Sentimentality as Performance: Shaftesbury, Sterne, and the Theatrics of Virtue

At the beginning of the second volume of A Sentimental Journey, Sterne’s narrator encounters a chambermaid in a Parisian bookstore. While flirting with her, Yorick slips a crown into her purse with this advice: “be but as good as thou art handsome, and heaven will fill it.” 1 In this line, Sterne articulates concisely the ideological values of his sentimental narrative; the woman’s goodness, beauty, and piety merit a reward that literally puts a price on her virtue. Yorick’s demonstrative generosity to the chambermaid is cast in a language that is explicitly mercantile—and ideological—rather than pristinely moral or poetic. The crown he gives her, as he recognizes, is not an innocent token of his admiration…