Vanity Fair

by William Makepeace Thackeray

Other authorsV. S. Pritchett (Afterword)
Paperback, 1962

Status

Available

Call number

823.8

Collection

Publication

Signet Classics (1962), Paperback, 832 pages

Description

Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML: Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero is William Thackeray's celebrated satirical novel of 19th century British society. Vanity Fair follows the rags-to-riches tale of the captivating and ruthless Becky Sharpe as she navigates her way through London society with fearsome determination and ambition..

User reviews

LibraryThing member baswood
Thackeray's Victorian novel is above all a satire. A journalist turned author, he cast his eyes around him and did not like what he saw. He has been labelled a realist and a searcher after truth and he uses wit, irony and biting satire to expose the corrupt and stagnant society that appeared all
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around him.

Thackeray's society is Vanity Fair. It is a place where individuals are driven by the worship of wealth, rank, power and class and are corrupted by it. Greed and lust predominate. The satire is at times savage and grotesque, but like much great fiction it resonates with modern readers. Today the Wall Street Occupation immediately springs to mind as well as earlier protest movements in the late 1960's. Thackeray's many allusions to Vanity Fair reminded me of Bob Dylan's Desolation Row, however it was some snatches of lyrics from "Its alright Ma, I'm only Bleeding" that seemed particularly relevant:

"gargles in the rat race choir
bent out of shape by society's pliers

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk it swears......"

The novel was published in monthly installments from January 1847 to July 1848 and had an immediate impact. Charlotte Bronte (writing under her pseudonym Currer Bell) in her preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre said:

"I regard him (Thackeray) as the first social regenerator of this day - as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things...... His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius, that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer cloud, does to the electric death spark hid in its womb. Finally, I have alluded to Mr Thackeray, because to him - if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger I have dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre

Currer Bell
Dec 21st 1847 "

Why did this mocking misanthropic book that has overtones of misogyny create such an impact at the time and has been regarded as a classic of English Literature ever since? Apart from the social commentary it has a story to tell. Two young women emerge from Mrs Pinkerton's academy for young ladies to take their place in society in the early years of the 19th century. Amelia Sedley was a paying border and coming from a rich merchant family her marriage prospects are good. Her friend Becky Sharpe was kept on at the Academy because of her teaching abilities and the best that she can look forward to is a place as a governess. The two girls could not be more different. Becky is clever and resourceful and an adroit manipulator of other people, she realises she must use her wits and her sex to get ahead. Amelia on the other hand while possessing both beauty and excellent manners is a weak character, unworldly, easily moved to tears and selfishly insular in her outlook. Their stories are told in parallel in the first part of the book, but intersect in the city of Brussels on the eve of the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo. This is the midpoint and backbone of the book. Following these climactic events the story moves back to London where Amelia and Becky suffer different fortunes. Amelia having lost her husband at Waterloo sinks into poverty as a result of her fathers failed business ventures. Becky builds on her success in Brussells and reaches for the highest echelons of society. Her marriage to Rawdon Crawley the brother of a barronet and a gambler and swindler to boot does not hold her back. Fortunes change again as the women who both now have a son meet towards the end of the book and enact a rather dispiriting denouement.

If this all sounds like a Bildungsroman where the characters moral and psychological development is the focus, then you would be mistaken for thinking so. Few of the characters develop in this way, they remain static and perhaps this is the point of the novel. Society or Vanity Fair allows for no character development. They keep on doing what they do as the all consuming rush for money power and position is the real focus for Thackeray's novel. Amelia remains the childish women she always was. Becky continues to live by her cleverness, her wit and her sex, until she is no longer able to do so. The male characters are too busy making money or seeking glory or like the faithful Dobbin: following a false dream, which when this fades there is nothing left but to do his duty.

Thackeray prefaces his novel with the idea of the Manager of the performance. It is this manager who will constantly interrupt the story to speak directly to the reader, telling him his views on the characters and their actions. At one point towards the end of the novel the manager tells his readers that he sat down with some of the characters outside a cafe and the story they told him is the one he is now relating to us. The question that is difficult to answer then is; who is this manager/narrator, is it the author Thackeray himself speaking to us. Are there two voices here. The book is written in a omniscient narrative style with these authorial interludes directed straight at the reader. This allows Thackeray to interpret events, give hints to future events, to recap on previous events, to fill in details and play with the time line. Sometimes it feels as though he is just playing with his readers. A typical example is when Amelia is praying for the safe return of her husband George Osborne:

"Have we the right to repeat or overhear her prayers? These brother are secrets, and out of the domain of vanity Fair in which our story lies."

