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. Toby and Trim march all the way down the road before remembering that they should be going the other way. They turn around and march back to widow Wadman’s door. Bridget is standing right behind the door, and widow Wadman is watching from her bedroom window. Toby, more nervous than ever, is about to stop and calls out to Trim as Trim raises the knocker on the door, but it is too late. Toby, hearing the knock, just whistles Lillabullero.
Toby and Trim get carried away with the excitement their military metaphors rouses in them, but quickly recall themselves. Widow Wadman and Bridget are clearly equally nervous and have been anticipating Toby and Trim’s arrival. Toby has a last moment of doubt, but Trim has already taken his master’s fate into his own hands.
Themes
Chapter 17. Because Bridget is right behind the door, Trim does not have knock as many times as, for example, Tristram’s tailor, whom Tristram owes at least twenty-five pounds. Tristram dismisses this debt and claims that there is no prince or pope more dedicated to settling his debts than he is. He describes his own cheapness to prove it. Tristram aims to live like Rousseau, alone in the country. However, he cautions the reader that that does not mean he would be a philosopher. He cannot get into the subject of true philosophy, however, while Toby is standing outside the door whistling Lillabullero.
Tristram makes another self-deprecating joke, riffing on the stereotypical image of the impoverished writer. His exaggerated depiction of his own stinginess parodies the Protestant moral imperative to settle one’s accounts and be financially responsible. Tristram compares himself to the French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who deliberately left society to live a moral contemplative life in the countryside.
Themes
Chapter 18. This chapter is a blank page.
Tristram subverts the reader’s expectations by withholding the climactic moment of Toby and Trim’s arrival at widow Wadman’s house.
Themes
Chapter 19. This chapter is also a blank page.
Tristram continues to withhold the scene of Toby’s declaration of love.
Themes
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Chapter 20. Toby assures widow Wadman that she “shall see the very place.” She blushes, and Tristram translates her blush for the reader: though she knows she should not look, she wants to, and she will. Toby meanwhile stands up and sends Trim to the garret to retrieve something. Trim disapproves of Toby’s orders but obeys, nevertheless. Toby sits back down and tells widow Wadman she will touch “the place” with her own finger. Tristram, realizing more “translation” is needed to make the last three pages comprehensible, asks the reader to help him.
This chapter begins mid-scene, and mid-conversation—it is unclear which place Toby is referring to, though the reader can infer that it may be related to sieges or to his wound. Tristram continues to toy with the reader, refusing to elaborate and intentionally rendering the conversation vague and unclear before he backtracks to explain the situation.
Themes
