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Vanity Fair #1-2
La Foire aux Vanités
A travers l'histoire de deux amies de collège, la bonne et naïve Amelia et l'intelligente et perverse Becky, W. M. Thackeray donne à voir une immense fresque qui conduit le lecteur des salons anglais du début du dix-neuvième siècle au champs de bataille de Waterloo pendant l'ère victorienne. Il y préconise de violer tous les principes moraux que la société fait semblant de respecter.
1071 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1847
About the author
William Makepeace Thackeray
4,687 books1,404 followersWilliam Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist, satirist, and journalist, best known for his keen social commentary and his novel Vanity Fair (1847–1848). His works often explored themes of ambition, hypocrisy, and the moral failings of British society, making him one of the most significant literary figures of the Victorian era.
Born in Calcutta, British India, he was sent to England for his education after his father’s death. He attended Charterhouse School, where he developed a distaste for the rigid school system, and later enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge. However, he left without earning a degree, instead traveling in Europe and pursuing artistic ambitions.
After losing much of his inheritance due to bad investments, Thackeray turned to writing for a living. He contributed satirical sketches, essays, and stories to periodicals such as Fraser’s Magazine and Punch, gradually building a reputation for his sharp wit and keen observational skills. His breakthrough came with Vanity Fair, a panoramic satire of English society that introduced the enduring character of Becky Sharp, a resourceful and amoral social climber.
Thackeray’s later novels, including Pendennis (1848–1850), The History of Henry Esmond (1852), and The Newcomes (1853–1855), continued to explore the lives of the English upper and middle classes, often focusing on the contrast between personal virtue and social ambition. His historical novel Henry Esmond was particularly praised for its detailed 18th-century setting and complex characterization.
In addition to his fiction, Thackeray was a noted public speaker and essayist, delivering lectures on the English humorists of the 18th century and on The Four Georges, a critical look at the British monarchy.
Despite his literary success, he lived with personal struggles, including the mental illness of his wife, Isabella, which deeply affected him. He remained devoted to his two daughters and was known for his kindness and generosity among his friends and colleagues.
His works remain widely read, appreciated for their incisive humor, rich characterizations, and unflinching critique of social pretensions.
Born in Calcutta, British India, he was sent to England for his education after his father’s death. He attended Charterhouse School, where he developed a distaste for the rigid school system, and later enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge. However, he left without earning a degree, instead traveling in Europe and pursuing artistic ambitions.
After losing much of his inheritance due to bad investments, Thackeray turned to writing for a living. He contributed satirical sketches, essays, and stories to periodicals such as Fraser’s Magazine and Punch, gradually building a reputation for his sharp wit and keen observational skills. His breakthrough came with Vanity Fair, a panoramic satire of English society that introduced the enduring character of Becky Sharp, a resourceful and amoral social climber.
Thackeray’s later novels, including Pendennis (1848–1850), The History of Henry Esmond (1852), and The Newcomes (1853–1855), continued to explore the lives of the English upper and middle classes, often focusing on the contrast between personal virtue and social ambition. His historical novel Henry Esmond was particularly praised for its detailed 18th-century setting and complex characterization.
In addition to his fiction, Thackeray was a noted public speaker and essayist, delivering lectures on the English humorists of the 18th century and on The Four Georges, a critical look at the British monarchy.
Despite his literary success, he lived with personal struggles, including the mental illness of his wife, Isabella, which deeply affected him. He remained devoted to his two daughters and was known for his kindness and generosity among his friends and colleagues.
His works remain widely read, appreciated for their incisive humor, rich characterizations, and unflinching critique of social pretensions.
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February 28, 2025
welcome to...JANITY FAIRBRUARY.
i'm going to read this huge scary book for the next two months (i.e., january and february), one chapter a day, trying all the while not to run away in fear as per my project long classics directive.
on that note, did authors from old times know it was possible to write something that wouldn't take future readers three months, a huge amount of confidence, and the energy of an eleven year old with a sugar rush to read?
just wondering.
CHAPTER I: CHISWICK MALL
whenever characters in books prepare for a journey with a bit of hard cheese and bread, or crackers and an apple, or (in this case) seed-cake and a bottle of wine i get so jealous. that sounds so much more appealing than my $6 bottle of water and protein bar from an airport hudson news kiosk.
CHAPTER II: IN WHICH MISS SHARP AND MISS SEDLEY PREPARE TO OPEN THE CAMPAIGN
oh i love a deceitful schemer...i think this becky sharp and i are going to get along just great.
CHAPTER III: REBECCA IS IN PRESENCE OF THE ENEMY
poor rebecca is trying to nab a rich husband and all she got for her trouble was a spicy food-based prank.
CHAPTER IV: THE GREEN SILK PURSE
both of our protagonists have found promising beaux, so something better go wrong fast. we're only 5% in! i'd die of boredom before we're a third through.
CHAPTER V: DOBBIN OF OURS
it doesn't matter how many books i read, i will always be a sucker for any bullied kid. easiest way to win my sympathy.
CHAPTER VI: VAUXHALL
i'm not sure what "knock up" implied in 1847, but i'm going to go ahead and guess it wasn't the same meaning as today. unless rebecca's target is planning on getting the archbishop of canterbury pregnant.
CHAPTER VII: CRAWLEY OF QUEEN'S CRAWLEY
okay, rebecca has struck out with jos. sorry to becky, but i'm thrilled. i think she has a long, full, happy life of scheming ahead of her.
CHAPTER VIII: PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
this chapter concludes with six paragraphs warning us about the crazy old sinners we're going to fearfully read about in the next 900 pages. don't threaten me with a good time, william.
CHAPTER IX: FAMILY PORTRAITS
i gotta say, thackeray really lets himself have fun in these closing sentences. the end of this chapter is about how it must rock to have a rich aunt.
CHAPTER X: MISS SHARP BEGINS TO MAKE FRIENDS
i took a solid long weekend off this project, and now i'm rested, restored, and ready to get back at it. (just kidding. i spent a weekend eating takeout and watching football with my siblings and my brain feels like a lump of play-doh. let's see what happens.)
CHAPTER XI: ARCADIAN SIMPLICITY
this is a chapter made up purely of the most elegant sh*t-talking.
CHAPTER XII: QUITE A SENTIMENTAL CHAPTER
oh, our poor amelia is down bad. the secondhand embarrassment of witnessing an intense crush reverberates throughout time.
CHAPTER XIII: SENTIMENTAL AND OTHERWISE
well, george osborne appears to be the original f*ckboy.
CHAPTER XIV: MISS CRAWLEY AT HOME
honestly it's no surprise feminism took so long to come into itself. back in the day women were so frail they'd develop days-long debilitating illnesses from eating too much at a lobster-based lunch. i wouldn't fall over myself to hand over the right to vote either.
WAIT PLOT TWIST?
CHAPTER XV: IN WHICH REBECCA'S HUSBAND APPEARS FOR A SHORT TIME
well, i was debating whether to spoil this million year old book for you, but then the chapter title decided to do it for me.
CHAPTER XVI: THE LETTER ON THE PINCUSHION
well becky. you've gone and done it now: made everyone in a family so enamored with you that you received multiple marriage proposals from within it and ran off with one of them. well call me a crawley because i'm obsessed.
CHAPTER XVII: HOW CAPTAIN DOBBIN BOUGHT A PIANO
now amelia is ruined and becky's life rocks. oh, the games we play.
CHAPTER XVIII: WHO PLAYED ON THE PIANO CAPTAIN DOBBIN BOUGHT
low stakes, sweet, boring, barely even a question. sounds like the world's first cozy mystery.
CHAPTER XIX: MISS CRAWLEY AT NURSE
it's kind of wild that aunts have had such a bad reputation as nosy / overbearing / annoying throughout time. justice for aunts! all of mine are cool.
CHAPTER XX: IN WHICH CAPTAIN DOBBIN ACTS AS THE MESSENGER OF HYMEN
oh my god. i mean. i don't even want to make a joke! it's too easy. i'm all about the chase.
CHAPTER XXI: A QUARREL ABOUT AN HEIRESS
i think i might be a bad person. whenever i read one of these 19th century classics about being in love with someone with no fortune while being romanced by someone with 10,000 pounds a year, i'm like...i'd be at least a LITTLE tempted.
CHAPTER XXII: A MARRIAGE AND PART OF A HONEYMOON
honeymoon is one of those words that doesn't seem as old as it is. there's something outrageously 1950s about it.
CHAPTER XXIII: CAPTAIN DOBBIN PROCEEDS ON HIS CANVASS
just rolling around london, being yelled at for telling people your best friend married your crush. this is almost as bad as the horrific boarding school bullying. war will be fine compared to this.
CHAPTER XXIV: IN WHICH MR. OSBORNE TAKES DOWN THE FAMILY BIBLE
note to self for future betrayals: immediately find a large fancy bible, cross out the person's name within its pages (aside: may have to write the name and then cross it out), find your will (aside: may have to write one), crumple it up, throw it in a nearby fireplace (aside: locate fireplace), and write a new will (aside: look up how to write a will).
CHAPTER XXV: IN WHICH ALL THE PRINCIPAL PERSONAGES THINK FIT TO LEAVE BRIGHTON
going straight from a poolside vacay to war. it's what george osborne deserves.
CHAPTER XXVI: BETWEEN LONDON AND CHATHAM
sure, amelia seems very boring and annoying and generally a bad hang, but there is no character in these pages worse than GEORGE. bring me back to becky already.
CHAPTER XXVII: AMELIA JOINS HER REGIMENT
i expected this to be facetious, but no. we've shipped the girl straight off to war.
CHAPTER XXVIII: IN WHICH AMELIA INVADES THE LOW COUNTRIES
i'm going to be honest with you: england and france being at war a decade into the nineteenth century...it feels a little late. leave that behavior in the 1700s. it's time for you guys to team up and rebrand as the world's good guys.
CHAPTER XXIX: BRUSSELS
if george has 100 haters i'm one of them. if george has 1 hater it's me. if george has no haters i'm dead.
CHAPTER XXX: THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME
at this point we should take bets on who won't make it back from war. of course i personally want george dead, rawdon would be the most plot-convenient passing, and dobbin is the only one i personally need to survive. watch it be him.
