Laurence Sterne's A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

NOTE: If you're going to use any of this for a term paper or whatnot (I'm referring to you "Birth of the Novel" English Lit students who come by at the end of every quarter -- like right about now), please be sure to credit me. The bibliography/source information is at the bottom of this entry, along with internal quote information. ALSO: COMMENTS would be nice. Thanks.

Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey literally hits the ground running, with its main character, Yorick, packing off to France, presumably at the mere indirect dare of his manservant. Yorick himself is the first to admit that he “generally act(s) from the first impulse” (Sterne, p. 22) and this quality is well demonstrated as we observe him indulge in a variety of whims and fancies through a series of French towns and cities. His adventure, as the title states, is a sentimental one, eschewing the usual gothic cathedrals and monuments for what amounts, in the end, to a search for the self in various locales that defy rational prediction.

Because Yorick is a “sentimental traveler,” the reader is treated to a quixotic ride of imagination, fancy, empathy, benevolence, wonder, and love. These internal workings are constantly juxtaposed against the fashionable theories of the day, particularly the mechanical nature of man and man as machine. Yorick’s own fascination with the pulse and involuntary blushes reveals a learned man’s understanding of the circulatory system by itself and vis-à-vis the emotions. Like the author, Yorick does not deny the mechanistic aspects of the human body, but there is an insistence that these are manifestations of the emotions. Martin Battestin makes a good case that Sterne was not only a great admirer of the French philosophes, but that he was also quite able to synthesize their views rather than reject them outright. “In these early sections of the novel – and in his emphasis throughout on the physiology of sentiment, on the innumerable ways in which our bodies serve as inlets to the soul – Stern pays tribute to the philosophes… Sterne … meant to reconcile body and soul, the laws of physiology and the freedom of the will.” (Battestin, p. 30, emphasis added)

The body can reveal emotions, betray the emotions, reflect the emotions and so on; the body in this respect serves emotion and is secondary to it. Yorick may be fascinated with the mechanics, but it is even more likely he is fascinated by the fact that the body does not lie. After all, there’s no such thing as a “fake” blush or a deceptively rapid heartbeat. The physical manifestation of something so invisible and potentially unknowable is of particular interest to Yorick, a man forever seeking emotional connection with women, their deepest internal states, and “the nakedness of their hearts” (Sterne, p. 84).

The novel’s preoccupation with emotion and sensory perception is key to understanding Yorick, a man not quite convinced, just as Sterne was not quite so convinced, that he is a mere automaton set in motion by some unknown and distant god. Indeed, Yorick seems to revel in his whimsy and flights of fancy that contrast the clocklike workings of man the machine. Emotion and sensory perceptions not only propel action and prompt body reactions, they are direct evidence of consciousness, what separates a man from, say, a garden hoe or spinning wheel. For Yorick, one need only insert “feel” or “sense” into Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.”

If Yorick’s stubborn independence to be his own free agent (not an automaton) is sustained primarily from his ungovernable feelings and often-inaccurate perceptions (and how he chooses by his own free will to act on them), there is the inevitable problem of a single, stable identity because perceptions and feelings themselves are unstable, unreliable, and fleeting. If one is one’s perceptions and/or feelings, one is in constant flux and indefinable. Yorick is painfully aware of this when he states: “There is not a more perplexing affair in life to me, than to set about telling any one who I am – for there is scarce any body I cannot give a better account of than of myself; and I have often wish’d I could do it in a single word – and have an end of it.” (Sterne, p. 85).

Furthermore, any kind of apt definition is impossible because his own solipsism bears an insurmountable complexity. He knows himself only too well and finds himself in a journey to the self that is like Chinese boxes. Extreme self-consciousness only muddies the definition. His search for “himself” has painted him into a corner, and this conundrum is compounded by the fact that he has become a nationless man abroad without a passport.

There are other traits to Yorick that hinder easy definition. His highly refined sensibility renders him effeminate while his status abroad (and perhaps at home) is not concrete. He is a part of an ambiguous, not fully formed bourgeoisie without the full credentials and authority of the established aristocracy. As Judith Frank points out, “Yorick’s journey in search of human nature – his journey of self-constitution as a benevolist – is undertaken as a response to a challenge from a servant” (Frank, p. 109). This is at odds with the Yorick at the beginning of the journey who so confidently defined himself to be the “Sentimental Traveler” (read: a latter day “sensitive man” who listens to his own drummer). The Yorick in Versailles, when actually put to the test, is at a loss for words and must resort to a clumsy reference to Hamlet’s court jester. This only adds to the confusion, however, and Yorick is doomed to be henceforth misconstrued by the French. His identity is further decimated in Paris when, amidst the philosophes and intellectuals of the day, he finds himself “of every man’s opinion” (Sterne, p. 112). Unable to be himself (i.e., express his own thoughts), he finds himself a slave to others’ au courant opinions; he is wildly popular (and well-fed) at the price of free will. Finally, it is probably no accident that those who misconstrue him the most are these French society people, peopled as they are by philosophes and “mechanists” overly beholden to sensory perception and reason, in direct contrast to the intuitive, irrational, emotional Yorick (who in some ways may be viewed as a prototype of the Romantic Movement’s dandy in the coming decades). Furthermore because Yorick “cannot take for granted his difference from the lower classes” and must “live by his wits,” he symbolically and literally becomes Yorick, “the character of a virtual slave in a feudal system … a laughing man … too servile to pose a danger to the (French) state” (Frank, p. 119). In the company of French aristocracy, Yorick becomes the emasculated company man, an experience which he likens to prostitution (so much for free will).

