Fair" is set in England, in the years around Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, However, William Makepeace Thackeray's portrait of human nature isn't limited to any time or place, The novel is made up of nothing but superrigidlydefined cliques complicated rules about who is allowed to talk to whom, when, where, and for how long small levels of popularity subdivided into types and a bunch of people who are constantly trying to reach the top of the heap and avoid becoming social pariahs.
No wonder Ive loved this book as a teenager it sounds just like highschool!
In a nutshell, “Vanity Fair” is the story of two young women whose lives take them in and out of every segment of English society, each of which can be mocked and displayed for laughs in turn.
But what's more important than the plot is the style of the novel: its bitter and caustic humor, And it really does have something for everyone to laugh at: snobby merchants, greedy social climbers, illiterate aristocrats, nosy servants, evil nobles, macho soldiers, bossy women, bumbling men, British people, German people, Belgian people, and every other kind of group of humans that can be crammed in.
What sets this aside from the novels of its time is that it's not about very nice people, These are people who make disliking them so easy which makes them, all the more, interesting, I sensed that Thackeray got into everything he ever witnessed or suspected about human motives, It's a profoundly skeptical book, He pits worldliness against goodness with no illusions about which quality usually triumphs, Put it this way: In a Dickens novel, a small boy rescued from the torments of a bully will almost certainly grow up to be an exemplar of kindness and gentleness.
The same boy, in Thackeray, grows up to be a snob and a rotter, and hateful to the friend who saved him from the bully.
Multiply those incidents into a panorama that stretches nearly the entire height of earlyth century English society, and you have an overwhelmingly coherent and devastating satiric vision.
And in the midst of it all is Thackeray's protagonist: the scheming, statusseeking Rebecca “Becky” Sharp,
A poor orphan of low birth, Becky is a born hustler and almost sociopathic striver who manages to raise herself to the upper limits of high society and wealth only to see her achievements crumble under the weight of her bad deeds.
Evil temptress or misunderstood woman ahead of her time You be the judge, "Vanity Fair" is inevitably a feminist tale, because Becky will not be kept down, But there's another way of looking at the story which doesn't preclude the feminist treatment, and which seems potentially richer: its inescapable revelation that inth century England, a woman had to be a genius to achieve success or even to fight life to a draw.
Her foil, Amelia Sedley, is also compelling, While Becky is selfreliant and action oriented, with a scheme or two always on the backburner, Amelia is dependent on the kindness of the next stranger to come around the corner.
If you want to get fancy about it, she entirely lacks agency, In almost any other novel, she would be the heroine, and her sadsack ways would be disguised a little better so that instead of coming across like a lump of nothing she would seem like a paragon of femininity.
You know the drill: dainty, small, semipathetic, and needing some whiteknight rescue action, Here, though, we are shown exactly what happens when you take those supposed ideals of femininity to the extreme you get JellO in human form.
Thackery's narrator, who's telling a "true" story based on the accounts of the principal characters he has met, satirizes earlyth century British and European culture class, religion, education, business, war, tourism, etc.
so as to expose human vanity in general, He is keenly honest about their failings, yet you don't get the feeling that he despises people for their weaknesses, He tells the story almost as if he is a fond old uncle, slightly detached, amused at the foibles of, but still having affection for, his characters.
“Vanity Fair” is a very long novel, written in serialization, Sentences are complex and very long, florid, and decorative, There is a lightness in its tone, even when your emotions are being tugged a bit, The book may not be uplifting but its certainly entertaining, thought provoking, and often moving, After reading this again, I could still say that this must be the most decorous, savage novel ever written and it's one of a handful of books Ive encountered to describe an honest vision of the world.
There was a girl I knew in school that made my formative years for this purpose I'm considering the "formative years" to bea bloody hell.
She was a nasty, manipulative, cruel girl who, unfortunately for me, also had the luck of being beautiful and popular, She was wretched to the little people, and I was a little person, She was mean to me but I so wanted her to be my friend because I thought if I was her friend and a part of her circle, then everything would be okay.