CHAPTER XXXI: IN WHICH JOS SEDLEY TAKES CARE OF HIS SISTER
i have to admit, i doubted amelia. i did not expect she could square up against becky and survive.
CHAPTER XXXII: IN WHICH JOS TAKES FLIGHT, AND THE WAR IS BROUGHT TO A CLOSE
the whole war was like one chapter long. one chapter that was filled with sentences like "surely we shall never forget..." and "a story we have all heard countless times and never made sense of..." william, not even wikipedia can help me sort this one out.
CHAPTER XXXIII: IN WHICH MISS CRAWLEY'S RELATIONS ARE VERY ANXIOUS ABOUT HER
i have been punished for my crimes of sh*t talking amelia to becky's benefit by being subjected to a full chapter about becky's in-laws when the biggest event of the book so far just happened to amelia.
CHAPTER XXXIV: JAMES CRAWLEY'S PIPE IS OUT
make that two chapters.
CHAPTER XXXV: WIDOW AND MOTHER
spoiler alert for this unbelievably old book: george is dead. that's what happened earlier. sorry amelia but i used to pray for times like these.
CHAPTER XXXVI: HOW TO LIVE WELL ON NOTHING A YEAR
this is the kind of budgeting advice that i'm looking for.
CHAPTER XXXVII: THE SUBJECT CONTINUED
okay. so the answer is mostly to take advantage of poor people. i guess i don't know what i expected.
CHAPTER XXXVIII: A FAMILY IN A VERY SMALL WAY
i have to say...i don't have as much interest in the amelia / dobbin will they won't they as i would like.
CHAPTER XXXIX: A CYNICAL CHAPTER
me if i was a chapter.
CHAPTER XL: IN WHICH BECKY IS RECOGNIZED BY THE FAMILY
as she should! not because it's the right thing (it's not) or she deserves it (she doesn't), but because from a narrative perspective i'm a proponent of becky getting everything she wants.
CHAPTER XLI: IN WHICH BECKY REVISITS THE HALLS OF HER ANCESTORS
okay. i have been holding this in but i can keep the secret no longer. confession: i am not enjoying this book like i thought i would. i can't believe we're past halfway.
CHAPTER XLII: WHICH TREATS OF THE OSBORNE FAMILY
never mind. for some reason this chapter and the last won me right back over. jinxed it.
CHAPTER XLIII: IN WHICH THE READER HAS TO DOUBLE THE CAPE
now dobbin has to race from india to england to try to prevent amelia from getting married. some romcom tropes never change.
CHAPTER XLIV: A ROUND-ABOUT CHAPTER BETWEEN LONDON AND HAMPSHIRE
the fact that becky's main opp is her eight-year-old son? she is just built different.
CHAPTER XLV: BETWEEN HAMPSHIRE AND LONDON
i will confess that 600 pages into this book, i do not know what the plot is. but that's okay. there are worse things.
CHAPTER XLVI: STRUGGLES AND TRIALS
controversial opinion, but...amelia's mom is right. kinda crazy that amelia is hoarding all this money to buy her son new christmas clothes when they're about to be evicted and also could be rich if she was willing to hang out with him less.
CHAPTER XLVII: GAUNT HOUSE
i was under the impression that dobbins was racing across eurasia like it was an airport in a rom-com but we haven't heard from him in like 4 chapters. maybe the commute just takes 6 weeks in a steamboat or something.
CHAPTER XLVIII: IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO THE VERY BEST OF COMPANY
i love becky and her waterproof blush and her fake crying and her incomprehensible finances and her schemes.
CHAPTER XLIX: IN WHICH WE ENJOY THREE COURSES AND A DESSERT
now i'm just having a blast. i hope we never hear from amelia again.
CHAPTER L: CONTAINS A VULGAR INCIDENT
well, the chapter name got me excited, but it was really just us hearing from amelia again. she shipped her son off to grandpa's.
CHAPTER LI: IN WHICH A CHARADE IS ACTED WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT PUZZLE THE READER
sorry, i was completely taken aback by what constitutes "charades" here. count me puzzled.
CHAPTER LII: IN WHICH LORD STEYNE SHOWS HIMSELF IN A MOST AMIABLE LIGHT
are rawdon junior and george junior going to be school buds? is that what we're building toward here? i'm having fun but i'm still at a loss.
and now rawdon senior is locked up.
CHAPTER LIII: A RESCUE AND A CATASTROPHE
becky's downfall? and dumb old RAWDON is the one to bring it about??? i don't believe it. my girl will come back stronger than ever (and then maybe fall again, i don't know, we have a fair number of pages left).
CHAPTER LIV: SUNDAY AFTER THE BATTLE
if i was about to die in a duel and my last meal was "some devilled kidneys and a herring," the duel would be canceled. i'd take myself out.
CHAPTER LV: IN WHICH THE SAME SUBJECT IS PURSUED
i would hope so! if we went back to amelia at this point i would completely freak out.
rawdon senior has been shipped off to the colonies, rawdon junior is essentially an orphan, and becky is for all intents and purposes single and childless. where do we go from here??? to amelia's boring plotline i would imagine.
CHAPTER LVI: GEORGY IS MADE A GENTLEMAN
it is clear to me that this 19th century eleven year old was making more than my 2025 salary in yearly allowance.
CHAPTER LVII: EOTHEN
well, dobbin is here, and it turns out he's been wearing a lock of amelia's hair that he bribed a maid to take while she was sick with fever this whole time. now i'm even less invested in this love story.
CHAPTER LVIII: OUR FRIEND THE MAJOR
it would be extremely awesome if at some point in these 1,000 pages amelia could develop a personality trait beyond "obsessive love for someone named george," but it appears we're running out of time for that.
CHAPTER LIX: THE OLD PIANO
dobbin declares his love. amelia is like "i'm actually married. to a ghost, but still." dobbin says okay can i just hang around and look at you sometimes. amelia says for sure. miserable!
CHAPTER LX: RETURNS TO THE GENTEEL WORLD
this is, essentially, a "nice guy who will wait as long as it takes" montage.
CHAPTER LXI: IN WHICH TWO LIGHTS ARE PUT OUT
there have been reconciliations, wills updated and read, last rites, final prayers, fortunes made, lives lost. in other words we're wrapping things up.
CHAPTER LXII: AM RHEIN
quick detour for a german vacation.
CHAPTER LXIII: IN WHICH WE MEET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
i suppose it'd be too much to hope for that we finally reconnect with becky, chapters since we last saw her and 4 to go until the end. instead we'll hang out with a guy named tapeworm.
NEVER MIND. I SHOULD NEVER HAVE DOUBTED YOU, THACKERAY.
CHAPTER LXIV: A VAGABOND CHAPTER
sheesh. how the mighty have fallen. becky can't even take a little vacay to rome without getting death threats from her exes.
CHAPTER LXV: FULL OF BUSINESS AND PLEASURE
in so many ways, emmy is no match for becky. girl, you just got played.
CHAPTER LXVI: AMANTIUM IRAE
i haven't been a particular dobbin fan ever since his bullied origin story, but man, amelia. you are just the worst.
CHAPTER LXVII: WHICH CONTAINS BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS
i have to say, i have no idea how old these ladies are. and i've heard it's in poor taste to ask.
OVERALL
this was very long and at points made me very angry, but mostly i had more of a good time than bad. i know all of these characters are supposed to be unlikable, but they are very well fleshed out in the ways they're supposed to be frustrating. moments of humor. moments of romance. in short i recommend it, if you have 400 free hours to spare.
rating: 3.5
i'm going to read this huge scary book for the next two months (i.e., january and february), one chapter a day, trying all the while not to run away in fear as per my project long classics directive.
on that note, did authors from old times know it was possible to write something that wouldn't take future readers three months, a huge amount of confidence, and the energy of an eleven year old with a sugar rush to read?
just wondering.
CHAPTER I: CHISWICK MALL
whenever characters in books prepare for a journey with a bit of hard cheese and bread, or crackers and an apple, or (in this case) seed-cake and a bottle of wine i get so jealous. that sounds so much more appealing than my $6 bottle of water and protein bar from an airport hudson news kiosk.
CHAPTER II: IN WHICH MISS SHARP AND MISS SEDLEY PREPARE TO OPEN THE CAMPAIGN
oh i love a deceitful schemer...i think this becky sharp and i are going to get along just great.
CHAPTER III: REBECCA IS IN PRESENCE OF THE ENEMY
poor rebecca is trying to nab a rich husband and all she got for her trouble was a spicy food-based prank.
CHAPTER IV: THE GREEN SILK PURSE
both of our protagonists have found promising beaux, so something better go wrong fast. we're only 5% in! i'd die of boredom before we're a third through.
CHAPTER V: DOBBIN OF OURS
it doesn't matter how many books i read, i will always be a sucker for any bullied kid. easiest way to win my sympathy.
CHAPTER VI: VAUXHALL
i'm not sure what "knock up" implied in 1847, but i'm going to go ahead and guess it wasn't the same meaning as today. unless rebecca's target is planning on getting the archbishop of canterbury pregnant.
CHAPTER VII: CRAWLEY OF QUEEN'S CRAWLEY
okay, rebecca has struck out with jos. sorry to becky, but i'm thrilled. i think she has a long, full, happy life of scheming ahead of her.
CHAPTER VIII: PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
this chapter concludes with six paragraphs warning us about the crazy old sinners we're going to fearfully read about in the next 900 pages. don't threaten me with a good time, william.
CHAPTER IX: FAMILY PORTRAITS
i gotta say, thackeray really lets himself have fun in these closing sentences. the end of this chapter is about how it must rock to have a rich aunt.
CHAPTER X: MISS SHARP BEGINS TO MAKE FRIENDS
i took a solid long weekend off this project, and now i'm rested, restored, and ready to get back at it. (just kidding. i spent a weekend eating takeout and watching football with my siblings and my brain feels like a lump of play-doh. let's see what happens.)
CHAPTER XI: ARCADIAN SIMPLICITY
this is a chapter made up purely of the most elegant sh*t-talking.
CHAPTER XII: QUITE A SENTIMENTAL CHAPTER
oh, our poor amelia is down bad. the secondhand embarrassment of witnessing an intense crush reverberates throughout time.
