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 22. The abbess and Margarita try to convince the mules to move forward by calling and stomping, to no success.
Lacking the secret words, the two nuns are powerless to control their animals.
Themes
Chapter 23. The abbess and Margarita panic, convinced that, stuck alone at night, they will be robbed and “ravish’d.” The women curse their ailments and worry about the impending loss of their virginities.
The two nuns are (or are supposed to be) virgins, having joined the nunnery instead of marrying and pledged themselves to God. They worry that they will be seduced or raped if they are left alone and defenseless overnight, but their expression of their fear—or Tristram’s retelling of it—suggests they are also scared by their own curiosity about the prospect of illicit sex.
Themes
Chapter 24. Margarita tells the abbess that she knows two words that will make any horse or mule start moving again. The abbess is aghast, thinking that the words are magic, but Margarita assures her they are only sinful. Tristram bemoans the lack of a hero to save the nuns from committing this sin, but it is too late: Margarita says the words.
To escape the sinful fate of being “ravish’d,” the nuns sin themselves. Speaking incantations was considered magic and was a practice strictly forbidden by the Catholic church.
Themes
Chapter 25. The abbess argues that all sins are mortal or venial, and venial sins can be divided unto they have been “diluted into no sin at all.” Therefore, she continues, if she and Margarita each say half of a word, it is not sinful. They begin to harmonize, the abbess saying “bou—” and Margarita say “—ger,” and then the abbess saying “fou—” and Margarita saying “—ter.” The mules do not react, and so the nuns speak faster and faster, hoping the mules will understand them.
The abbess’s argument is based on an elaborate, twisted logic that treats sins like units of measurement. Most theologians would certainly reject such logic, and Tristram uses it to poke fun at the hypocrisies of the Catholic church. The two words, “bouger” and “foutre,” mean “to move” or, more indecently, “to bugger” (that is, to have anal sex) and “to fuck.”
Themes
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Chapter 26. While the reader has been distracted by the story he is telling, Tristram has made great progress on his journey south. Having passed through many towns on the way to Lyons, he feels he should describe them briefly in this chapter or the next. He asks the reader to pass him his fool’s cap. When he notices the reader has been wearing the cap all along, and he suggests they keep it on.
Tristram, pretending to have pulled a joke on the reader by skipping over so many towns, then pulls another one on them, literally placing a fool’s cap (the hat worn by jesters and clowns) on the reader’s head.
Themes
Chapter 27. Tristram has little to say about Fontainebleau, a favored destination of the French king for hunts and carnivals. He likewise describes Sens as little more than the site of a bishopdom, and he refuses to discuss Joigny at all. Tristram is more than happy to talk about Auxerre, however, and launches into the tale of his first visit there, on his own grand tour through Europe with Walter, Toby, Trim, and Obadiah. Walter has the party stop in Auxerre for two days, and during his investigations leaves Tristram with enough material to go on forever about the town, or so he claims. Tristram praises his father’s insightfulness and the unique travels it led to.
Tristram continues to dismiss the “must-see” destinations of France, choosing instead to focus on places and observations that resonated with him personally. Auxerre inspires him to suddenly go back in time to a previous trip to France, which would have taken place in his adolescence or early adulthood (the grand tour was a rite of passage that involved traveling through Europe and especially Italy). Walter, idiosyncratic as ever, insists that they stop in Auxerre so that he can investigate the town himself.
Themes
Walter brings Toby to the abbey of Saint Germain to see their collection of mummies. The sacristan gives them a tour, describing the lives of the various mummies. Toby is greatly disappointed by these stories, as the mummies were all monks and not soldiers. Toby and Trim and similarly bored by the story of Saint Maxima, struggling to understand why she would martyr herself if it took 200 years for her to be canonized after her death. The tomb of Saint Optat, however, greatly pleases Walter, who is able to add a new name to his list. Walter intends to return to the abbey, but Toby and Trim plan to explore the fortifications instead.
Toby and Trim comically misunderstand where they are, not realizing that all the mummies in the abbey will be monks or nuns. Their confusion over Saint Maxima’s canonization also reflects a deep ignorance of Catholicism; a saint is canonized after their death for their selfless devotion of God, and any saint that wished to become a saint would be too vain to be chosen. The name Optat is derived from the Latin “optatus,” which means “longed for.”
Themes
Chapter 28. Tristram expresses wonder at how in the last chapter he has been moving ahead in two different journeys at two different times. Back in the present, he has left Auxerre, and is entering Lyons with his post-chaise “broke into a thousand pieces”; and is already on the banks of the Garonne.
Tristram continues to toy with the flow of time in his novel, now intentionally layering scenes which take in the same place but at different times on top of one and another; alongside these two scenes in Auxerre is a third, that of his ongoing southward journey.
Themes
