55 pages • 1-hour read
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
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Chapters 42-46Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 42-44 Summary
In his room, Yorick sits at his table and thinks about imprisonment. He imagines the life of a person locked in a cell. After despairing over his situation, he eventually calls for La Fleur and asks for a coach to be made ready first thing in the morning.
After a night’s sleep, Yorick takes the coach to Versailles. During the course of the journey, he discusses a short history of the starling he encountered in the cage. It arrived from England, brought by “an English lad” (44) who travelled with a gentleman. He’d brought the bird all the way to Paris and, when he was set to leave the hotel, he left it behind. La Fleur purchases the bird and its cage “for a bottle of Burgundy” (44) and gives it to Yorick. Eventually, the bird will be bought and sold by a string of aristocrats and “many commoners” (44), so Yorick admits that the reader might well have heard the starling’s song.
In Versailles, Yorick intends to meet Monsieur le Duc de C---, whom he hopes will be able to help him with his legal issue. When he arrives, he is told that the Duc de C--- is busy. After a conversation, Yorick is told that he can see the Duc in two hours. Not wanting to stand around in the house with no one to talk to for two hours–which would be “as bad as being in the Bastille itself” (46)–Yorick returns to his coach and asks to be taken to the nearest hotel.
Chapters 45-46 Summary
Halfway down the street, Yorick changes his mind and decides to take “a view of the town” (46). After talking to the coachman, he decides to visit Count de B---, whom he talked about with the owner of the bookstore and who has a reputation for appreciating “English books and Englishmen” (46). On the way, Yorick encounters a Chevalier de St. Louis selling pâtés and stops to talk to him. The man was once in the military and his story saddens Yorick; later, the man’s story will reach the king, who will in turn award the man a pension.
The man’s story reminds Yorick of another tale. The Marquis d’E--- oversees the decline in fortunes of his house, but “fought up against his condition with great firmness” (48), hoping to preserve his dignity. The marquis surrenders his familial sword to the local president and embarks on a business career, slowly rebuilding his fortunes. Twenty years later, he “return’d home to reclaim his nobility” (48) and takes back his sword, shedding a tear as he does so. Yorick admits that he envies the man’s feelings in that moment.
Chapters 42-46 Analysis
In these chapters, Sterne moves away from the conventional travel narrative and brings in a series of anecdotes and metaphors that help to contextualize Yorick’s journey through France. Using the need for a passport to move Yorick beyond his comfort zone, Sterne introduces a threat into the narrative (imprisonment) and then mediates on this threat through the metaphor of the starling. Not only does the story of the starling impact Yorick’s life at the moment of his journey to France, he extrapolates the story and continues it into the future, providing a satisfying and literary conclusion for the bird’s appearance in the text.
At first, it seems as though the interlude with the starling is simply an interruption into the narrative of Yorick’s quest to find a passport. It is almost an interlude, the bird’s presence, allowing for a moment of introspection. But the image of the caged bird will not leave Yorick alone. At a time when Yorick is worrying about the threat of imprisonment, he encounters a bird that is itself imprisoned.
Perhaps most notable thing about this incident is Yorick’s failure to free the starling. The bird not only remains trapped, but is then taken across the continent and through various countries, always stuck inside its cage and always forced to repeat the same few words that it has learned. This focus on etymology is shared by Yorick, who tries to reason his way out of his predicament when trapped alone in his room. He says to himself that “the Bastille is but another word for a tower—and a tower is but another word for a house you can’t get out of” (42), an attempt to reduce his fear into manageable, understandable component parts. Yorick is, ostensibly, a writer, so his attempt to reason himself out of the situation by deconstructing the words seems natural, as does his empathy for a bird, which is forced to repeat the same words endlessly while trapped in a cage. Yorick sees their future as being the same, which is why he dedicates so much time to trying to free the bird.
Yorick, just like the starling, will be forced to travel across Europe, speaking the same words over and over. Later in the text, when Yorick introduces himself to the members of Parisian high society, he will grow weary of repeating himself over and over, becoming tired of his role as a jester, as an item of interest that has arrived in Paris. Yorick becomes just like the starling: forced to sing for the entertainment of others. However, the key difference is that Yorick is able to extricate himself from this situation by departing for Italy, while the starling remains trapped forever.
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