This is fascinating because Thackeray is both a satirist/social analyst and a moralist and these points of view do not always sit together comfortably. There is some confusion as to which hat the author is wearing or what voice he is speaking with. This results however in the characters having a sort of life of their own as we are constantly seeing them from different sides. Becky is subject to many of these authorial reviews, which culminate in this wonderful passage towards the end of the novel:

"I defy anyone to say that our Becky, who has certainly some vices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and inoffensive manner. In describing this syren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author with modest pride, asks his readers all around, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent, and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling round corpses; but above the water line, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair right to cry fie? When however the syren disappears and dives below, down among the dead men, the water of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour lost to look into it ever so curiously. They look pretty enough when they sit upon a rock, twanging their harps and combing their hair, and sing, and beckon to you to come and hold the looking glass; but when they sink into their native element depend on it those mermaids are about no good, and we had best not examine the fiendish marine cannibals, revelling and feasting on their wretched pickled victims. And so, when Becky is out of the way, be sure she is not particularly well employed, and that the less said about her doings the better"

This passage highlights Thackeray's ambivalence towards his heroine. Thackeray's masterstroke is to compare her with the saintly but inept Amelia as their lives run parallel. Becky has battled against the odds to become a player in vanity Fair and has had fun doing it. Nobody has as much fun in this novel as Becky Sharpe. (apart from her admiring husband Rawdon Crawley perhaps)

This is a must read for lovers of the Victorian novel and for those who wish to chart the development of the novel in the English language. There are some issues for the modern reader. Thackeray was a journalist with a wide knowledge of current events. His text is sprinkled with personalities, politicians, artists who were well known at the time, but have since faded into obscurity. A thoroughly annotated text is recommended for the reader who wished to pick up on all the references. It is not essential though to enjoy the book, although it will be easier for readers native to England. It is a long novel nearly 700 pages and there is some obvious padding. Thackeray had to produce 32 pages of script for his monthly deadlines and some passages feel like add ons in order to fulfill his contract. Having said that I found the book fairly well structured and some of the recaps were helpful.

This is a book to be savoured and enjoyed and for those people unfamiliar with the genre, may find it quite astonishing. A well written biting satire of a corrupt and moribund society is enough to hold my interest. This together with some wonderful characters (who can forget Jos "Waterloo" Sedley or Sir Pitt Crawley) and some purple patches of prose make this a classic in every sense of the word. And don't forget Thackeray's marvellous illustrations; well over a hundred of them.
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LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
Well, there's more life in this than in Dickens. Simultaneously more ebullient and affectionate, more mordant and morbid, less principled and progressive, certainly, but realer. Dickens is your vegan uncle who listens to public radio and gives you that painfully earnest pep talk that you often just
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don't wanna hear right now but that usually makes you feel better, and Thackeray is your really funny rich alcoholic Republican uncle who's great when you're in the mood but only has a bottle of sparkling wine and some mayonnaise at home in the fridge (and some shadows lurking in the corners). I found it really touching how this book started off kind of light-hearted and poking fun at everybody's foibles, but then by the end everyone was weary and full of psychic wounds and hints of even darker things and I don't think Thackeray even planned it that way. Just like every party, just like life. Who of us is happy? It's a relief, saying that.
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LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
The first thing that impressed me about this book was the voice. The introduction to the edition I read stated that it is "a narrative style that speaks in a manner utterly unlike the usual Victorian novel." It's true. The snarky all-knowing voice doesn't sound one bit to me like Charles Dickens,
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the Brontes, Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins or Elizabeth Gaskell. It does remind me of Jane Austen though. A meaner, bitterer and much more cynical and jaundiced Jane Austen, and a more intrusive narrator--but every bit as witty, quotable, insightful, ironic. Vanity Fair is set around the time of Austen's novels too, beginning around 1813 and concluding in the 1830s before the reign of Victoria. Here's a bit toward the beginning of Vanity Fair describing one of the principle characters, Amelia Sedley:

As she is not a heroine, there is no need to describe her person; indeed I am afraid that her nose was rather short than otherwise, and her cheeks a great deal too round and red for a heroine; but her face blushed with rosy health, and her lips with the freshest of smiles, and she had a pair of eyes which sparkled with the brightest and honestest good-humour, except indeed when they filled with tears, and that was a great deal too often; for the silly thing would cry over a dead canary-bird; or over a mouse, that the cat haply had seized upon; or over the end of a novel, were it ever so stupid; and as for saying an unkind word to her, were any persons hard-hearted enough to do so—why, so much the worse for them.