CHAPTER XIII: SENTIMENTAL AND OTHERWISE
well, george osborne appears to be the original f*ckboy.
CHAPTER XIV: MISS CRAWLEY AT HOME
honestly it's no surprise feminism took so long to come into itself. back in the day women were so frail they'd develop days-long debilitating illnesses from eating too much at a lobster-based lunch. i wouldn't fall over myself to hand over the right to vote either.
WAIT PLOT TWIST?
CHAPTER XV: IN WHICH REBECCA'S HUSBAND APPEARS FOR A SHORT TIME
well, i was debating whether to spoil this million year old book for you, but then the chapter title decided to do it for me.
CHAPTER XVI: THE LETTER ON THE PINCUSHION
well becky. you've gone and done it now: made everyone in a family so enamored with you that you received multiple marriage proposals from within it and ran off with one of them. well call me a crawley because i'm obsessed.
CHAPTER XVII: HOW CAPTAIN DOBBIN BOUGHT A PIANO
now amelia is ruined and becky's life rocks. oh, the games we play.
CHAPTER XVIII: WHO PLAYED ON THE PIANO CAPTAIN DOBBIN BOUGHT
low stakes, sweet, boring, barely even a question. sounds like the world's first cozy mystery.
CHAPTER XIX: MISS CRAWLEY AT NURSE
it's kind of wild that aunts have had such a bad reputation as nosy / overbearing / annoying throughout time. justice for aunts! all of mine are cool.
CHAPTER XX: IN WHICH CAPTAIN DOBBIN ACTS AS THE MESSENGER OF HYMEN
oh my god. i mean. i don't even want to make a joke! it's too easy. i'm all about the chase.
CHAPTER XXI: A QUARREL ABOUT AN HEIRESS
i think i might be a bad person. whenever i read one of these 19th century classics about being in love with someone with no fortune while being romanced by someone with 10,000 pounds a year, i'm like...i'd be at least a LITTLE tempted.
CHAPTER XXII: A MARRIAGE AND PART OF A HONEYMOON
honeymoon is one of those words that doesn't seem as old as it is. there's something outrageously 1950s about it.
CHAPTER XXIII: CAPTAIN DOBBIN PROCEEDS ON HIS CANVASS
just rolling around london, being yelled at for telling people your best friend married your crush. this is almost as bad as the horrific boarding school bullying. war will be fine compared to this.
CHAPTER XXIV: IN WHICH MR. OSBORNE TAKES DOWN THE FAMILY BIBLE
note to self for future betrayals: immediately find a large fancy bible, cross out the person's name within its pages (aside: may have to write the name and then cross it out), find your will (aside: may have to write one), crumple it up, throw it in a nearby fireplace (aside: locate fireplace), and write a new will (aside: look up how to write a will).
CHAPTER XXV: IN WHICH ALL THE PRINCIPAL PERSONAGES THINK FIT TO LEAVE BRIGHTON
going straight from a poolside vacay to war. it's what george osborne deserves.
CHAPTER XXVI: BETWEEN LONDON AND CHATHAM
sure, amelia seems very boring and annoying and generally a bad hang, but there is no character in these pages worse than GEORGE. bring me back to becky already.
CHAPTER XXVII: AMELIA JOINS HER REGIMENT
i expected this to be facetious, but no. we've shipped the girl straight off to war.
CHAPTER XXVIII: IN WHICH AMELIA INVADES THE LOW COUNTRIES
i'm going to be honest with you: england and france being at war a decade into the nineteenth century...it feels a little late. leave that behavior in the 1700s. it's time for you guys to team up and rebrand as the world's good guys.
CHAPTER XXIX: BRUSSELS
if george has 100 haters i'm one of them. if george has 1 hater it's me. if george has no haters i'm dead.
CHAPTER XXX: THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME
at this point we should take bets on who won't make it back from war. of course i personally want george dead, rawdon would be the most plot-convenient passing, and dobbin is the only one i personally need to survive. watch it be him.
CHAPTER XXXI: IN WHICH JOS SEDLEY TAKES CARE OF HIS SISTER
i have to admit, i doubted amelia. i did not expect she could square up against becky and survive.
CHAPTER XXXII: IN WHICH JOS TAKES FLIGHT, AND THE WAR IS BROUGHT TO A CLOSE
the whole war was like one chapter long. one chapter that was filled with sentences like "surely we shall never forget..." and "a story we have all heard countless times and never made sense of..." william, not even wikipedia can help me sort this one out.
CHAPTER XXXIII: IN WHICH MISS CRAWLEY'S RELATIONS ARE VERY ANXIOUS ABOUT HER
i have been punished for my crimes of sh*t talking amelia to becky's benefit by being subjected to a full chapter about becky's in-laws when the biggest event of the book so far just happened to amelia.
CHAPTER XXXIV: JAMES CRAWLEY'S PIPE IS OUT
make that two chapters.
CHAPTER XXXV: WIDOW AND MOTHER
spoiler alert for this unbelievably old book: george is dead. that's what happened earlier. sorry amelia but i used to pray for times like these.
CHAPTER XXXVI: HOW TO LIVE WELL ON NOTHING A YEAR
this is the kind of budgeting advice that i'm looking for.
CHAPTER XXXVII: THE SUBJECT CONTINUED
okay. so the answer is mostly to take advantage of poor people. i guess i don't know what i expected.
CHAPTER XXXVIII: A FAMILY IN A VERY SMALL WAY
i have to say...i don't have as much interest in the amelia / dobbin will they won't they as i would like.
CHAPTER XXXIX: A CYNICAL CHAPTER
me if i was a chapter.
CHAPTER XL: IN WHICH BECKY IS RECOGNIZED BY THE FAMILY
as she should! not because it's the right thing (it's not) or she deserves it (she doesn't), but because from a narrative perspective i'm a proponent of becky getting everything she wants.
CHAPTER XLI: IN WHICH BECKY REVISITS THE HALLS OF HER ANCESTORS
okay. i have been holding this in but i can keep the secret no longer. confession: i am not enjoying this book like i thought i would. i can't believe we're past halfway.
CHAPTER XLII: WHICH TREATS OF THE OSBORNE FAMILY
never mind. for some reason this chapter and the last won me right back over. jinxed it.
CHAPTER XLIII: IN WHICH THE READER HAS TO DOUBLE THE CAPE
now dobbin has to race from india to england to try to prevent amelia from getting married. some romcom tropes never change.
CHAPTER XLIV: A ROUND-ABOUT CHAPTER BETWEEN LONDON AND HAMPSHIRE
the fact that becky's main opp is her eight-year-old son? she is just built different.
CHAPTER XLV: BETWEEN HAMPSHIRE AND LONDON
i will confess that 600 pages into this book, i do not know what the plot is. but that's okay. there are worse things.
CHAPTER XLVI: STRUGGLES AND TRIALS
controversial opinion, but...amelia's mom is right. kinda crazy that amelia is hoarding all this money to buy her son new christmas clothes when they're about to be evicted and also could be rich if she was willing to hang out with him less.
CHAPTER XLVII: GAUNT HOUSE
i was under the impression that dobbins was racing across eurasia like it was an airport in a rom-com but we haven't heard from him in like 4 chapters. maybe the commute just takes 6 weeks in a steamboat or something.
CHAPTER XLVIII: IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO THE VERY BEST OF COMPANY
i love becky and her waterproof blush and her fake crying and her incomprehensible finances and her schemes.
CHAPTER XLIX: IN WHICH WE ENJOY THREE COURSES AND A DESSERT
now i'm just having a blast. i hope we never hear from amelia again.
CHAPTER L: CONTAINS A VULGAR INCIDENT
well, the chapter name got me excited, but it was really just us hearing from amelia again. she shipped her son off to grandpa's.
CHAPTER LI: IN WHICH A CHARADE IS ACTED WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT PUZZLE THE READER
sorry, i was completely taken aback by what constitutes "charades" here. count me puzzled.
CHAPTER LII: IN WHICH LORD STEYNE SHOWS HIMSELF IN A MOST AMIABLE LIGHT
are rawdon junior and george junior going to be school buds? is that what we're building toward here? i'm having fun but i'm still at a loss.
and now rawdon senior is locked up.
CHAPTER LIII: A RESCUE AND A CATASTROPHE
becky's downfall? and dumb old RAWDON is the one to bring it about??? i don't believe it. my girl will come back stronger than ever (and then maybe fall again, i don't know, we have a fair number of pages left).
CHAPTER LIV: SUNDAY AFTER THE BATTLE
if i was about to die in a duel and my last meal was "some devilled kidneys and a herring," the duel would be canceled. i'd take myself out.
CHAPTER LV: IN WHICH THE SAME SUBJECT IS PURSUED
i would hope so! if we went back to amelia at this point i would completely freak out.
rawdon senior has been shipped off to the colonies, rawdon junior is essentially an orphan, and becky is for all intents and purposes single and childless. where do we go from here??? to amelia's boring plotline i would imagine.
CHAPTER LVI: GEORGY IS MADE A GENTLEMAN
it is clear to me that this 19th century eleven year old was making more than my 2025 salary in yearly allowance.
CHAPTER LVII: EOTHEN
well, dobbin is here, and it turns out he's been wearing a lock of amelia's hair that he bribed a maid to take while she was sick with fever this whole time. now i'm even less invested in this love story.
CHAPTER LVIII: OUR FRIEND THE MAJOR
it would be extremely awesome if at some point in these 1,000 pages amelia could develop a personality trait beyond "obsessive love for someone named george," but it appears we're running out of time for that.
CHAPTER LIX: THE OLD PIANO
dobbin declares his love. amelia is like "i'm actually married. to a ghost, but still." dobbin says okay can i just hang around and look at you sometimes. amelia says for sure. miserable!
CHAPTER LX: RETURNS TO THE GENTEEL WORLD
this is, essentially, a "nice guy who will wait as long as it takes" montage.
CHAPTER LXI: IN WHICH TWO LIGHTS ARE PUT OUT
there have been reconciliations, wills updated and read, last rites, final prayers, fortunes made, lives lost. in other words we're wrapping things up.
CHAPTER LXII: AM RHEIN
quick detour for a german vacation.
