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. Tristram wishes Toby, too, were a water-drinker, as that would explain widow Wadman’s attraction to him. Toby, however, only drinks water when liquor is not available, or when a doctor orders him to do so. Tristram notes that all effects require causes, and searches for attributes of Toby’s that could have sparked widow Wadman’s desire but comes up short. He then declares that he has never belabored a chapter so much for the sake of the next chapter as he is currently doing. Tristram then criticizes himself for the new problems he is constantly creating, indebting himself and further weakening his already poor health. He recounts how two months ago, he laughed so hard he burst a blood vessel and lost two quarts of blood.
Toby, as the reader will recall, is very fond of a glass of sack (fortified wine). While hardly a hard drinker, Toby enjoys alcohol as one pleasure among others, like his pipe. Tristram’s inability to discover the root of widow Wadman’s attraction to Toby reflects both Tristram’s own admitted lack of a unified theory of love as well as the utter mystery of the human mind and its passions. Tristram, meanwhile, is suffering in body as he dedicates himself in mind to his book. The dangerous consequences of his laughter cast doubt on his assertions that humor keeps him healthy.
Themes
Chapter 7. Tristram reminds himself and the reader the story must once again proceed in a straight line. He is about to once again begin in the middle of the story and must be more careful.
Tristram’s rebuke to himself signals to the reader that the next chapter will feature an abrupt transition.
Themes
Chapter 8. Toby and Trim are in the middle of one of their campaigns and have forgotten one of the most important tools: a bed, (Shandy Hall is unfurnished, and the inn where Le Fever will later die is yet unbuilt). Because of this, Toby stays at widow Wadman’s until Trim has built him a bed. Being in a woman’s home is different than meeting her outdoors, Tristram argues; in the former case, a woman will soon start to view a man as another one of her many possessions.
Tristram’s clues situate this story immediately after Toby and Trim’s arrival at Shandy-Hall and the end of Toby’s convalescence. This, Tristram reveals, is the source of widow Wadman’s attraction to Toby, as the intimacy of his presence in her home, especially overnight, developed into love.
Themes
Chapter 9. Tristram compares “night-shifts” and “day-shifts,” which he finds to be radically different from each other. Widow Wadman has long, old-fashioned “night-shifts” which trail down past her feet. One of widow Wadman’s favorite habits, developed over seven years of widowhood, is to have Bridget tie up the end of her “night-shift” with a pin once she has gotten into bed, thereby fully tucking her in. Bridget fulfills this duty every night. After Toby’s arrival, however, widow Wadman begins sleeping on her side, then staying up late to reread her marriage settlement, then she finally kicks the pin out of Bridget’s hands in a moment of distraction. This not only disrupts the household etiquette but reveals that widow Wadman is in love with Toby.
“Night-shifts,” or nightshirts, were a type of pajamas worn in the eighteenth century. “Day-shifts” are a nonsense word of Tristram’s own invention, and it is unclear what distinguishes them from regular clothes. The mysterious development in widow Wadman’s passions that eventually grows into love for Toby first reveals itself in these slight, unconscious disturbances to her nighttime routine.
Themes
Get the entire Tristram Shandy LitChart as a printable PDF.
Chapter 10. Toby is distracted by his sieges, and his affair with widow Wadman must wait until the demolition of Dunkirk. Widow Wadman waits for 11 years; Tristram argues, however, that it is the second attack that makes a battle, and that is why he describes the story at Toby’s amours with widow Wadman rather than the other way around. He stresses the importance of the distinction.
It is only after the Treaty of Utrecht and the mandatory demolition of both the real fortifications of Dunkirk and Toby’s model of them that widow Wadman’s opportunity arises. Tristram insists on describing their affair as Toby’s amours, however, as the ultimate conclusion was reached through Toby’s own initiative, as the reader will see in due course.
Themes