Compare that to an excerpt from the opening of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.... A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number; but the Morlands had little other right to the word, for they were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features--so much for her person; and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boy's plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush.

The difference is that while you feel Austen tells her tales with a smile and a good-natured laugh, Thackeray seemingly has a rather sardonic smirk on his face. I think it's telling the subtitle of Vanity Fair is "a novel without a hero." And heroines? Well, even Thackeray admits within his narrative that one could call Amelia Sedley "insipid." Much more interesting is her friend Becky Sharp, who together with Amelia, carries the story. If you want an Austen parallel to her, the nearest would be Lucy Steele of Sense and Sensibility, only Becky is much more cunning, cutting and clever. She's an orphan, the impoverished social-climbing daughter of an artist and a ballet dancer. I've heard her called the literary ancestor of Scarlett O'Hara of Gone With the Wind, and I can see the resemblance. Like Scarlett, Becky is flirtatious, conniving and completely lacks all maternal instinct; she even uses the word "fiddlededee!" Except Becky is a much darker, harder figure. While Scarlett is a successful, if ruthless, businesswoman who provides for her family's survival, Becky is a parasite who is the financial ruin of many. While Scarlett believes herself in love with Ashley, comes to care for Rhett, Becky cares only about Becky. Her redeeming characteristic though is her wit. She's lively and her scheming ways are fun to read about. She's a lot of the reason I kept reading for hundreds of pages, even though I don't usually care for such a jaded world view or books with such an unlikable protagonist. Austen allows witty and clever characters such as Henry Tilney and Elizabeth Bennet to also be good. In Thackeray's world, you seem to have a choice between clever and sociopathic like Becky or good and quite dim and dull like Amelia and William Dobbin.

But then it's all one piece with the title, which is alluded to throughout the novel. "Vanity Fair" is a place within John Bunyan's Christian allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, where "are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not. And, moreover, at this fair there is at all times to be seen juggling cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind. Here are to be seen, too, and that for nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false swearers, and that of a blood-red colour." That's about as good a description of the human pageant Thackeray displays before us as any. It's not a pretty display, and don't expect a warm and toasty romantic happily ever after a la Austen. And it is long. But it's not just entertaining but as vivid and and memorable as any novel I've ever read.
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LibraryThing member ChocolateMuse
On one level, Vanity Fair is a (rather convoluted) love story. On another level it's a moral tale, about choices in life and where they lead you. On another level it's a clever and amusing satire about society in Thackeray's day - and much of it still applies today. On another level it's a study of
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the helplessness of women, and the desperate or submissive ways they had to act to influence their destiny... and yet however hard they fought, their destiny would often still be the same.

And over it all, it's a story about interesting, rounded characters in glittering and ever-changing settings. It's a fun book. It made me laugh, and it made me think. It's the reason why so many faithful horses and donkeys over time have been named 'Dobbin'. Becky Sharp is one of the most fascinating characters to enter the world of fiction - you hate her, love her, pity her, despise her, admire her and condemn her - and despite all the suffering she causes other people, you can't help wishing her well.