CHAPTER LXIII: IN WHICH WE MEET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
i suppose it'd be too much to hope for that we finally reconnect with becky, chapters since we last saw her and 4 to go until the end. instead we'll hang out with a guy named tapeworm.
NEVER MIND. I SHOULD NEVER HAVE DOUBTED YOU, THACKERAY.
CHAPTER LXIV: A VAGABOND CHAPTER
sheesh. how the mighty have fallen. becky can't even take a little vacay to rome without getting death threats from her exes.
CHAPTER LXV: FULL OF BUSINESS AND PLEASURE
in so many ways, emmy is no match for becky. girl, you just got played.
CHAPTER LXVI: AMANTIUM IRAE
i haven't been a particular dobbin fan ever since his bullied origin story, but man, amelia. you are just the worst.
CHAPTER LXVII: WHICH CONTAINS BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS
i have to say, i have no idea how old these ladies are. and i've heard it's in poor taste to ask.
OVERALL
this was very long and at points made me very angry, but mostly i had more of a good time than bad. i know all of these characters are supposed to be unlikable, but they are very well fleshed out in the ways they're supposed to be frustrating. moments of humor. moments of romance. in short i recommend it, if you have 400 free hours to spare.
rating: 3.5
July 9, 2024
Here I am, 54 years old, and for the very first time reading William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair. "Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero." I disagree with Thackeray. The 'Hero' of Vanity Fair is the steadfast and stalwart William Dobbin; of that there is no doubt. This novel is not the coming of age, or bildungsroman, of Becky Sharp. No, Miss Rebecca Sharp sprang from the womb enlivened with her desire to claw her way to the top. She can't help it, and nor should she; is she really any different than any of us? No, she's not. It is her methods that vary from what you and I might use; or do they?
To me, the narrator's voice in the novel was most amazing. It seemed that at every opportune moment, the narrator took a step back and informed us, the reader, of some nugget, some little moral, that placed the actions of the participants in the Fair in context. Vanity Fair is with us, all around us; and many times we never fully understand the roles that the players play. This voice of reason grounds us; makes us understand the joy, the pain, the happiness, and the sorrow that accompanies each of us in our journey through life. If we care to, we can learn to become better parents, better husbands, better wives, and better friends.
I also learned through the course of the novel that I can't outright condemn Becky Sharp. Becky is perhaps not a woman easily liked, but she is an admirable woman, a tough woman, and a woman I can respect. Strong-minded and willed, a terrible mother, but a battle-axe to those who take her head-on. Miss Becky Sharp -- Mrs. Rawdon Crawley -- is committed to living life at its fullest, and not one jot less. She is a woman of purpose, and that is a rare quality in many people.
The novel drips with satire from page to page; it is full of wit and sardonic humor. It is through the use of satire that we realize that the characters at the Fair are us -- have been us, and always will be us -- generation after generation, and nothing will change; only the time will change. There will always be Lord Steynes, Jos Sedleys, Old Osbornes, Mother Sedleys, Sir Pitt Crawleys, Miss Crawleys, the George Osbornes, William Dobbins, and Amelias. Our task, according to Thackeray, is to figure out how best to treat them, how best to interact and understand them, how to live with them. The real challenge, however, is how best to love, appreciate, and care for the Miss Becky Sharps in our lives. We do deserve to know her, to care for her, to appreciate her for whom she is, and she deserves to be brought in from the rambunctiousness and vagaries of the Fair.
In the end, it is Miss Sharp that gains at least some measure of redemption. It is she, and she alone, that removes the mote from Amelia's eyes regarding her feelings for William Dobbin. For Becky Sharp does understand honor, virtue, and integrity (or, does she?). Thackeray finishes appropriately -- For truly it can be said, "Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? -- Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out."
A magnificent novel from start to finish.
To me, the narrator's voice in the novel was most amazing. It seemed that at every opportune moment, the narrator took a step back and informed us, the reader, of some nugget, some little moral, that placed the actions of the participants in the Fair in context. Vanity Fair is with us, all around us; and many times we never fully understand the roles that the players play. This voice of reason grounds us; makes us understand the joy, the pain, the happiness, and the sorrow that accompanies each of us in our journey through life. If we care to, we can learn to become better parents, better husbands, better wives, and better friends.
I also learned through the course of the novel that I can't outright condemn Becky Sharp. Becky is perhaps not a woman easily liked, but she is an admirable woman, a tough woman, and a woman I can respect. Strong-minded and willed, a terrible mother, but a battle-axe to those who take her head-on. Miss Becky Sharp -- Mrs. Rawdon Crawley -- is committed to living life at its fullest, and not one jot less. She is a woman of purpose, and that is a rare quality in many people.
The novel drips with satire from page to page; it is full of wit and sardonic humor. It is through the use of satire that we realize that the characters at the Fair are us -- have been us, and always will be us -- generation after generation, and nothing will change; only the time will change. There will always be Lord Steynes, Jos Sedleys, Old Osbornes, Mother Sedleys, Sir Pitt Crawleys, Miss Crawleys, the George Osbornes, William Dobbins, and Amelias. Our task, according to Thackeray, is to figure out how best to treat them, how best to interact and understand them, how to live with them. The real challenge, however, is how best to love, appreciate, and care for the Miss Becky Sharps in our lives. We do deserve to know her, to care for her, to appreciate her for whom she is, and she deserves to be brought in from the rambunctiousness and vagaries of the Fair.
In the end, it is Miss Sharp that gains at least some measure of redemption. It is she, and she alone, that removes the mote from Amelia's eyes regarding her feelings for William Dobbin. For Becky Sharp does understand honor, virtue, and integrity (or, does she?). Thackeray finishes appropriately -- For truly it can be said, "Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? -- Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out."
A magnificent novel from start to finish.
February 5, 2025
Written in 1848, Vanity Fair is an excellent satire of English society in the early 19th Century. Thackeray states several times that it is a novel "without a hero", and at a couple of points tries to claim that Amelia, a good person but who inevitably comes across as rather wishy-washy, is the heroine. But we all know that a "bad" girl or boy is infinitely more interesting than a "good" girl or boy, so I suspect Thackeray of dissembling even here. Becky Sharp is out and out the anti-hero(ine) in this book, which could well have been named, "The Rise and Fall of Rebecca Sharp".
Thackeray apparently saw people as "abominably selfish and foolish", and this negative view comes across loud and clear with his use of vicious vocabulary, and his unremittingly dark portrayal of human nature. The author's voice is continually present, and his wry observations do contribute to making the novel vastly entertaining. They were also intended to make it instructive to his readers.
Interestingly the author makes a habit of commenting on particular instances of female behaviour, and drawing from this to make a general observation of all women. At first the reader is inclined to think how astute this is; how well Thackeray knows women and how unusual and refreshing it is to find this in a male writer of his day. However, these observations are invariably judgemental, whereas he tends not to apply the same maxims to his male characters. The men are seen much more as individuals. A modern reader becomes uneasy with this after a while; it begins to seem less witty and apt, and in fact rather tiresome.
Here is an example of Thackeray's views on women:
"What do men know about women's martyrdoms? We should go mad had we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains which are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience, watchfulness without even so much as the acknowlegement of a good word; all this, how many of them have to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces as if they felt nothing. Tender slaves that they are, they must needs be hypocrites and weak."
Thackeray's perceived audience will have been male readers, of course, and this is clear when he addresses the reader personally referring to "your wife", "your sister" or "your servants." And the audience will have been educated, land-owning white males at that. Some of the "witty" observations about an heiress from St. Kitts, or a black manservant called "Sambo" make the modern reader cringe. The author is scathing about all his characters' partialities and weaknesses, yet because he is a man of his time, culture and class, he cannot see his own prejudices, complacently considering that this is the only correct stance.
Vanity Fair was serialised in 20 monthly parts. As with other novels which were originally issued in this way, the structure is not as tight as the reader would wish. There are great swathes of writing about charades, or a play, or a battle, which are rather flabby. Some parts seem very ponderous, or lead nowhere, whereas others are extremely witty and/or exciting. Authors such as Thackeray and Dickens (to whom this applied for nearly all of his novels) would surely have wished to edit their work, or even rewritten scenes or altered characters, had they had the opportunity. It is incredible to a modern reader that they fared as well as they did under this draconian regime. And it is therefore unfair to compare this with the more structured later novels, as it is not a level playing field.
"Vanity Fair is a wicked foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions,"
states the author. This theme of "Vanity Fair" is reiterated over and over again, and throughout the reader will be thinking that nothing has changed over a century later. Thackeray's observations of human behaviour are so apposite, the descriptions of situations, personalities, expressed motives and hidden motives (which are inevitably very different) are timeless. And this of course, coupled with the deliciously droll manner of Thackeray's writing, is what makes this novel a classic. It is hugely entertaining in parts, and would have been a 5 star novel had Thackeray's voice and attitudes not been quite so dominant throughout.
EDIT:
Interestingly each monthly installment of Vanity Fair only ever sold 5000 copies at the most. At the same time, the hugely popular figure Charles Dickens was publishing his novel "Dombey and Son", which was also being serialised by the same publisher. Before long the episodes of "Dombey and Son" were selling 40,000 copies per month - eight times as many! Yet of the two, nowadays, probably Vanity Fair is the more popular.
Thackeray apparently saw people as "abominably selfish and foolish", and this negative view comes across loud and clear with his use of vicious vocabulary, and his unremittingly dark portrayal of human nature. The author's voice is continually present, and his wry observations do contribute to making the novel vastly entertaining. They were also intended to make it instructive to his readers.
Interestingly the author makes a habit of commenting on particular instances of female behaviour, and drawing from this to make a general observation of all women. At first the reader is inclined to think how astute this is; how well Thackeray knows women and how unusual and refreshing it is to find this in a male writer of his day. However, these observations are invariably judgemental, whereas he tends not to apply the same maxims to his male characters. The men are seen much more as individuals. A modern reader becomes uneasy with this after a while; it begins to seem less witty and apt, and in fact rather tiresome.
Here is an example of Thackeray's views on women:
"What do men know about women's martyrdoms? We should go mad had we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains which are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience, watchfulness without even so much as the acknowlegement of a good word; all this, how many of them have to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces as if they felt nothing. Tender slaves that they are, they must needs be hypocrites and weak."
