Vanity Fair: A
Novel without a Hero – William Makepeace Thackeray
First published in 1847, Thackeray’s best-known novel starts
slow. In the early going, I was confused sometimes by Becky Sharp’s bitterly
cynical point of view mixed with the narrator’s gently ironic view.
Some sections felt tedious because I didn’t know how long the writer was going
to stretch digressions, which had varying degrees of interest to me. Thackeray’s prose is sometimes loose, but I
think a bright teenage reader could follow it easily enough, much less a reader
of a certain age who, in the winter, likes a phat Victorian story.
The fact that it’s a masterpiece dawned on me as I
made my way through this vivid pageant of early 19th century life in
England. Like Austen, Thackeray knows readers like surprises so three or four unexpected twists maintain interest. As usual, the urge to know what happens to the characters prevailed. For instance, though
she is not always on stage, we readers pull for scheming Becky Sharp, deservedly
one of fiction's great characters, because the scoundrels whose heads she
neatly hands back richly merit mistreatment.
Despite the sub-title, William Dobbin is a decent character
who stands in contrast to prig snot and booby George Osborne, glutton Jos Sedley,
grouch Pa George Osborne, and ruffian Rawdon Crawley. The female characters are great too: simpleton Amelia Sedley-Osborne, worldly Miss Crawley, fortune-seeking Mrs.
Bute Crawley, and stage Irish Mrs. Major O’Dowd (who calls to mind comic relief
Costigan in Pendennis)
.
Thackeray's intention was to examine Regency England
during the Napoleonic wars so we readers can compare it to our own times. Have
people and their heart’s desires changed? No. Desires will be disappointed; if
they come true, they will sour. Disenchantment and resignation are the fate of many like Miss Jane
Osborne:
… Her father swore to her that
she should not have a shilling of his money if she made any match without his
concurrence; and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did not choose that
she should marry, so that she was obliged to give up all projects with which
Cupid had any share. During her papa's life, then, she resigned herself to the
manner of existence here described, and was content to be an old maid. Her
sister, meanwhile, was having children with finer names every year and the
intercourse between the two grew fainter continually. "Jane and I do not
move in the same sphere of life," Mrs. Bullock said. "I regard her as
a sister, of course"—which means—what does it mean when a lady says that
she regards Jane as a sister?
Family ties are frail; worldly things, empty; and fate,
stern. Take life as you find it. Do no harm, help others endure if your help
will do any good. People are mortal so we had better be ready to comfort them
in their illness and lose them in the end. The writer does like the home truth:
That second-floor arch in a
London house, looking up and down the well of the staircase and commanding the
main thoroughfare by which the inhabitants are passing; by which cook lurks
down before daylight to scour her pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young
master stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and let himself
in after dawn from a jolly night at the Club; down which miss comes rustling in
fresh ribbons and spreading muslins, brilliant and beautiful, and prepared for
conquest and the ball; or Master Tommy slides, preferring the banisters for a
mode of conveyance, and disdaining danger and the stair; down which the mother
is fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as he steps steadily
step by step, and followed by the monthly nurse, on the day when the medical
man has pronounced that the charming patient may go downstairs; up which John
lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering tallow candle, and to gather up before
sunrise the boots which are awaiting him in the passages—that stair, up or down
which babies are carried, old people are helped, guests are marshalled to the
ball, the parson walks to the christening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the
undertaker's men to the upper floor—what a memento of Life, Death, and Vanity
it is—that arch and stair—if you choose to consider it, and sit on the landing,
looking up and down the well! The doctor will come up to us too for the last
time there, my friend in motley. The nurse will look in at the curtains, and
you take no notice—and then she will fling open the windows for a little and
let in the air. Then they will pull down all the front blinds of the house and
live in the back rooms—then they will send for the lawyer and other men in
black, &c. Your comedy and mine will have been played then, and we shall be
removed, oh, how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting, and the
posture-making. If we are gentlefolks they will put hatchments over our late
domicile, with gilt cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is "Quiet in
Heaven." Your son will new furnish the house, or perhaps let it, and go
into a more modern quarter; your name will be among the "Members
Deceased" in the lists of your clubs next year. However much you may be
mourned, your widow will like to have her weeds neatly made—the cook will send
or come up to ask about dinner—the survivor will soon bear to look at your
picture over the mantelpiece, which will presently be deposed from the place of
honour, to make way for the portrait of the son who reigns.
Obviously, I read to work out my own sense and grit so I
don’t mind being addressed directly to buck the hell up with that “you.” But
then maybe I’m weird – I take comfort in knowing after I check out the world will carry on as
usual.
Thackeray has a tough-minded sensibility such as Smollet,
Fielding,
and Austen
in that the outlook is pretty simple, unemotional, and skeptical of human
aspirations and endeavor. When we reach a point where we might dare to think, “I’ve arrived”
the ever-changing world will smirk, “Well, try this misdiagnosis – car crash – recession – transfer to a mad supervisor – on for size, kiddo.” All we can
control is our response to flux.
So, Thackeray’s outlook is austere, this novel is not a
sunny exercise in being all we can be and making a difference. But it’s still a lot of fun to read, at
least for us hardcore readers, we of the sliver of the population that reads bleak
novels for sheer pleasure.
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