I should add that this book is not for everyone. We're reading it for my October book group, and I gather from other people's comments that it's not universally popular. I imagine that if you're not familiar with society in Thackeray's time then you'll probably miss a lot of the point. Also, Thackeray's use of authorial intrusion, which I love and think is done wonderfully well, might annoy some people. And, be warned - it's long!
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LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Two girls and two very different personalities and temperaments, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp, form the center of this lengthy story "without a hero". By the end I was almost convinced that all is 'vanity' in this world, or at least in this novel. This reminded me somewhat of Balzac (e. g. Cousin
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Bette), but with more humor.
The best thing in the book was the Authorial presence as he comments on the people and their actions at regular intervals. The two most memorable aspects of the book for me were the voice of the author and the character of Becky Sharp, certainly one of the most memorable in all of my reading. Unlike Dickens, the author does not deal with the ills of society at large (e. g. education or debtors' prison), but focuses on the characters of the individuals and the consequences of their character and actions on their lives.
The characters seem like puppets on a stage at times, while he uses them to reveal general truths about human nature. Becky is the best example as her greed and selfishness knows no bounds. When dealing with most of the other characters you almost don't mind since they usually deserve the treatment they receive from her; however, her unmotherly actions toward her son betray a more vile nature than one would expect, from anyone that is other than Becky.
This is a novel that explores the dichotomy between love and money, those who depend on the largess of others are often disappointed and all the love in the world does not pay the bills. Thackeray manages to keep the story interesting primarily because, in spite of her character flaws, Becky is both smart and charming. He explores her nature in a way that is both profound and detailed and ultimately, with a large supporting cast, creates a world in Vanity Fair that seems not too unlike our own.
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LibraryThing member wrmjr66
This one took me a long time to read. It's a good book--I'd say about 60% of it is a great book--but it wanders and lags a bit too much for me. The characters are either interesting but inconsistent (like Becky Sharp) or consistent but uninteresting (like Dobbin). None of the characters are
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ultimately very likable, but that isn't a weakness, in my opinion. More of an issue is that the book is really two novels that intertwine a little bit at some key moments. One novel is the satiric look at the rise and fall of Becky Sharp and the other is the "romance" of Amelia and Dobbin. The former is by far the stronger part, and the scenes of Becky's triumphs in London are written without any allusion to Amelia and Dobbin. The romance isn't of much interest, and given the other narrative, the very idea of romance is treated with ambivalence. The problem, though, is that one plot or the other will take over for a hundred or more pages, and by the time Thackeray returns to the other plot, I had forgotten many of the important but undifferentiated characters. I'm glad I read it, but I would not say it is a "must read" novel from the 19th century.
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LibraryThing member aaronbaron
While an enjoyable read on it’s own, only in comparison to other Victorian novels does Vanity Fair really shine. Along with an agreeable sense of shock and indignation, what relief the public must have felt at Becky Sharp’s entrance onto the world stage. In place of Dickens’s cozy
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sentimentality, the Bronte sisters’ tortured psyches, and Elliot’s scholarly ethics, we have in Becky, at long last, a whip smart protagonist whose sole and blissfully unequivocal desire is to vault into a life of luxury. Such worldliness is an emetic against the hulking morality of Victorian fiction. Of course, it’s still the 19th century, and Becky is duly castigated for her wayward ways, but her punishment is merely an unconvincing plot device; a soggy deus ex machine necessary to avoid damning censure. We all know what she is all about, and we love her for it. Besides providing this critical breakthrough, Vanity Fair provides little else but a decent story with a respectable gallery of funny episodes. There is plenty of satire, but the English had not yet regained the sharp wit they lost in the 18th century, and most of the humor here is still of the meaty-elbow-in-the-ribs-guffaw variety. All of the characters except Becky, and perhaps the inspired figure of Jos "Waterloo" Sedly, are cut-rate Dickens knockoffs, and the narrative itself is a clunky vehicle following an entirely predictable road. Still, Thackery gave us Becky, and thereby saved the English novel from drowning in a turgid sea of good intentions.
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LibraryThing member Helena81
I found this book to be truly wonderful, perhaps my new favorite. Thackeray makes his characters come alive, and the story is just so well told with its twists and turns. It's also interesting to have a central character--especially a leading woman in a 19th Century novel--who is so rotten. Becky
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is a sociopath but, as a friend also reading the book pointed out, she is the product of a sociopathic culture.

Amelia and Dobbin I cared about deeply, although, again, Amelia isn't an Elizabeth Bennet who the reader can get behind wholeheartedly--she's too weak-willed for that.

These fascinating, flawed, characters will stay with me for a long time. Despite Thackeray's 900 pages, I still long to know more!

I will add, however, that there was at least one passage where I just wanted to get past the description and back to the characters I was so fascinated by. I suspect, however, that Thackeray's long description of Germany in the last 10% of the book is meant to build the reader's anticipation for the denouement of the book.
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LibraryThing member StoutHearted
This lengthy novel at times tries the reader's patience, but the firey Becky Sharp commands attention to the end.