In many ways Yorick’s predicament is familiar to 20th and 21st century readers, and to many male readers in particular. What does it mean to be a “man” then and today? It would seem we’re still trying to figure that out, with our recent conversations about the New Man, the Metrosexual, and so on: he’s sensitive, in touch with his feelings, self-aware, in possession of taste, and monied. These last two qualities are no accident: money creates taste, and those who have money, via their heightened sensitivity, redefine quality. For example, if Yorick can sense and appreciate, say, a rustic vase with all its imperfections and clumsiness, valuing it instead for a feeling it evokes in him, he can pay for it handsomely. Hence the self-serving label we see frequently see today on various merchandise: This product you have just bought is handmade and may contain natural imperfections unique to its craftsmanship. When you buy that “imperfect” product, you’re buying a feeling that that product evokes (rustic simplicity, contentment, coziness, oneness-with-nature, and etcetera). And if there are enough Yoricks of the same sensibility (and there are), the price of such vases would be expected to increase, not unlike Amish furniture or otherwise useless Arizonian tumbleweeds.

But sensibility and its resultant taste have limited currency abroad, and it does not appear that Yorick will be raising the price of rustic vases any time soon in Versailles or Paris. Yorick cannot be the man he wants to be (and be seen as) because of his ambiguous status as an expatriate in Parisian society, but, upon fleeing to Moulines, he rediscovers his best self that fits his original label of the Sensitive Traveller. His self-image (today we would say self-esteem) is resurrected; he becomes like a father to Maria and speaks in almost paternalistic terms (he’s re-masculinated). It is in Moulines, where, upon consoling a deeply depressed Maria, that Yorick rediscovers the transcendent gift of a visceral emotion, empathy: “[S]uch undescribable emotions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion. I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pester’d the world ever convince me of the contrary.” (Sterne, p. 114)

With this confirmation that he has a soul, Yorick is unburdened of his own dead-end self-absorption that does little to make himself concrete to himself in any event. He also becomes strikingly aware that knowing – real knowing – is aided by the senses, his imagination, and his feelings of empathy which combine toward a higher purpose. When he experiences empathy, he is finally projecting outward, away from the self, and the experience is not only intense, but liberating (from the prison of one’s mind). Liberation does not come from an endless self-reference, a self-denying and unsatisfying purely mechanistic view, or even the imagination alone; these are all elements that, while necessary, are meant to lead to something greater. This something greater Yorick calls the “great SENSORIUM of the world” (Sterne, p. 117). Today we might call this any number of things, such as the Universe, the collective mind, the infinite, or the light. It is generally that which is “beyond myself” and typifies an interconnectedness of all things (Sterne, p. 117).

From here on, it would appear that Yorick is on a sort of roll of ecstatic bliss that is comical and, in a sense, dubious. He is clearly romanticizing the peasantry from a bourgeoisie point of view during “The Supper” and one can interpret this scene as Sterne’s own gentle reminder that, yet again, perceptions are not trustworthy, tainted as they can be with one’s own “state of mind,” biases, and emotional state. The scene may also illustrate how tourists, in their quest for culture and refinement, generally have come to be viewed in the pejorative. Nevertheless, the scene holds intense meaning for Yorick – never mind what the peasants think of him – and this intense meaning (via a previous visceral emotional experience) has a value unique to him. Who are we to say that it is wholly superficial, even if it is transitory? Isn’t this a judgment reserved for God himself, and isn’t this a private conversation between Yorick and God that we just happen to be privy to? “The inflated rhetoric Sterne uses here, however, as well as the utter conventionality of the pastoral vignette that follows, suggest that his tone is as much satirical as celebratory. The element in this passage that survives the satire is the direct link Yorick makes between sense and sentiment, his recognition of the human ability to endow objective phenomena with personal meaning.” (Chadwick, p. 198) The experience is real for Yorick and is beyond our limited judgment, different as we our in our own perceptions, imagination, point of reference, emotions, etcetera.

Thus, Yorick’s search for himself through self-definition (a man of taste, a sensitive traveler) becomes a discovery of God, however short the actual experience. We might assume that Yorick will have other transcendent experiences between his fascination with pulses and blushes, dalliances with chambermaids, fetishes, and off-kilter first impressions. Because spiritual bliss is transitory and difficult to sustain, it would not have been realistic for Sterne to end with “The Grace.” Instead, Yorick’s journey is open-ended and unpredictable, just as his personality is, and the novel ends with an implication that Yorick continues in his idiosyncratic, delicate, mannered sensibility to find connections with others.

REFERENCES:

Battestin, Martin C. “Sterne among the Philosophes: Body and Soul in A Sentimental Journey.” Eighteenth Century Fiction 7(1) (1994): 17-36.

Chadwick, Joseph. “Infinite Jest: Interpretation in Sterne’s A Sentmental Journey.” Eighteen Century Studies 12 (1978-1979): 190-205.

Frank, Judith. “A Man Who Laughs Is Never Dangerous”: Character and Class in Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey. ELH 56(1) (1989): 97-124.

Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey. New York: Oxford University Press. 1984.

The above essay was written by Patty K., published in www.urgentexplanations.blogspot.com, written in 2004 and posted on August 2, 2014. URL is http://urgentexplanations.blogspot.com/2014/08/laurence-sternes-sentimental-journey.html.