I would like to begin with the difficulty of gathering all the knowledge we have acquired to formulate a question on a topic worth researching. Like many other students, I will not worry about the word count but have a more focus on a strong topic and question. After analyzing some of the novels we have read, the two novels that caught my eye is Roxana and Pamela. From what we have read, we can say that these two novels share a common issue in the eighteenth century. That issue may pertain to marriage, gender inequality and women’s virtue. Social values during this time was considered an important aspect of life. For example, Roxana prostituted herself to gain wealth, as well as to obtain a higher rank in society which ultimately forfeited her virtue. This was a valued element in a woman at the time and when Roxana married the Dutch Merchant, she had to hide a lot from him. She hid the fact that she was wealthy with many children in order to preserve her virtue in the marriage.

Richardson’s Pamela also contained similar examples of how social values affected their daily lives of women. Similar to Pamela, Roxana showed how social values during the time affected women. Women were forced to choose from following the norms of society or pursue their desired wishes in life. Pursuing their wishes may lead to sacrificial decisions, such that their virtue may be loss in the process. In this essay I would like to analyze these two novels and how social values during the eighteenth century affected the decisions of women which ultimately led to the sacrifice of their virtue. (temporary but I may go deeper).

Mr. Shandy is both a Christian and a philosopher. His love for obscure and complicated rational argumentation has led him to ridiculous phony scientific theories. For example, his knowledge of the mind and soul is often argued by him to be closely related. A passage from Volume II gives us an idea of Mr. Shandy’s argument “that all souls were by nature equal, —and that the great difference between the most acute and the most obtuse understanding, —was from no original sharpness or bluntness of one thinking substance above or below another, —but arose merely from the lucky or unlucky organization of the body, in that part where the soul principally took up her residence, —he had made it the subject of his enquiry to find out the identical place” (117). In this quote Mr. Shandy may be referring to the soul as source of one’s thinking due to “lucky or unlock” occurrences to the body. For example, Uncle Toby suffered damage to his groin in battle, this occurrence led him to retire and caused a focus into the science of military strategies.

Following the above information, I would like to refer to the footnote 4. Des Cartes (558) in chapter nineteen, Volume II. This footnote explains the philosophical views of René Descartes that was a French philosopher, scientist and mathematician. The Treatise on the Passions (1649) is referring to the real book René Descartes had written which is called The Passions of the Soul. I am not sure, but this may be Sterne’s way of mocking René Descartes, most likely due to a conflicted theoretical view and Mr. Shandy’s philosophical view may be Sterne’s point of view on this particular topic of the mind, body and soul.

René Descartes speaks of the pineal gland as a small gland in the center of the head which was argued to be the location of the soul where all thoughts were formed. Referring back to the passage on page 117 that starts from “Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of this matter….”, this passage is a direct disagreement with René Descartes philosophical view of the soul.

In the near passage Tristram speaks of his father’s viewpoint and states that “If Death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body; —and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains, —then certes the soul does not inhabit there” (118). This is clearly tied directly to the birth of Tristram and the reference made to René Descartes is important in this passage as we try to understand Mr. Shandy’s thoughts. He believes that if death is the separation of the soul from the body then the soul should reside elsewhere. However, after much conversing and thinking Mr. Shandy settled that the soul lies in the cerebellum or pineal gland. These thoughts are tied to the birth of Tristram Shandy as he fears that the contractions of the uterus will crush an infant’s head and his soul as well.

 (https://www.wdl.org/en/item/14786/)

This image is the book René Descartes had written in 1649, The Passions of the Soul. I found it on the World Digital Library that features novels from ancient history  and information from reputable institutions.

In comparison of the modern novels The Castle of Ortranto and The Old English Baron, we can clearly see the similarities of Gothic genre or sometimes referred to as Gothic horror. The novel Horace Walpole had written is a classic gothic fiction of horror with a twist of romance. It follows the traditional features of a horror story that pertains a spooky mysterious location, supernatural occurrences, a suffering protagonist and a distressed maiden. In essence The Old English Baron holds a somewhat similar output to Walpole’s novel. Although Clara Reeve’s novel is a gothic novel, it does not go to the extremes of representing horror and romance. There were no extraordinary supernatural occurrences that would surprise the readers like Walpole had done.

This leads to Clara Reeve’s Preface to the second edition, The Old English Baron. In the preface I believe she is confident that “Mankind are naturally pleased with what gratifies their vanity; and vanity, like all passions of the human heart, may be rendered subservient to good and useful purposes”. That being said, Reeve’s novel is a typical ghost story with egotistic characters that majority of the readers would like to read about. She believes the goal of a romance novel is to excite the reader, cause the reader to feel directed to “some useful, or at least innocent, end”. Refer to the image of The Old English Baron and from this image, it excites no sign of horror or gothic elements but a sign of a happy story to a happy ending.

Clara Reeve was staggered and annoyed by Walpole’s writing of its sudden reduction of “enchantments” in the novel. In the preface she claims that Walpole allowed the reader to expect astounding enchantments in the novel such as a “sword so large as to require an hundred men to lift it”. From Reeve’s analysis of the early novel it allowed me to understand the mechanics of Walpole’s gothic novel.