School chums Amanda Sedley and Becky Sharp come from two different backgrounds: the former from privelege, the latter from poverty thanks to a starving artist father. Amanda is meek
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while Becky is cunning, and the novel depicts how these two different personalities make their way through life. Amanda falls in love with Osbourne, a handsome scoundrel whose father ruined the Sedleys financially. Becky takes her place befitting her station as a servant in the Crawley household, but is determined to make it to the top any way she can. Her main weapon is flirtation and deceit, and many men are ruined in her wake. Even Osbourne, who sees through Becky, eventually makes himself a fool over her. Amanda remains blindly devoted to her husband while she, meanwhile, is blindly devoted to by Osbourne's fellow soldier Dobbin, a man who is strong when it comes to the military, but an absolute pushover when it comes to Amanda.

Becky Sharp remains one of the most dynamic characters in English literature. Even if her fellow characters were not so weak-willed and wishy-washy, she still would be a force to be reckoned with. Little shames her except the sting of poverty. She's unfaithful, deceitful, and cruel to those who love her, even her own son. She's played the survivor's game for so long that, to the end, Becky Sharp remains her first priority. She's been thrown off the top of the world so many times that you know she always has a trick up her sleeve, a new plan to regain wealth and position. She does not need love because she will always love herself. This makes her a terrifying force among the other, weaker characters.

Sounds awful, right? How can readers like her? Perhaps because Thackeray gives us no other hero, we cling to Becky for her never-say-die attitude. She's the catalyst that finally pushes milquetoast Dobbin and Amanda together, albeit in her usual cruel way. But it's a relief after reading hundreds of pages of Amanda pining for undeserving Osbourne while Dobbin shoots her the puppy-dog eyes. In the end, no character is left with respect for Becky, but she comes out just fine. She was never out for people's respect; she just wanted their money.

On the whole, it's a biting satire of society life, and the things one does to "make it" among its confines.
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LibraryThing member unlikelyaristotle
As characteristic for novels written in that period of time, or at least ABOUT that era (19th century England), Vanity Fair is an extremely wordy book. It pushes the boundaries of rambling, in my opinion, but still, the story is always a good one. What I love about it is, the theme is one that is
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timeless, true for every generation probably since the history of man, and most likely in every country. If every country in the world made it mandatory for their schools to direct a play based on this novel, edited according the cultural norms of their society (e.g. in the Arab world Rebecca - Becky - Sharp would be Reem Shalabya, perhaps, in Argentina she might be Renata Salvas, etc), it would make total sense, and I'm pretty sure everyone would be able to relate to it. It's social climbing at it's ugliest, hidden behind the beautiful setting of England in the 1800s.

The main character, Becky Sharp, is extremely unlikeable because of her selfishness and utter cruelty to people around her, beloved or not. I take some issue with the rather misogynistic view that if a woman knows what she wants then the author has to portray her as cruel and conniving, whereas the kind and good-hearted Amanda Sedley is always vulnerable and weak, as if that's the way woman should always be. But, if Becky Sharp was a charitable and warm-hearted person, I doubt this classic would be as interesting as it is to so many people.
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LibraryThing member MaowangVater
A biting and witty satire on English social life and customs during the first part of the nineteenth century, its subtitle is “a novel without a hero,” and it could also be added without heroines. Yet the book’s two central characters, the virtuous but dim and naive Amelia Sedley and the
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amoral, clever, congenial Becky Sharp both display admirable and distressing qualities as they rise, fall, and rise again in society. One of the great virtues of Vanity Fair is that while it is told in hilarious prose, with short burst of genuine pathos, it was praised by its contemporaries as a thoroughly realistic account of the society that it portrays.
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LibraryThing member myfanwy
I just finished Vanity Fair and, though enjoyable, I can't help thinking it would have been better read episodically. That is, it has similarities to any TV show. The arc is less interesting than each episode and watching them altogether will only make you overwhelmed. 800 pages of gossip on two
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inter-connected families can be a little too much even when each page is witty and comical.

Indeed, Thackeray's writing is very readable. He brings you in as an accomplice, regularly breaking the fourth wall, talking about the process of writing and who he heard what from. And he makes the most delightful pronouncements upon humanity. The entire book is an exercise in laughing at onesself (if you a member of the upper middle class of England in 1830).