Thackeray's perceived audience will have been male readers, of course, and this is clear when he addresses the reader personally referring to "your wife", "your sister" or "your servants." And the audience will have been educated, land-owning white males at that. Some of the "witty" observations about an heiress from St. Kitts, or a black manservant called "Sambo" make the modern reader cringe. The author is scathing about all his characters' partialities and weaknesses, yet because he is a man of his time, culture and class, he cannot see his own prejudices, complacently considering that this is the only correct stance.
Vanity Fair was serialised in 20 monthly parts. As with other novels which were originally issued in this way, the structure is not as tight as the reader would wish. There are great swathes of writing about charades, or a play, or a battle, which are rather flabby. Some parts seem very ponderous, or lead nowhere, whereas others are extremely witty and/or exciting. Authors such as Thackeray and Dickens (to whom this applied for nearly all of his novels) would surely have wished to edit their work, or even rewritten scenes or altered characters, had they had the opportunity. It is incredible to a modern reader that they fared as well as they did under this draconian regime. And it is therefore unfair to compare this with the more structured later novels, as it is not a level playing field.
"Vanity Fair is a wicked foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions,"
states the author. This theme of "Vanity Fair" is reiterated over and over again, and throughout the reader will be thinking that nothing has changed over a century later. Thackeray's observations of human behaviour are so apposite, the descriptions of situations, personalities, expressed motives and hidden motives (which are inevitably very different) are timeless. And this of course, coupled with the deliciously droll manner of Thackeray's writing, is what makes this novel a classic. It is hugely entertaining in parts, and would have been a 5 star novel had Thackeray's voice and attitudes not been quite so dominant throughout.
EDIT:
Interestingly each monthly installment of Vanity Fair only ever sold 5000 copies at the most. At the same time, the hugely popular figure Charles Dickens was publishing his novel "Dombey and Son", which was also being serialised by the same publisher. Before long the episodes of "Dombey and Son" were selling 40,000 copies per month - eight times as many! Yet of the two, nowadays, probably Vanity Fair is the more popular.
November 6, 2025
“Are not there little chapters in everybody’s life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?”
“Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is called low life.”
“It is in the nature and instinct of some women. Some are made to scheme, and some to love.”
“In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.”
“Yes, if a man’s character is to be abused, say what you will, there’s nobody like a relation to do the business.”
“There’s no reason she should die or live miserably because you are wrong-headed.”
“She generally succeeded in making her husband share all her opinions, whether melancholy or cheerful.”
“As they say in the old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of souls thither.”
“She was content to lie on the shore where fortune had stranded her.”
“In Vanity Fair the sins of very great personages are looked at indulgently.”
“She looked upon him as her errand-man and humble slave.”
“Make way, sir, and let me pass.”
“No, you are not worthy of the love I have devoted to you. I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning.”
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $39.26 from eBay (I used a replica of the one that F. Scott Fitzgerald owned, a 3-volume set from 1937. He made annotations in his copy!)
Audiobook – Audible – 1 credit (Audible Premium Plus Annual – 24 Credits Membership Plan $229.50 or roughly $9.56 per credit)
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“Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is called low life.”
“It is in the nature and instinct of some women. Some are made to scheme, and some to love.”
“In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.”
“Yes, if a man’s character is to be abused, say what you will, there’s nobody like a relation to do the business.”
“There’s no reason she should die or live miserably because you are wrong-headed.”
“She generally succeeded in making her husband share all her opinions, whether melancholy or cheerful.”
“As they say in the old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of souls thither.”
“She was content to lie on the shore where fortune had stranded her.”
“In Vanity Fair the sins of very great personages are looked at indulgently.”
“She looked upon him as her errand-man and humble slave.”
“Make way, sir, and let me pass.”
“No, you are not worthy of the love I have devoted to you. I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning.”
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $39.26 from eBay (I used a replica of the one that F. Scott Fitzgerald owned, a 3-volume set from 1937. He made annotations in his copy!)
Audiobook – Audible – 1 credit (Audible Premium Plus Annual – 24 Credits Membership Plan $229.50 or roughly $9.56 per credit)
Connect With Me!
Blog Threads BookTube Facebook Insta My Bookstore at Pango
December 10, 2016
1. I liked the company of Thackeray who is breezy, ebullient and cynical about everyone’s motives. And he’s very confident too. He thinks he knows everything, although there’s not a word about how the poor live here, that’s not his subject. So he’s like the mid-19th century version of Tom Wolfe or Jonathan Franzen, two authors (among many others) who also think they know everything. I don’t mind them thinking that. It’s a good quality in a writer who’s trying to depict all of society.
2. 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 week’s 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 won’t 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.”
3. I can’t 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 726-732). Or the detailed descriptions of charades at upper class parties (p 594-601). Mother of God, these sections are unreadable. This is what drags the rating down to 4.5 stars.
4. Why is this book 800 pages 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 drawing-room suite was muffled in straw, the carpets were rolled up and corded, the small select library of well-bound books was stowed into two wine-chests, and the whole paraphernalia rolled away in several enormous vans to the Pantechnicon, where they were to lie until Georgy’s majority.
5. The author breaks the fourth wall all the time, as they liked to do in the early-ish days of novelling, before such stuff was frowned upon as being uncouth and inartistic. So on p 296 we 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 Rebecca’s shoulder.
“We” here means the author and the reader. And later on page 721 whilst 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.
6. 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 wouldn’t get a modern novelist doing any such thing but it’s kind of fun.
7. He has a brilliant section called “How to Live Well on Nothing a Year”. Essentially, you could maintain your place in well-to-do society by racking up credit extended to you by umpteen tradesmen and servants (who would do it because you had a place in well-to-do 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. It’s a precarious way of life but if you have strong nerves it can be done.
8. 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, she’s 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 doesn’t get the expected inheritance) so she dodges and weaves and figures out how to live well on nothing a year (see above). In the time-honoured 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. She’s 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 she’s 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 she’s 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 she’s still the only character with a zest for life in the whole mutton shop.
9. Meanwhile her husband Rawdon is a military gentleman until he resigns from the Army and then – does nothing. Continues with his cardsharping and pool-sharking but as for gainful employment, raises not one hand. And Thackeray who likes to describe most other aspects of these people’s lives ignores this as not worth commenting on. Rawdon writes a pitiful letter from debtor’s prison at one point :
I wasn't brought up like a younger brother, but was always encouraged to be extravagant and kep idle.
And that’s all the explanation you get.
10. 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 person’s 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 the 1920s called “After You Get What You Want you Don’t 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 you’re on, then don’t fall off, because the drop will be considerable hard on your feelings.
August 10, 2010
"But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm in saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little creature. And a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (and the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort that we are to have for a companion so guileless and good natured a person. As she is not a heroine, there is no need to describe her person; indeed I am afraid that her nose was rather too short than otherwise and her cheeks a good deal too round and red for a heroine..."
I just chose this passage randomly out of the first few pages of the novel to illustrate how much I love Thackeray's voice. He himself is the best character in the novel. To use theatre terminology, he definitely breaks the 4th wall into the story quite frequently. Reading it is rather like watching the play, but with periodic pauses for the playwright to jump up on stage and offer his commentary upon the action, and also upon his perceptions of the feelings of those watching his creation. (Thackeray himself terms the "Vanity Fair"- his comment on society in general- a sort of play.) This might sound annoying to some, but, really, it isn't. If you're already reading the book critically... I suppose it could also be compared to reading a chunk of a book for class and then stopping to discuss your reactions with a professor determined to make you see things beyond the surface and expose whatever prejudices you might have against the book. I loved debating with Thackeray in interpreting scenes and actions. The margins are filled with my disagreements or indulgence of his point of view. And I almost never write in books. It was irresistable in this case.
It is as interesting trying to draw a portrait of Thackeray's character as it is the rest of them. He is sometimes defensive, sometimes judgemental of his audience, at times quietly insightful, at times ironic, at times as gleeful as a child at some trick he believes he's played upon us. You can just see him cackling over his writing, clapping his hands when he thinks of something good and scribbling away furiously into the night. He makes the tale seem brightly, urgently alive just in the sheer immediacy of his feeling and force of personality.
Right. As to the story itself? Very solid, old fashioned tale of love, war, betrayal, money, family. All the standards for an epic. But in the way it is executed, it is anything but standard. Particularly for its time. It was subtitled, "the novel without a hero," by Thackeray. It is a book filled with, as the best are, very grey characters with motivations and actions sometimes very hard to fathom. The epitome of this is of course Becky Sharp, the main character if not the "heroine," of the piece. Capable of both acts of great kindness and selflessness, and sheer, naked cruelty when it suits her, it is hard to either condemn or praise the woman in the end. I grew to root for her anyway, though. She's awful, she really is, but she does seem to learn by the end of the book. She changes, progresses, and all while getting everything she's ever really seemed to want. She's ambitious and cutthroat, but manages to do well in a world that tries to slap her down at every turn. (Not that she doesn't deserve it sometimes, I will admit.) There is also a more standard, sweeping love story for those of you in it for the more conventional aspects. The above described Amelia is involved in that plotline.
Also? This book has the best, the longest, the most throughly researched and detailed description of the battle of Waterloo that you are likely to find. A huge chunk of the book is devoted to that day and the reaction to that day, and it is as epic a war novel as one could hope to find for that space of time.
In some ways, I feel like Thackeray was trying to encompass his century as a whole, not just the very specific time of the Napoleonic wars. He deals with class, money, ambition, war, roles and rights of women, questions of morality, and times that inevitably change and change again, pushing the old world and the old ways into ever faster irrelevance. Just as the 19th century did. I think Becky Sharp might well be a fitting symbol of the whole century: she wants to rise high in society, she wants as much money as she can get her hands on, she wants the appearance of morality (but doesn't much care for the actuality), she is from the lower class and spends the book working her way up the ladder tooth and nail through representatives of the "old guard," at any cost to herself or others. And yet, she still holds sentimental feelings for Amelia, for her husband, she does what she thinks is best for her son (however controversial that might be and at whatever cost in pride), and she cannot quite bear to be completely alone.... I don't know. I'm really just remembering things I wrote down when I read this over two years ago, re-piecing together theories, so I hope you'll forgive me if they're a wee incoherent.
