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The uniqueness of Tristram Shandy has pushed critics to see many different topics as the central concern of the work. It may even be an impossible task to pinpoint which of two seemingly contradictory themes Tristram is pursuing, because Tristram does not give us much of a beginning, middle, or end, preferring to stream along in digressive contentment. However, as Jean-Jacques Mayoux writes, it may be possible to transcend subjectivity by seeking coherence. In other words, by examining a theory under the lens of the relevant facts, we should able to see how much water it holds.
It is with this in mind that we turn to On Tristram Shandy, a paper by Dorothy Van Ghent, which makes several claims about Tristram Shandy that cannot be substantiated as motifs in the forefront of Tristram's consciousness in light of those suggested by Mayoux and Howard Anderson. To prove this, we will use Mayoux's concept of cohesiveness, along with the standard scientific principle that the simplest answer is usually the correct one. It may appear odd to contrast Mayoux with Van Ghent, especially because both begin with identical ideas: Mayoux argues that, in the book, the human world is made up of microcosmic, enclosed units, of windowless monads, while Van Ghent contends that the mind is a monad[an] elemental unit of energy that [has] mirrors but no windows. However, from here, Mayoux and Van Ghent diverge.
While Mayoux seeks to assert three propositions, On Tristram Shandy has no easily discernable central thesis or theses; rather, it contains an evolving theory. Van Ghent moves from Liebnizs monads to ask, What is the action of Tristram Shandy? She answers, Sterne's projects to analyze and represent in his novel the creative process. While it is obvious that Tristram lays bare his own creative process in the novel, it is a suspect claim that this is his primary objective. Indeed, it is argued that Henry Fielding does a similar examination of the novel in Tom Jones, but Fielding himself supports this claim throughout his book. And whereas Fieldings ruminations on the novel are pointed at the edification of the reader, Tristram offers his more as intimate observations in the dialog he is having with the reader.
Furthermore, a sense that the project of Tristram Shandy is a literary analysis implies that the connection between the reader and Tristram is nothing more than a device to achieve this end. Yet a far simpler explanation for the conversation the reader has with Tristram is that Tristram wants to educate his reader. Van Ghent might argue that this education revolves around the form of the novel; however, reason admits a much different answer. Despite her classification of Sterne as primarily a novelist, Sterne is much more of a priest, being only the author of at most one novel (or whatever). Sterne was a man of the cloth for over thirty years, and thus one could reasonable assume that the primary message of his first long piece of fiction would focus on something centered a little closer to humanity.
Yet, before we disregard Van Ghent's claim, we must give her the benefit of the doubt and allow her to present her most convincing example. She points to my Uncle Toby's mistake about the bridge: The author must elucidate Toby's error, but when? Right now, at the moment Toby makes the remark? But the goings-on upstairs in Mrs. Shandy's bedchamber are of the greatest consequence now.
Later, then, among the anecdotes of Toby's amours with Widow Woman? Or in the middle of Toby's campaigns on the bowling green? All of these circumstances press upon the author at once, and are, in the a temporal time of consciousness, contemporaneous. By what principle of selection is he to subject them to the time demands of the novel? O ye powers! [Sterne cries]I beg and beseech youth wherever in any part of your dominions it so falls out, that three several roads meet in one point direct an uncertain devil which of the three he is to take. This selection seems to fit perfectly with Van Ghent's proposition; Tristram does show us his perturbation at having to take one of the three roads meeting at this juncture.
However, if we pay heed to Mayoux's method of cohesiveness, we see that this interpretation fails in light of the rest of the book. This manner of stopping, confounded, and appealing to the heavens for Tristram is not unique to his examination of plot development. About the gossip surrounding his circumcision, Tristram laments, O told provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this world! And even as Tristram pleads to some unseen power for guidance in how to better move the plot, each appeal is very similar to the last: we are up a hill, and cannot get down; or my father and Uncle Toby are on the stairs and I cannot figure how to get them to bed. In addition, it seems that most of these problems have a fairly simple solution: re-order the telling of certain plot elements so that these issues do not appear. Surely Tristram is telling us more than how difficult it is to craft the plot of a novel in a single attempt.