Life would be perfect,
I remember one day in class as we were down to the last few minutes before the bell, our teacher just let us all sit around and talk.
There was a school dance that evening and it was all anyone wanted to talk about, The teacher happened to ask this popular girl if she was looking forward the dance, This girl made a comment that has stayed with me all these years: "Yeah, but I still haven't decided how I'm going to act tonight.
" The teacher asked what she meant by that and this girl went on to explain, "Well, if I act sad I can get a lot more attention from people, like the boys.
" She said it so nonchalantly, as if this was something she did every day, like waking up and brushing her hair looking back I realize she probably did.
She probably did think about what sort of attention she would get based on how she behaved, I was sort of scared of her in that moment someone my age who knew more about human nature than I thought I ever could, someone who knew how to manipulate everyone around her.
It was freakish and sort of awesome all at once,
I thought of that girl a lot while reading Vanity Fair, Becky Sharp is just as dangerous a character as that girl I knew was in real life, The concept of "being nice" was foreign to both of them why bother being nice to people who couldn't get you anywhere in life Why bother being nice to someone who is, for all intents and purposes, below you It's a crazy thought process but that's what Becky and this other girl were all about.
What's interesting to me is that Becky is not really the main character of the story, Just like that girl I knew in school, As far as I was concerned at the time, the sun rose and set because of her, Everyone knew who she was, everyone wanted to be her friend, even the teachers, Looking back as an adult I realize everyone was really just afraid of her as I was, but I thought there was something more to the power she held.
But no, she and Becky Sharp were just that insidious, There were other people in the school myself included but none of those other people mattered when she was around, Same holds true with Vanity Fair, There are other characters, like Amelia, but they're almost completely overshadowed by this really insignificant person even during the parts that didn't include Becky, the reader is just waiting for her to step her precious little foot back into the story.
I hear that this girl from my school days is married and has some kids and has found religion, I'm told she's not as bad as she used to be, But I'm not going to lie that girl messed me up, and now I can't imagine her being a good mother to her kids I sort of think she probably treats them the same way Becky Sharp treated her own child in the story: as a nuisance, serving only the purpose of gaining attention for herself when necessary.
Perhaps that's being unfair to that girl from school to imagine that's how she is everyone can change, Hell, I'm not the same kid I was back when I knew her, so chances are she's just as capable of change as well.
But a part of me needs her to still be that nasty little bitch I knew then because it makes me feel better about me which, funnily enough, isn't that different from Becky Sharp at all.
The truth of the matter is that we all have a little Becky Sharp in us somewhere, It may be larger piece in some than in others, and maybe we all have a little bit of Amelia as well who isn't quite as interesting but worthy of a little disgust thrown her way too, just for different reasons.
We all love having someone to hate on for some it's the Kardashians, for some it's Lady Gaga, It contributes to the way society works, and no one is free of it, We love to hate, and Thackeray wrote some characters in Vanity Fair that are absolutely delicious to hate it's just Becky Sharp is the strongest of them all.
'Cause she's a bitch, through and through,
. I liked the company of Thackeray who is breezy, ebullient and cynical about everyones motives, And hes very confident too, He thinks he knows everything, although theres not a word about how the poor live here, thats not his subject, So hes like the midth century version of Tom Wolfe or Jonathan Franzen, two authors among many others who also think they know everything.
I dont mind them thinking that, Its a good quality in a writer whos trying to depict all of society,
. An example of his cynical sermonizing here he waxes forth about our yours, mine postmortem fate :
Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately deplored Those who love the survivors the least, I believe.
The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire, The death of an infant which scarce knew you, which a weeks absence from you would have caused to forget you, will strike you down more than the loss of your closest friend and if you are old, as some reader of this may be or shall be old and rich or old and poor you may one day be thinking for yourself “These people are very good round about me but they wont grieve too much when I am gone.
I am very rich, and they want my inheritance or very poor and they are tired of supporting me, ”
. I cant believe everyone who has read this has read every page, For instance the eight pages of satire about the small German Duchy of Pumpernickel p, Or the detailed descriptions of charades at upper class parties p, Mother of God, these sections are unreadable, This is what drags the rating down to,stars.