There is more to it than that, but I do not think that any review of reasonable length can encompass everything in this book, particularly when I've already rambled about my favorite things for so long, and things are already this disorganized. Fitting, I suppose, in such a merrily chaotic book. So I'll just leave you with the quote that I think explains and drives much of the action and is one of the major points of the novel:
"Vanitas Vanitatium! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or having it, is satisfied?"
I just chose this passage randomly out of the first few pages of the novel to illustrate how much I love Thackeray's voice. He himself is the best character in the novel. To use theatre terminology, he definitely breaks the 4th wall into the story quite frequently. Reading it is rather like watching the play, but with periodic pauses for the playwright to jump up on stage and offer his commentary upon the action, and also upon his perceptions of the feelings of those watching his creation. (Thackeray himself terms the "Vanity Fair"- his comment on society in general- a sort of play.) This might sound annoying to some, but, really, it isn't. If you're already reading the book critically... I suppose it could also be compared to reading a chunk of a book for class and then stopping to discuss your reactions with a professor determined to make you see things beyond the surface and expose whatever prejudices you might have against the book. I loved debating with Thackeray in interpreting scenes and actions. The margins are filled with my disagreements or indulgence of his point of view. And I almost never write in books. It was irresistable in this case.
It is as interesting trying to draw a portrait of Thackeray's character as it is the rest of them. He is sometimes defensive, sometimes judgemental of his audience, at times quietly insightful, at times ironic, at times as gleeful as a child at some trick he believes he's played upon us. You can just see him cackling over his writing, clapping his hands when he thinks of something good and scribbling away furiously into the night. He makes the tale seem brightly, urgently alive just in the sheer immediacy of his feeling and force of personality.
Right. As to the story itself? Very solid, old fashioned tale of love, war, betrayal, money, family. All the standards for an epic. But in the way it is executed, it is anything but standard. Particularly for its time. It was subtitled, "the novel without a hero," by Thackeray. It is a book filled with, as the best are, very grey characters with motivations and actions sometimes very hard to fathom. The epitome of this is of course Becky Sharp, the main character if not the "heroine," of the piece. Capable of both acts of great kindness and selflessness, and sheer, naked cruelty when it suits her, it is hard to either condemn or praise the woman in the end. I grew to root for her anyway, though. She's awful, she really is, but she does seem to learn by the end of the book. She changes, progresses, and all while getting everything she's ever really seemed to want. She's ambitious and cutthroat, but manages to do well in a world that tries to slap her down at every turn. (Not that she doesn't deserve it sometimes, I will admit.) There is also a more standard, sweeping love story for those of you in it for the more conventional aspects. The above described Amelia is involved in that plotline.
Also? This book has the best, the longest, the most throughly researched and detailed description of the battle of Waterloo that you are likely to find. A huge chunk of the book is devoted to that day and the reaction to that day, and it is as epic a war novel as one could hope to find for that space of time.
In some ways, I feel like Thackeray was trying to encompass his century as a whole, not just the very specific time of the Napoleonic wars. He deals with class, money, ambition, war, roles and rights of women, questions of morality, and times that inevitably change and change again, pushing the old world and the old ways into ever faster irrelevance. Just as the 19th century did. I think Becky Sharp might well be a fitting symbol of the whole century: she wants to rise high in society, she wants as much money as she can get her hands on, she wants the appearance of morality (but doesn't much care for the actuality), she is from the lower class and spends the book working her way up the ladder tooth and nail through representatives of the "old guard," at any cost to herself or others. And yet, she still holds sentimental feelings for Amelia, for her husband, she does what she thinks is best for her son (however controversial that might be and at whatever cost in pride), and she cannot quite bear to be completely alone.... I don't know. I'm really just remembering things I wrote down when I read this over two years ago, re-piecing together theories, so I hope you'll forgive me if they're a wee incoherent.
There is more to it than that, but I do not think that any review of reasonable length can encompass everything in this book, particularly when I've already rambled about my favorite things for so long, and things are already this disorganized. Fitting, I suppose, in such a merrily chaotic book. So I'll just leave you with the quote that I think explains and drives much of the action and is one of the major points of the novel:
"Vanitas Vanitatium! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or having it, is satisfied?"
April 12, 2021
The author makes his presence known towards the end of the book. It was both eerie and uncanny. He kept breaking the fourth wall, then he conjured that apparition of his in one of the last chapters.
Vanity Fair contains no real heroes. That was a fact that Thackeray himself stated, and who am I to dispute that. This book of his is quite droll in its stitching together. There is a threat of a continuum, then everything is put back into question.
Classics are a strange beast. With them, I feel attachment like it's the result of Stockholm Syndrome. My delight at finishing these Mesozoic beasts is unique to the genre. Long may it continue.
Vanity Fair contains no real heroes. That was a fact that Thackeray himself stated, and who am I to dispute that. This book of his is quite droll in its stitching together. There is a threat of a continuum, then everything is put back into question.
Classics are a strange beast. With them, I feel attachment like it's the result of Stockholm Syndrome. My delight at finishing these Mesozoic beasts is unique to the genre. Long may it continue.
June 26, 2026
The premise I believe that Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray reveals here in his accomplished novel Vanity Fair is people are complex , yet still they strive for their own self- interest above everything, all else is irrevelant. Our Becky (Rebecca) Sharp is a prime example of this fact she goes too far in climbing the ladder to respectability, lies, cheats and steals to reach goals unattainable if her ways were nominal. A poor orphan when the teenager married Captain Rawdon Crawley lacking intelligence though, nonetheless from a wealthy family before the decisive battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's last bloody struggle. And her maybe friend Amelia Sedley also of the consequence becomes widowed to a man who loved another, Becky, no surprise unfaithful husband George Osborne. A tiger cannot change his stripes and this truism applies to our anti- heroine Becky most emphatically as she enters High Society. These people spend money they can't afford just to give the impression of limitless riches which few have but debts acquired, a silly condition in order to deceive the quite pompous empty lives of their fellow hypocrites trying to show how great it is to be them, in opulent parties, if only the public knew the reality. The numerous people fall for the concept and many will regret this fallacy like Becky however the family of her estranged husband hates her with a passion and disowns the pretentious woman, here the writer shows his knowledge of England. The impoverished Amelia disliked by her father-in- law with her little son George, pines for her late mate while Captain William Dobbin loves her but is rejected feeling guilty, she. Mr. Thackeray's best book gives a glimpse into the human character warts and all, the good and bad not the superficial but the authentic, this is quite refreshing. A European tour after the war by Amelia tells us her situation has improved and meeting Becky in a small German town not very comfortable for them however a place which helps both reach their ultimate destiny. The fun if that is the proper word in Vanity Fair (this the correct title) as Miss Becky Sharp manipulates those who deserve to be fooled by the smart, pretty girl who for a time gave the mirage of being one of their kind. Not quite an honest person but neither were the so called elites and we the countless reader are the delighted benefactors.
August 18, 2020
.اِمی با اندوه گفت: کاش به من محبت پیدا میکردند. همیشه با من سرد بودند
