Chapter 18. Walter, in his “bed of justice,” proposes dressing Tristram in breeches to Mrs. Shandy. Mrs. Shandy agrees with all of Walter’s points, repeating his arguments back to him: that Tristram is tall for his age, that he will look strange in breeches, and so on. Walter becomes annoyed by the lack of resistance. Tristram points out that this discussion took place on a Sunday night.
Walter’s “bed of justice” has little effect but to confirm for him a decision he had already made, to put Tristram in breeches. Tristram’s point that this discussion took place on a Sunday night would suggest that the very same thing happened the night before.
Themes
Chapter 19. Following his argument with Mrs. Shandy, Walter consults the writings of Albertus Rubenius, which are far too esoteric to be of much use to him. Rubenius describes all kinds of Roman articles of clothing and shoes, but not breeches. Rubenius then explains how these items were manufactured in Rome, but he still has nothing to say of breeches. Walter then learns about a mysterious item of clothing called the Latus Clavus, which historians cannot agree upon. Some say it was a coat, some say the color, some say a particular kind of stud, and so on. Picking his favorite of these theories, Walter orders Tristram’s breeches to be made with hooks and eyes.
Walter’s elaborate investigations into ancient Roman clothing parody Enlightenment classicism and its attempts to both understand the ancient world and extract lessons from it for modernity. Mistranslation and the loss of certain ideas or things to history are, unfortunately, unsurmountable limits for the study of history, leading researchers down pointless rabbit holes in search of obscure discoveries. The Latus Clavus is one such lost concept. Ironically, it is completely irrelevant to modern life and leads Walter to make Tristram breeches that are both strange and impractical.
Themes
Get the entire Tristram Shandy LitChart as a printable PDF.
Chapter 20. Tristram warns the reader of a new subject to come and instructs them to leave the breeches and Latus Clavus, leave Mrs. Shandy, leave Dr. Slop, leave Le Fever, and even to leave him, Tristram, behind. He admits that the latter, of course, is impossible, as he must guide the reader to the end of the book.
Tristram foreshadows a change of topic in the latter half of this volume, sarcastically urging the reader to leave behind certain characters while, as the narrator, discarding them himself; his elaborate authorial games are emphasized by his ironic suggestion that the reader should discard him too, if only they could.
Themes
