Women and Emotions in Laurence Sternes A Sentimental Journey through France and

Italy

The last work of Laurence Sterne obviously only adds to his immense talent and to the

creation and development of the stream-of-consciousness style. He creates a character, named

Yorick to represent his identity and to take us through this journey of emotion. Quickly we

uncover that he is a man that swiftly changes his mind and flies from one woman to another like

a bird flies from a bough to bough. But behind all these women there is the ever-present Eliza.

(1, 29)In this book we get to compare her to different kinds of French women that could not

reach her high place and gracefully. They did not succeed in winning Yoricks heart, although he

is captivated by them.

In this period of English history the pervading feeling was the one of reason, as it is the

age of reason. People emphasized the need for reason to stand above all other emotions.

Therefore sentiment and the question of emotion held a lower position and were led by reason.

But as we see in Yoricks journey he does takes this journey to learn anything or to see new

things. He takes it to feel new things. As Virginia Woolf points out this resembles a journey

through his own mind (7, Woolf). At the beginning we get the sense of his strong opinion

about nationalism, he holds the opinion that everything is better in his homeland variety of

learning, art, sciences, Nature. There is no need to leave the place you live in, because it will

forever be the best irrespectively of all other cultures. So he asks plainly Where then, my dear

countrymen, are you going?(Sterne, 7). From this we can perceive that his cherishes his own

country most ardently and it is clear why he could never stick with a French woman. His English

woman may be far away and there may be temptations on the way but he still places her in the

first place. So he continues this search for new sensations and finds some actually but they still
cant keep him in one place. As he points out before leaving Paris that he felt he was getting

everything too easy and this was not the way it was supposed to be in life (Sterne, 78). This trip

through his mind was one of the first examples of stream of consciousness and that is why

Virginia Woolf paid special attention to him and even wrote a preface to his work. She discusses

his identity and the way that this work affects literature as a whole.

Sterne invents his protagonist around the idea of the man of feeling (Todd, 88). Women

were considered the weaker sex, more passionate (MacCormack, 48) in the age of reason and

men the opposite. So it is quite unusual for Sterne to create a character that envelops such

emotions and passions. On every possible occasion we see either his compassion, or his

sympathy or his pure affection. Sterne does not give us a clear picture of the womans feeling but

rather of Yoricks perceptions. He is the man of feeling in an unfeeling world, avoided

manly power and assumed womanly qualities of tenderness and susceptibility (Todd, 88).

Although this is not entirely true because throughout the novel he proves that he is a man of his

age but constantly evaluating every situation from every possible angle so as to reach the best

solution to it, for example the happening with monk at the beginning of the work. But these

musings are all crashed by the power of sensitivity (Tiusanen, 11) the meeting with the first

woman. This is a strongly emotional scene because the protagonist gets to hold the ladys hand.

We see him hesitating in every step but also expressing severe desire to hold her more tightly.

When he sees that if he applied more pressure on she would run away, he changes his manner

and decreases the power he possesses. Yorick first perceives her with the monk and after this

emotional exchange, he complete change his opinion on the question of giving money (Zunshine,

161). This is an interesting point because we reach the moment where sentiment takes over

reason and that was incredibly new and rare in the Age of Reason. We can refer on this matter to
David Hume - Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend

to any other office than to serve and obey them (2, 3, 3: 462). These were the first steps to

reverse the roles of these two fundamental features of the human mind and soul. The eternal

opposition, which has been analyzed for centuries and still there is no clear cut view on this

matter. Furthermore it is interesting to me what draws him to this girl, apparently it is not beauty

or mind, because one he does not acknowledge and the second he has no way of knowing. He

dotes on her because she looks as if she has gone through big crises in her life. That again brings

us to sympathy; he cant like a girl for herself, there always has to be supplementary emotions

and stimuli.

Then we should pay attention to the grisette, their meeting is not entirely consistent. At

the beginning we have no idea that she is woman who is not available. The scene turns sensual

when she asks him to feel her pulse, to feel her blood. The blood of a person is his life force, so

although this might not look so promiscuous it is indicative of the most intensified intimacy. It is

as though he touches her life force. The peculiar element is the figure of the husband, who passes

by and does nothing; he considers this a normal occurrence. This is where the English and

French differ, because this certainly leaves an impression upon the protagonist. But as I have said

at the beginning all these new experiences does not distract him from his main person in his life.