There is one other flaw. Beck Sharp is a fascinating character. She is beautiful, talented, ambitious, charming, and will let nothing stand in the way. Her foil, Amelia, is pious and simple and good, and frankly, uninteresting. I know we're meant to root for Amelia, but vice is so much more interesting and Thackeray even acknowledges this in his pages. But nonetheless, there is still much amusement in wondering whether Mr. X will make it back in time to propose to Miss Y and what exactly Mr. Z meant when he referred to the sordid past of Widow Q.
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LibraryThing member Safarr
Although this novel is coralled into the category of "classic" that desuades so many from reading a book it is well worth the time. It exposes the effects of manipulation and greediness, and it shows that people will ultimately get what they deserve. Although the characters inhabit a time apart
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from ours, they may as well be living in current times. Readers should be able to relate easily to this book.
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LibraryThing member Clarencex
I am almost 70, and had never read this book. For some reason I had the idea that it was a dry, musty, boring book. Boy, was I wrong. This was one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in ages. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor. It is funny, enlightening, beautifully written. I read it
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because someone said it was the English counterpart to War and Peace. I agree, except that it's a lot funnier than W & P.
One of my all time favorite books.
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LibraryThing member wrightja2000
I wonder if anyone who works for the magazine Vanity Fair has ever read the book. I would think that if they had, they wouldn't call it Vanity Fair because Thackeray was (very effectively in my opinion) making fun of the kind of people who live that type of life style.

(Maybe someday I'll write
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more of a review but wanted to get that idea down.)
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LibraryThing member PatsyMurray
Droll, satirical take on human nature and just as relevant today as it was in the Victorian Age.
LibraryThing member Sandydog1
Yet another long, presumably serialized, early Victorian soap opera about a young girl and others, clawing up the social ladder. Great characters and character development. The author's short essays and sarcastic observations are very amusing.
LibraryThing member bleached
As mysterious and delectable Becky Sharp travels up and down the social latter, the reader is enticed by her lies, manipulations, and scandals. Every character in this charming book is deep and riveting and both loved and hated for their actions, thoughts and habits. Becky, who is the most cunning
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of them all, is the main character and the one the reader has the most love/hate relationship with. Her betrayals are cruel but understandable. There is no middle ground with Ms. Sharp and the reader has to decide for himself whether she is heroine or villain.
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LibraryThing member sprainedbrain
Long and sprawling, witty and satirical, this is quite a character study. I think I recognized someone I know in real life in each and every one of the main characters. A novel without a hero, you say, Mr. Thackeray? Then please explain Dobbin! :)
LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
Thackeray's novel without a hero, a story of the manners and morality of society in the years around the Battle of Waterloo, is a respected and admired classic, and also - perhaps more importantly - a document of the time. Like the other writers of his period, Thackeray is more than happy to
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digress, to follow a tangent away from his story to describe a time or place, and like Hugo's 'Les Miserables' it is in these digressions that the most interesting details emerge.
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LibraryThing member AlCracka
Vanity Fair is sometimes called the best British novel ever written, but it's totally not. Middlemarch is way better. Honestly, VF's not even in the top ten. So why do people love it so much? Because of Becky Sharp. Which is funny, because she's not what it was supposed to be about.

Becky Sharp is
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to Thackeray as Satan is to Milton. The argument has been made in both cases that the author secretly intended us to love their most memorable characters, but that's not true - or at least it's not that easy. While both dominate their stories, both authors are clearly uncomfortable with the fact that that's happened.

Vanity Fair didn't really take shape until Thackeray turned it into an autobiography: the Amelia / Dobbins story, which he thought of after he'd submitted the first few chapters and which caused an eight-month delay while he reconfigured the story, mirrors his own one-sided love affair with his friend's wife. Dobbins is based on himself. And certainly their story turns out to be an important counterweight to Becky's; without it, the novel would be a slighter work about a femme fatale, arguably more fun but less important. With them it turns into a sprawling landmark in realist literature, one that unarguably influenced War & Peace.

But Amelia and Dobbins are such milquetoasts that Becky insists on running away with the book. They're nice people, and you root for them, but during their chapters...you wish it would get back to Amelia's frenemy.