جورج پاسخ داد: طفلکِ من، به تو هم اگر دویست هزار لیره داشتی، محبت پیدا میکردند. اینها را اینجور بار آوردهاند. جامعهٔ ما، جامعهٔ پول و پَله است. ما در میان صرافان و کَلهگُندههایِ بازارِ شهر زندگی میکنیم که لعنت بر همهشان باد و هرکس که با آدم حرف میزند صدای جرینگجرینگِ لیرههای جیبش
را درمیآورد
اولا
جائی خواندم، رمانِ "بازار خودفروشی"، این داستانِ بی قهرمان را، یکی از بیست رمانِ بزرگِ قرن 19اُم دانسته اَند، اکنون که مطالعه اَش را به پایان بُرده ام، بعید می دانم که ادعائی بی راه و گزافه باشد
نویسنده، "ویلیام تکری"، با نگاهی نقادانه به زندگیِ مُزورانه و بَزَک-دوزَکیِ بریتانیائیهایِ هم عصرش، که شخصیت هائی از طبقاتِ مختلفِ اجتماعی اَند، داستانِ زندگی دو زن را مبنایِ روایتَش قرار می دهد. یکی فَلک زَده اما آب زیرکاه والبته در اندیشه یِ در صَدر بودن و قَدر دیدن و آن دیگری، ساده دلی مهربان و مُرَفه که در مدرسه ای شبانه روزی با هم آشنا -اگر نگوئیم یک روح در دو بدن- شده اند. ابزارِ اصلیِ تکری در ساختنِ این یاوه بازار، تغییر و تبدیلِ روزگارِ این دو زن است که ضمنِ آمدن و رفتنِ گاه و بی گاهِ شخصیت هایِ دیگر، جذابیتی دوچندان می یابد. این دو "آملیا" و "ربکا" هستند
دوم
الف: سبکِ ترجمه یِ "منوچهر بدیعی" در این کتاب، از لحاظِ بهره بردن از نسخه نسبتاََ به روز و قابلِ فهمی از فارسیِ قَجری، با ترجمه دریابندری از "بازمانده روز" مشابه است
ب: ترجمه دوست داشتنیِ بدیعی پُر بود از عباراتِ زیبا و ناشنیده یِ فارسی که گرچه خواندنش دلنشین بود اما یاد سپردنش، البته سخت
ج: بدیعی در مقدمه ای ارزشمند، ضمن اشاره به عبارت "یاوه بازار"، با استدلالاتی مقبول و با عنایت به بیتِ زیر از حافظ، عنوان برازنده یِ "بازارخودفروشی" را به سایر مواردِ متصور ترجیح می دهد
در کویِ ما شکسته دلی خَرند و بَس /// بازارِ خودفروشی از آن سویِ دیگر است
سوم
تاریک روشنِ بازارِ "خودفروشی"، برایِ خواننده اَش، نَه یک چاله و چاه، که مَغاکی است هَم تاریک و خَلسه آور، هَم روشن و دوس داشتنی!. متنِ سخت خوانِ رمان، گاهی خواننده را -هر قدر هم که بلحاظِ عادت مطالعه، منظم و سخت جان باشد-، به زمین گذاشتنِ کتاب و دوری جستن از "تکری" می خواند، آنهَم نَه یک ساعت و یک روز بلکه گاهاََ چند روز. بعنوانِ نمونه، برای خودِ من، برآوردِ هفت تا 10 روزه برایِ اتمامِ رمان، عملاََ به یک ماهِ تمام رسید. شایان ذکرست که جاذبه و دافعه یِ توصیفاتِ خُردکننده یِ تکری از جلوه فروشی هایِ تفاخرگونه و نمایشی، چنان مایه و پایه درستی دارد که در عیب جوئی، هیچَش نَتوان گفت اِلا سکوت
رخصت دهید مثالی بیاورم. کیست که به "اورست"، این دست نَیافتنی ترین خاکِ عالم برایِ آدمیان صعود کند و در خاطره گوئی اَش، توصیفاتِ دل انگیز از شعفِ نیل به قله را وانَهد و از اِفلاس و جان کَندن هایِ کوهپایه ها نوحه سرایی آغازَد؟!. تکری اما، در بازارِ خودفروشی اَش، راهی دیگر در پیش می گیرد. اگر که از کوهپایه هایِ سخت گذرِ توصیفاتِ تکان دهنده و مواجهه با سوال هایِ گاه و بی گاهِ تکری از وجدانِ خواننده بِسلامت بگذرید و نگاهی به پشتِ دُکانِ کاسبانِ پرشمارِ بی روی و چشمِ بازارِ خودفروشی بیندازید، آنگاه همچو خریداری دقیق، از لابلایِ 846 صفحه -که هر صفحه اَش یک دُکان از بازار خودفروشی است- به قُله خواهید رسید
!و چه سخت است این، هَم اگرکه حاصل شود، چه شیرین
چهارم
در این رمان که به روشی بیشتر شبیهِ "دانایِ کُل" روایت شده، نویسنده، گهگاه سوالاتی با مَطلعِ "کیست که نداند / نتواند..." ، می
پرسد که هدفش را می توان خواندنِ مخاطب به عرصه یِ مَحکِ ریاکاریِ خویشتنِ خویش در معرکه یِ بازار خودفروشی دانست و بَس
در پایانِ ریویو، چند نمونه از این دست را -از متن کتاب-، پیشکشِ نگاهتان می کنم
مگر در زندگیِ هَمگان فصلهایِ کوتاهی وجود ندارد که ظاهراََ چیزی به نظر نمی رسند اما در بقیه زندگیِ آنان اثر می گذارد؟
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پس ای بانوانِ جوان!، محتاط و به بِهوش باشید که چگونه دل می بندید. چنان به خانه شوهر روید که در فرانسه می روند. در آنجا حقوق دانان ساقدوش و ینگه عروس و داماد هستند. عهدی مَبندید که به وقتِ ضرورت نَتوانید بر آن چیره شوید. در بازار خودفروشی راهِ حُرمت دیدن و فضیلت یافتن همین است
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فقط زنها می توانند این گونه زخم بزنند. نوکِ تیرهایِ کوچکِ آنان به زهری آلوده است که هزاران بار بیش تر از شمشیرِ مردان کارگر می افتد
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نمی دانم آیا اینکه مردمان، شجاعت را تا بدین اندازه می ستایند ، بِدان سبب است که در نهان بُزدل هستند؟
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فلان عضوِ شورایِ ولایتی که از ضیافتِ بوقلمون می آید، دیگر از کالسکه اش پایین نمی پَرد تا رانِ گوسفندی بِدُزدد، اما همین آدم را گرسنگی بدهید، می بینید که از کِش رفتنِ یک قرصِ نان هم ابایی ندارد
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هر مردمآزاری، صرفاً به حکم عقل و منطق، ناگزیر است که خباثتِ مردِ از اسب اُفتاده را ثابت کند – وگرنَه بَدطینتی خود را ثابت کرده است
لینکِ مقاله فرج سرکوهی درباره رمان بازار خودفروشی در کافه بوک
https://kafebook.ir/%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B...
لینکِ مقاله یِ رادیو فردا درباره رمان بازار خودفروشی
https://www.radiofarda.com/a/f3_weekl...
جورج پاسخ داد: طفلکِ من، به تو هم اگر دویست هزار لیره داشتی، محبت پیدا میکردند. اینها را اینجور بار آوردهاند. جامعهٔ ما، جامعهٔ پول و پَله است. ما در میان صرافان و کَلهگُندههایِ بازارِ شهر زندگی میکنیم که لعنت بر همهشان باد و هرکس که با آدم حرف میزند صدای جرینگجرینگِ لیرههای جیبش
را درمیآورد
اولا
جائی خواندم، رمانِ "بازار خودفروشی"، این داستانِ بی قهرمان را، یکی از بیست رمانِ بزرگِ قرن 19اُم دانسته اَند، اکنون که مطالعه اَش را به پایان بُرده ام، بعید می دانم که ادعائی بی راه و گزافه باشد
نویسنده، "ویلیام تکری"، با نگاهی نقادانه به زندگیِ مُزورانه و بَزَک-دوزَکیِ بریتانیائیهایِ هم عصرش، که شخصیت هائی از طبقاتِ مختلفِ اجتماعی اَند، داستانِ زندگی دو زن را مبنایِ روایتَش قرار می دهد. یکی فَلک زَده اما آب زیرکاه والبته در اندیشه یِ در صَدر بودن و قَدر دیدن و آن دیگری، ساده دلی مهربان و مُرَفه که در مدرسه ای شبانه روزی با هم آشنا -اگر نگوئیم یک روح در دو بدن- شده اند. ابزارِ اصلیِ تکری در ساختنِ این یاوه بازار، تغییر و تبدیلِ روزگارِ این دو زن است که ضمنِ آمدن و رفتنِ گاه و بی گاهِ شخصیت هایِ دیگر، جذابیتی دوچندان می یابد. این دو "آملیا" و "ربکا" هستند
دوم
الف: سبکِ ترجمه یِ "منوچهر بدیعی" در این کتاب، از لحاظِ بهره بردن از نسخه نسبتاََ به روز و قابلِ فهمی از فارسیِ قَجری، با ترجمه دریابندری از "بازمانده روز" مشابه است
ب: ترجمه دوست داشتنیِ بدیعی پُر بود از عباراتِ زیبا و ناشنیده یِ فارسی که گرچه خواندنش دلنشین بود اما یاد سپردنش، البته سخت
ج: بدیعی در مقدمه ای ارزشمند، ضمن اشاره به عبارت "یاوه بازار"، با استدلالاتی مقبول و با عنایت به بیتِ زیر از حافظ، عنوان برازنده یِ "بازارخودفروشی" را به سایر مواردِ متصور ترجیح می دهد
در کویِ ما شکسته دلی خَرند و بَس /// بازارِ خودفروشی از آن سویِ دیگر است
سوم
تاریک روشنِ بازارِ "خودفروشی"، برایِ خواننده اَش، نَه یک چاله و چاه، که مَغاکی است هَم تاریک و خَلسه آور، هَم روشن و دوس داشتنی!. متنِ سخت خوانِ رمان، گاهی خواننده را -هر قدر هم که بلحاظِ عادت مطالعه، منظم و سخت جان باشد-، به زمین گذاشتنِ کتاب و دوری جستن از "تکری" می خواند، آنهَم نَه یک ساعت و یک روز بلکه گاهاََ چند روز. بعنوانِ نمونه، برای خودِ من، برآوردِ هفت تا 10 روزه برایِ اتمامِ رمان، عملاََ به یک ماهِ تمام رسید. شایان ذکرست که جاذبه و دافعه یِ توصیفاتِ خُردکننده یِ تکری از جلوه فروشی هایِ تفاخرگونه و نمایشی، چنان مایه و پایه درستی دارد که در عیب جوئی، هیچَش نَتوان گفت اِلا سکوت
رخصت دهید مثالی بیاورم. کیست که به "اورست"، این دست نَیافتنی ترین خاکِ عالم برایِ آدمیان صعود کند و در خاطره گوئی اَش، توصیفاتِ دل انگیز از شعفِ نیل به قله را وانَهد و از اِفلاس و جان کَندن هایِ کوهپایه ها نوحه سرایی آغازَد؟!. تکری اما، در بازارِ خودفروشی اَش، راهی دیگر در پیش می گیرد. اگر که از کوهپایه هایِ سخت گذرِ توصیفاتِ تکان دهنده و مواجهه با سوال هایِ گاه و بی گاهِ تکری از وجدانِ خواننده بِسلامت بگذرید و نگاهی به پشتِ دُکانِ کاسبانِ پرشمارِ بی روی و چشمِ بازارِ خودفروشی بیندازید، آنگاه همچو خریداری دقیق، از لابلایِ 846 صفحه -که هر صفحه اَش یک دُکان از بازار خودفروشی است- به قُله خواهید رسید
!و چه سخت است این، هَم اگرکه حاصل شود، چه شیرین
چهارم
در این رمان که به روشی بیشتر شبیهِ "دانایِ کُل" روایت شده، نویسنده، گهگاه سوالاتی با مَطلعِ "کیست که نداند / نتواند..." ، می
پرسد که هدفش را می توان خواندنِ مخاطب به عرصه یِ مَحکِ ریاکاریِ خویشتنِ خویش در معرکه یِ بازار خودفروشی دانست و بَس
در پایانِ ریویو، چند نمونه از این دست را -از متن کتاب-، پیشکشِ نگاهتان می کنم
مگر در زندگیِ هَمگان فصلهایِ کوتاهی وجود ندارد که ظاهراََ چیزی به نظر نمی رسند اما در بقیه زندگیِ آنان اثر می گذارد؟
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پس ای بانوانِ جوان!، محتاط و به بِهوش باشید که چگونه دل می بندید. چنان به خانه شوهر روید که در فرانسه می روند. در آنجا حقوق دانان ساقدوش و ینگه عروس و داماد هستند. عهدی مَبندید که به وقتِ ضرورت نَتوانید بر آن چیره شوید. در بازار خودفروشی راهِ حُرمت دیدن و فضیلت یافتن همین است
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فقط زنها می توانند این گونه زخم بزنند. نوکِ تیرهایِ کوچکِ آنان به زهری آلوده است که هزاران بار بیش تر از شمشیرِ مردان کارگر می افتد
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نمی دانم آیا اینکه مردمان، شجاعت را تا بدین اندازه می ستایند ، بِدان سبب است که در نهان بُزدل هستند؟
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فلان عضوِ شورایِ ولایتی که از ضیافتِ بوقلمون می آید، دیگر از کالسکه اش پایین نمی پَرد تا رانِ گوسفندی بِدُزدد، اما همین آدم را گرسنگی بدهید، می بینید که از کِش رفتنِ یک قرصِ نان هم ابایی ندارد
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هر مردمآزاری، صرفاً به حکم عقل و منطق، ناگزیر است که خباثتِ مردِ از اسب اُفتاده را ثابت کند – وگرنَه بَدطینتی خود را ثابت کرده است
لینکِ مقاله فرج سرکوهی درباره رمان بازار خودفروشی در کافه بوک
https://kafebook.ir/%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B...