And as we see so far these scenes are emotional and passionate and intense, but they never turn

into anything physical. Moreover this text provides us with a lot of material, which can help us to

draw a distinction between what is expected from English and from French women. Let consider

first the girl he escorted home and whom he gave a crown to. I think she is the most innocent

creature in this narrative and Yorick appreciated it that is why he gives her the money. Then

when she goes to his lodgings to show what she had made for his crown, they spent two hours
together in his room as his narrative points out nothing happens. And here is the exchanges of

words which we should consider I should not have minded, Monsieur, said he, if you had had

twenty girls - Tis a score more, replied I, interrupting him, than I ever reckond upon - Provided,

added he, it had been but in a morning. - And does the difference of the time of the day at Paris

make a difference in the sin? - It made a difference, he said, in the scandal.(Sterne, 66). So

everything is good and proper if it was in the morning but turns into a literal scandal if it is in the

night. I hold the position that sins can be acted upon in any time and in any place. Or do the acts

become sins only they are acknowledged as such by the society. Where do the demarcation line

lies? If nobody had seen the girl there would not have been any problem, the conscious of the

protagonist seemed clear after the event. How much of our lives are predetermined by the

expectations and rules of society, and which of them broken rules turn into sins. More plausible

explanation is that everybody carries his own sins and does not need society to reflect them and

to impose punishment on him. It does not matter at which hour she went to his room if he did

nothing with her. Also this text apart from being a sentimental book is a satire on human

interactions and actions (Keymer, 598).

To continue our journey with Yorick and his women, we reach Maria that is not a new

character for Sterne. She is written in the book only to kindle the protagonists sympathy. He is

ready to do anything for her only to lessen her misery. Sterne often applies sympathy when he

deals with misfortune (Brewer, 246). Earlier in the book Yorick states that he is always in love

with somebody and does not have the time to fall out of love and to fall in love again. And this is

exemplified on every step of the book. He does not do anything for Maria just listens to her

sorrow and provides empathy. At the end he parts from her also. We come at the final instalment

of women in this marvellous woman and I mean his last lodgings. Despite being called A
Sentimental Journey through France and Italy the action in the book happens only in France and

ends before he reaches Italy. Before reaching his last abode Yorick gets tired of the easy life in

Paris, he has the women all figures out as he arranges them in three groups first a coquette,

second deist, and then devote. Young women can allow themselves to be a coquette, their

only job is to enchant man, then they form a mind of their own when beauty is not enough and

have to shine with extravagancies and last they found their way back and become humble. When

he spends enough time in this never ending circle he decides to leave it, because there is nothing

new and exciting anymore. The journey ends in a house, where he has to sleep in a room with

another woman. The whole event is quite comical and disturbing. Apparently this woman is

highly prudent and devises different rules for him as not to talk when the fire is out etc. (Sterne,

86). This turns upside down when at the end from all these precautions he grabs the ladys maid.

This part may be the one that puts him in the most intimate place, but we do not get from him the

emotions we saw when he held the hand of the first woman or when he gave the crown, so the

question is quite arbitrary. Feelings can possess the heart without leading to physical

consummation and that is the beauty of humanity.

This book except for creating the genre of travel journals paints a beautiful picture of the

18th century reality and what a man could feel towards a woman. He can even suppress his reason

to suite her expectations and desires. For many years men have been the stronger sex, which does

not manifests their emotions and inner feelings. This book breaks the chains and by bringing the

man into the womens domain, we can sympathize and experience with him all the new

sensations. Let us not forget though that he stays true to his country and his Eliza that always

stands first before all foreign beauties.

 Work Cited

Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Michael S. Hart. Project

Guttenberg, 2002. Web.

Woolf, Virginia. Introduction. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. London: Oxford

University Press, 1928. 1-17. Print.

Postmodern Studies 15. Laurence Sterne in Modernism and Postmodernism. Ed. David Pierce,

Peter Jan de Voogd. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. Print.

Todd, Janet. Sensibility: An introduction. London and New York: Methuen, 1986. Print.

MacCormack, Carol, and Marilyn Starthern. Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1980. Print.

Tiusanen, Jukka. Emotion, Motion, Feeling and Falling in Laurence Sternes Narratives. Diss.

University of Vaasa, 2010. Print.

Keymer, Thomas. Sentimental fiction: ethics, social critique and philanthropy. Cambridge

Histories Online. Cambridge University Press, 2008. Web.

Zunshine, Lisa. Theory of Mind, Social Hierarchy, and the Emergence of Narrative

Subjectivity. The Emergence of Mind. Ed. David Herman. London: University of Nebraska

Press, n.d. Print.

Brewer, John. Sensibility and the Urban Panorama. Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 70, No.

2 (June 2007), pp. 229-249. University of California Press, 2007. Print.