And Thackeray attacks Becky, again and again, viciously. His most telling attack is in her constantly reiterated failure to love her son, which is a mortal sin in Victorian novels as it is in the rest of them. A father can occasionally be forgiven for not loving his children; never a mother. But there's also this deadly passage toward the end of the novel, in which he defensively compares her to the old-school, evil mermaid:"Has [the author] once forgotten the rules of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling around corpses, but above the waterline, I ask, has not everything been proper?"It frankly feels like Thackeray is punishing Becky for taking over the book that he'd tried to take over himself. He sounds confused: like he wishes the whole novel was a moral one, and realizes only now that it's failed to be that. (Remember, this book couldn't be retooled; it was released in installments, and everyone had already read the rest of them.)

Consider also the ending. Becky has a moment of magnanimity and reconciles Dobbins and Amelia. Then she turns around and murders Jos. (Don't try to argue that she didn't murder him. Thackeray may not say it, but he leaves little doubt.) Which feels more honest to you? Which feels like something Becky would do? She's a calculating, immoral woman who may have been (but probably wasn't) involved in countless affairs by this time, but did you get the sense that she's a murderess? Thackeray's book has gotten away from him, and he's betraying her in an attempt to snatch it back.


Compare this with Middlemarch, also a landmark realist novel, and also one released in installments, but one in which it's perfectly clear that Eliot had the entire plot, thread by thread, perfectly planned from the beginning. Eliot never lets her book get away from her. And when I say that, and when you consider the fact that Middlemarch includes no character as compelling as Becky Sharp - she would have despised Dorothea - it sounds like Vanity Fair might be more fun than Middlemarch, but it's not. Thackeray's sense of human nature isn't as strong as Eliot's (or as Tolstoy's), and the novel isn't as satisfying.

It's good, because Becky Sharp escaped from somewhere in Thackeray's brain and took it from him. What doesn't belong to her is just okay.
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LibraryThing member renderedtruth
This is a book about women.

There are a couple of them in the story and I think the author was 'comparing' and 'contrasting' them.

I liked both of them but figure they would most likely be 'out of my league.'
LibraryThing member jovemako
good story. reading it though makes me think of the Lamb Chop song "this is the song
LibraryThing member AdonisGuilfoyle
O, the satisfaction in finishing this book! Thackeray is a cynical genius - more pessimistic and critical than Dickens - and the characters in 'Vanity Fair' are captivating, but this is a heavy book padded with much social commentary and subjective griping from the author. The trick, I think, to
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persevering, is to read a copy with type of a legible size.

This 'novel without a hero' - although the dependable and earnest Dobbin is more than worthy of that honour - is about the proud, arrogant, pompous, grasping, sly, hypocritical and vain men and women of Vanity Fair, Thackeray's name for society, and those who aspire to be accepted amongst its ranks. The anti-heroine of the story is Becky Sharp, who claws her way up from charity case to governess to army wife, at the expense of friends and lovers, but without finding satisfaction or happiness. Her tenacity and ambition are admirable, but Becky is rarely likeable - her exploits are amusing, talented and charming, but she is not a sympathetic character by any means. For all that she hurts others - her devoted husband and neglected son - there is an appropriate sense of justice in Thackeray's novel that keeps knocking Becky down at the height of her success. The odious Lord Steyne is more than a match for her scheming, and watching her come undone is refreshing. Of course, she is rarely down for long, and never defeated. The rest of the cast are also vividly human in their faults and the choices they make - pathetic Emmy and her poor father, conceited George, ridiculous Jos, proud Mr Osbourne. These characters are the strength of the novel, carrying the reader through the social and historical lectures which fill the rest of the tome.

That said, Thackeray's sharp observations on the beahviour of men and women are still relevant today, and very droll in the telling. Backbiting amongst female friends, the plain companion of the vivacious beauty, English travellers herding together abroad and recreating a 'little England' in foreign countries - not much has changed!

I heartily recommend this sizeable novel, but if the footnotes and meandering narrative are intimidating, then the BBC miniseries with Natasha Little as Becky, Philip Glenister as the wonderful Dobbin and Nathaniel Parker as Rawdon, is an excellent introduction, faithful in spirit to the text.
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LibraryThing member grant.libby
Thackeray has a meandering style I find quite entertaining. His characters are convincingly developed and the story is well constructed. It's worth reading. However, I prefer the film version starring Reese Witherspoon and directed by Mira Nair. It captures the essence of the story very concisely,
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and the slightly altered ending is a great improvement in my opinion.

Libby
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Language

Original publication date

1847
1848

Physical description

832 p.; 6.88 inches

ISBN

0451524896 / 9780451524898

Other editions

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