. Why is this bookpages long Many passages like this:
The house was dismantled the rich furniture and effects, the awful chandeliers and dreary blank mirrors packed away and hidden, the rich rosewood drawingroom suite was muffled in straw, the carpets were rolled up and corded, the small select library of wellbound books was stowed into two winechests, and the whole paraphernalia rolled away in several enormous vans to the Pantechnicon, where they were to lie until Georgys majority.
. The author breaks the fourth wall all the time, as they liked to do in the earlyish days of novelling, before such stuff was frowned upon as being uncouth and inartistic.
So on pwe get :
In the course of the evening Rawdon got a little family note from his wife, which although he crumpled it up and burnt it instantly in the candle, we had the good luck to read over Rebeccas shoulder.
“We” here means the author and the reader, And later on pagewhilst talking about his main characters holidaying in Germany he suddenly announces
It was on this very tour that I, the present writer of a history of which every word is true, had the pleasure to see them first, and to make their acquaintance.
. The author is not embarrassed to jump in and comment directly on his characters, like this :
I like to dwell upon this period of her life, and to think that she was cheerful and happy.
You see she has not had too much of that sort of existence as yet, and has not fallen in the way of means to educate her tastes or her intelligence.
She has been domineered over hitherto by vulgar intellects, It is the lot of many a woman,
You wouldnt get a modern novelist doing any such thing but its kind of fun,
. He has a brilliant section called “How to Live Well on Nothing a Year”, Essentially, you could maintain your place in welltodo society by racking up credit extended to you by umpteen tradesmen and servants who would do it because you had a place in welltodo society! and robbing Peter to pay Paul continually plus, the wife would inveigle loans out of rich old guys who thought they might have a chance to get something going with her and the husband would contribute with winnings from cards and billiards.
Its a precarious way of life but if you have strong nerves it can be done,
. Which leads us to the issue of Becky and her husband Rawdon, Becky is the best, most interesting character by far, Lots of commentators describe her as in some way morally questionable, even “bad”, At first this seems quite unjust, She has no family, shes as poor as a mouse, so she schemes and ducks and dives to land a husband with money.
This goes awry she gets the husband but he doesnt get the expected inheritance so she dodges and weaves and figures out how to live well on nothing a year see above.
In the timehonoured way of plots in novels, all her maneuvering and manipulating and cajoling and flattering and
flashing of bosoms is just about to pay off handsomely when it all goes tits up.
Not her fault. Shes a woman trying to get by in a world where money and position is everything,
Then she disappears from the novel for a hundred pages or so, When we meet her again shes a fully fledged demimondaine and now you can say her moral bankruptcy has blossomed Thackeray makes a song and dance about not being able to set down exactly what shes been up to because this is a family show, so he drops hint after hint, ending in the possibility of murder.
All the ambiguity is I suppose understandable but after it all shes still the only character with a zest for life in the whole mutton shop.
. Meanwhile her husband Rawdon is a military gentleman until he resigns from the Army and then does nothing, Continues with his cardsharping and poolsharking but as for gainful employment, raises not one hand, And Thackeray who likes to describe most other aspects of these peoples lives ignores this as not worth commenting on, Rawdon writes a pitiful letter from debtors prison at one point :
I wasn't brought up like a younger brother, but was always encouraged to be extravagant and kep idle.
And thats all the explanation you get,
. The subtitle of Vanity Fair is “A Novel without a Hero” meaning that we are not following one particular character and we do not see the story through any one persons eyes.
Nor yet, really, is it that much of a story, A couple of women make rash marriages, After which there are some ups and downs, There was a song in thes called “After You Get What You Want you Dont Want It” and Thackeray believes people are exactly like that so happy endings and neat bows are not his thing.
He leaves us with the image of Vanity Fair itself, that whirligig of human foolishness, rocketing on like a perpetual switchback ride, Best thing to do is not get on in the first place, the ride is not worth the admission fee, but if youre on, then dont fall off, because the drop will be considerable hard on your feelings.
.