Indeed, Howard Anderson sees a different design in Tristram's passages. Are we for ever, asks Tristram, to be twisting, and untwisting the same rope? For ever in the same track for ever at the same pace? The answer that emerges from his example and his instruction is surely clear: we are destined to remain trapped in sterile futility only if we refuse to break barriers that our minds erect between us and the world. When Tristram appeals to ye powers at the crossroads, he reinforces this message, consistent with his profession as a priest.
Tristram shows us, that when faced with an obstacle, he pushes past the artificial obstruction. Instead of rewriting this section of his text what a novelist would at this difficult juncture Tristram just keeps going. Thus, Andersons explanation seems to fit much better with both the entirety of the novel and Sterne's own position in life, and hence is a more coherent explanation than Van Ghent's. This does not signal the demise of On Tristram Shandy, though, as Van Ghent skips to an explanation of Sterne's masterful time-sense.
She describes, with excellent clarity, how Sterne juxtaposes Lockean duration with clock-time to create joyously vivid descriptions of his characters. However, beyond its descriptive power, Van Ghent does not offer much explanation for why Sterne controls time in this way. It is not, presumably, related to the construction of the novel, since no other novel at that time, nor any novel for quite a long time after Tristram Shandy, used this same effect. Surely there must be some explanation for Sterne's obsession with temporal and a temporal time that relates to Tristram's dialogue beyond mere description. Mayoux offers, it seems to me, that his constant stressing and over-stressing of his freedom covers an anxiety Volume VII is perhaps merely a belated admission into the consciousness of the fear that time was prevailing against him, irresistibly, and that the recovery of lost time was doomed. In other words, Tristram, ever aware of his own mortality, seeks to slow the flow of time.
One of Van Ghent's examples literally shows this: Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more everything presses on whilst thou art twisting that lock, see! it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make. The philosopher, with his head full of time, is never allowed to sail off into abstraction; he keeps his eye on Jenny twisting her lock. Van Ghent's observation is true, but hardly more than a note on Tristram's device.
In addition, she describes these laments as cries of authorial distress that are really false scents [laid] down humanistically. For Van Ghent, all of Tristram's constructions are about the form of the novel. Mayoux, however, is more concerned with Tristram's message, and he notes, Yes, of course, all this is said in a flippant and jesting tone. Can we fail, however, to perceive that the theme is becoming obsessive, and to detect under the surface what I have termed anxiety, and might perhaps term anguish? For Van Ghent, this is all Sterne's doing; it is a demonstration of the potential and power of the form. But Van Ghent forgets that Sterne is a parson and a person before a novelist, and her own focus on close literary criticism ignores that Tristram is the man behind the story, the man who strives to bring us into his conversation, and ultimately, the man who has a message for us.
Mayoux again: Now this cruel awareness of time as change gets such a hold of his imagination that in a remarkable manner he adapts himself to its rhythms so as once more to master it: he turns inevitable change into the free creation of change by speed Death may pursue, but we can race faster; and again in speed joy is with us. So much of motion, we read in Chapter 13, is so much of life, and so much of joy stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil To end her paper, Van Ghent examines how Sterne achieves some of his comic moments, and concludes that the humor is quite similar to the combination of high and low in Don Quixote. Again, she seems to view Tristram Shandy as essentially an experiment in style that helps the reader understand the form of the novel in better ways. But this simply cannot account for Tristram's wild success through the course of history. Following Van Ghent's claims on the important elements of Tristram Shandy, we must conclude that Samuel Johnson was entirely wrong when he said, Nothing odd will do long. However, it is difficult to believe that the oddity is what draws readers with Tristram; in fact, many critics have given us a much more believable explanation as they point to the relationship that is built between Tristram and his readers.
It is not the oddity that does long, but rather the conversation. Yes, Tristram is odd, but more importantly, he is someone we want to hear. His mastery of living joyously in the light of despair is eminently illuminating to read.
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Research essay sample on Dorothy Van Ghent And Tristram Shandy Primary Purposes
