As I said, you should bring Shandy to class on Friday, and there may be some more Shandy for Monday, the way things are shaping up for the first group presenting. And we will be returning to it intermittently throughout the semester.
To follow up on today's class, though: what further illumination do you now have into the characters of (a) Mrs. Shandy and (b) Uncle Toby?
Deadline: Friday (2/11), 1pm.
3 comments:
From the class discussion on Wednesday, I've gained a little more insight into both characters. Mrs. Shandy seems like a character of folly during numerous parts of the story. For example she hears the wrong part of a conversation. Her exaggerated reaction serves the purpose of comedy. However it also illustrates her disconnect from her husband. In a less comedic way another example of her disconnect from the household is her being the last to know of her son's death.
In class we discussed uncle Toby being the emotional center. He also seems more reasonable than his brother. He is at least reasonable in the sense that his reactions to events are more predictable. Tristram at one point mentions that the way his father reacts to things is often a surprise. This makes Uncle Toby's character more stable which explains his value in the household.
Until the discussion, I didn't realize that when Mrs. Shandy is eavesdropping on Walter and Toby that she is unaware that her son is dead. Knowing that now, it appears that Mrs. Shandy's role or place in the family is very minor, outside of her reproductive value, which could be reflective of typical C18 family dynamics. It also highlights just how much Walter relies on his Classics, which is perhaps too much if he turned to Socrates first rather than his wife upon the news of Bobby's death.
I've learned a lot about the family dynamics through the characters of the Shandy family. Tristam is sadly emotionally neglected by his father and I think that is what plays into the writing style of his story. I see a parallel between the avoidance of Walter's emotions and the avoidance of straight-forwardness in Tristam's writing.
Mrs. Shandy seems to be completely in her own little world. There are allusions that she is having an affair and that she is an after-thought in the family hierarchy. It is really sad that no one thought to inform her that Bobby died. She just seems very involuntary and loopy as a mother. In an odd way Uncle Toby is more involved in the family and has a higher role than the mother. His has an integral part of the family, and in Tristam's narrative because he is the source of most of Tristam's information about his childhood.
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