لینکِ مقاله یِ رادیو فردا درباره رمان بازار خودفروشی
https://www.radiofarda.com/a/f3_weekl...
May 17, 2007
I realize that I'm not making friends here by only giving what is considered a masterful piece of literature what amounts to a "meh" review but that's really how I felt about this book.
On a small scale, I thought the writing was too long-winded. This is not a fancy story and it could have been told more concisely. I was mostly bored reading it.
On a bigger scale, I had serious issues with the heroine. Rebecca is the type of woman who has always made my stomach churn in anger and to ask me to sympathize, even for a brief moment was just too much for me. I ended up despising every single character in the book. Which, if you want to get all literatti about it might be a good thing - having a visceral reaction to the written word is often seen as a power few can manage but it didn't make me like the author, the characters or the plot any better.
On a small scale, I thought the writing was too long-winded. This is not a fancy story and it could have been told more concisely. I was mostly bored reading it.
On a bigger scale, I had serious issues with the heroine. Rebecca is the type of woman who has always made my stomach churn in anger and to ask me to sympathize, even for a brief moment was just too much for me. I ended up despising every single character in the book. Which, if you want to get all literatti about it might be a good thing - having a visceral reaction to the written word is often seen as a power few can manage but it didn't make me like the author, the characters or the plot any better.
June 14, 2026
Tutti cambiano, tutti dimenticano, non c'è nessuno che non sia senza cuore
July 17, 2016
Vanity Fair is a big surprise for me. I was expecting a story about the trial and tribulations of a couple of plucky lady friends what I discovered was a witty, satirical novel that made me laugh several times, engaged my attention always and even moving at times.
On the surface Vanity Fair is a story of the two main characters Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, two childhood friends from the opposite ends of the moral and intellectual spectrum. Becky is ambitious, conniving and smart, Amelia is humble, kind, simple, and rather dim.
The novel concurrently charts Becky’s rise from her humble station in life to the rank of the fashionable high society, while Amelia meets with several misfortunes and becomes penniless. It is quite a lengthy novel of more than 800 pages with a large cast of characters who revolve around the lives of the two protagonists.
The most interesting feature of Vanity Fair is how meta it is. Thackeray often breaks the fourth wall to address the reader directly with sly and humorous asides, making light of the novelist’s omnipotence.
Thackeray’s satirical self-portrait
The characters are very well drawn (in more ways than one), particularly Becky who is basically a femme fatale but still manages to show the odd flashes of conscience. Amelia is too virtuous for her own good yet unintentionally takes advantage of a man who has an unrequited love for her.
Nice but dim Amelia
It is an interesting trope of a lot of fiction that the nicest, kindest man is immediately friend-zoned by the love of his life. This is very much the case for William Dobbin the man who longs for his (dead) best friend’s girl Amilia like a Norwegian Blue parrot pining for the fjord*
My only minor criticism of the book is that some of the characters are just a little too stupid to be realistic. Amelia is well aware of Dobbin’s love for her but feels unable to return his love because she feels that she would be betraying the memory of her dead husband. Although Amelia is naïve, dimwitted and does not care for him Dobbin – an intelligent fellow – cannot get over his obsession with her. Amelia’s brother Jos is even worse, he has seen with his own eyes that Becky is dishonest, mercenary and cannot be trusted but he still falls for her entrapment. His stupidity is surprising because he is described as talented and singlehandedly recues his father and his sister from extreme poverty.
Thackeray’s writing is wonderful, excessive usage of the word “prodigious” notwithstanding. I don’t think I have read anything this witty since The Picture of Dorian Gray. Like all long novels it is something to sink into and live with rather than just passively reading.
The book makes me reflect that being virtuous is not enough to be of much use to the world if the virtue is not supported by intelligence and wisdom. On the other hand being clever like Becky and achieving wealth and fame is a hollow accomplishment if you are left with no genuine friends and family and viewed with disdain everywhere you go.
Becky being Sharp
One of my favorite Victorian novels, if you like reading the classics Vanity Fair is a must.
_________________________
Notes
For a change the free audiobook does not come from Librivox.org, they have their own edition but it is read by multiple readers several of them are very bad. The edition I listened to is from Lit2Go, beautifully read by Amanda Elan.
My favorite quotes are not included on GR’s quotes page for this book so I’ll drop them here:
LOL:
“Though he was familiar with all languages, Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one, and spoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness.”
Meta:
“If, a few pages back, the present writer claimed the privilege of peeping into Miss Amelia Sedley's bedroom, and understanding with the omniscience of the novelist all the gentle pains and passions which were tossing upon that innocent pillow, why should he not declare himself to be Rebecca's confidante too, master of her secrets, and seal-keeper of that young woman's conscience?”
* Hi Cecily! ;)
On the surface Vanity Fair is a story of the two main characters Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, two childhood friends from the opposite ends of the moral and intellectual spectrum. Becky is ambitious, conniving and smart, Amelia is humble, kind, simple, and rather dim.
The novel concurrently charts Becky’s rise from her humble station in life to the rank of the fashionable high society, while Amelia meets with several misfortunes and becomes penniless. It is quite a lengthy novel of more than 800 pages with a large cast of characters who revolve around the lives of the two protagonists.
The most interesting feature of Vanity Fair is how meta it is. Thackeray often breaks the fourth wall to address the reader directly with sly and humorous asides, making light of the novelist’s omnipotence.
Thackeray’s satirical self-portrait
The characters are very well drawn (in more ways than one), particularly Becky who is basically a femme fatale but still manages to show the odd flashes of conscience. Amelia is too virtuous for her own good yet unintentionally takes advantage of a man who has an unrequited love for her.
Nice but dim Amelia
It is an interesting trope of a lot of fiction that the nicest, kindest man is immediately friend-zoned by the love of his life. This is very much the case for William Dobbin the man who longs for his (dead) best friend’s girl Amilia like a Norwegian Blue parrot pining for the fjord*
My only minor criticism of the book is that some of the characters are just a little too stupid to be realistic. Amelia is well aware of Dobbin’s love for her but feels unable to return his love because she feels that she would be betraying the memory of her dead husband. Although Amelia is naïve, dimwitted and does not care for him Dobbin – an intelligent fellow – cannot get over his obsession with her. Amelia’s brother Jos is even worse, he has seen with his own eyes that Becky is dishonest, mercenary and cannot be trusted but he still falls for her entrapment. His stupidity is surprising because he is described as talented and singlehandedly recues his father and his sister from extreme poverty.
Thackeray’s writing is wonderful, excessive usage of the word “prodigious” notwithstanding. I don’t think I have read anything this witty since The Picture of Dorian Gray. Like all long novels it is something to sink into and live with rather than just passively reading.
The book makes me reflect that being virtuous is not enough to be of much use to the world if the virtue is not supported by intelligence and wisdom. On the other hand being clever like Becky and achieving wealth and fame is a hollow accomplishment if you are left with no genuine friends and family and viewed with disdain everywhere you go.
Becky being Sharp
One of my favorite Victorian novels, if you like reading the classics Vanity Fair is a must.
_________________________
Notes
For a change the free audiobook does not come from Librivox.org, they have their own edition but it is read by multiple readers several of them are very bad. The edition I listened to is from Lit2Go, beautifully read by Amanda Elan.
My favorite quotes are not included on GR’s quotes page for this book so I’ll drop them here:
LOL:
“Though he was familiar with all languages, Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one, and spoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness.”
Meta:
“If, a few pages back, the present writer claimed the privilege of peeping into Miss Amelia Sedley's bedroom, and understanding with the omniscience of the novelist all the gentle pains and passions which were tossing upon that innocent pillow, why should he not declare himself to be Rebecca's confidante too, master of her secrets, and seal-keeper of that young woman's conscience?”
* Hi Cecily! ;)
January 28, 2024
I'm in the minority here, and the lovers of this book wouldn't be so pleased with what I have to say. But I must have my say. It is only Thackeray's use of satire that held me through the novel. When that collapsed at the end, being replaced by sentimentality instead, and when an unwanted twist, just to give a touch of eeriness, trespassed on the coherent flaw, there was nothing for me to cling to, the floor being blown under my feet. Beaten and exhausted, with a sense of waste of time, is something quite unpleasant to feel after reading a classic that is said to be a 'must-read".
Some of the lengthy Victorian novels have soap-operatic quality, and Vanity Fair would easily pass as one. The introduction chapters in which the author introduced his story and characters were unalluring, and I had to struggle to find my way through the novel. Despite my indifference to the story and the greater aversion for its characters, I found ground in Thackery's satire. The whole of Victorian society, from the people's individualistic behaviour to their morals and conventions, hasn't escaped Thackery's satirical eye. The caricature portrayal of the characters, whether they are from the houses of Crawleys, Osbornes, Sedleys, or Steyns, or individuals - either not attached to a prestigious house, like our "remarkable" heroine, Rebecca Sharp, or attached to a house to which much credit wasn't given, like that of our hero, Dobbin - was entertaining.
This brings us to the point where I must address the contradictory nature of the novel's subtitle: A novel without a hero. Notwithstanding Thackeray's protestations against a hero, he has unwittingly introduced two, not one, from both genders. If one can see the story of Vanity Fair as a battle between good and bad, the hero, Dobbins, and heroine, Becky, were the respective representatives of the two factions. Even though Thackeray was cynical of both sides, and unintentional in appointing a leader to each side, there is no denying that he has brought about a heroine and hero to a story.
I didn't care much about the story, nor I cared for the characters - they exasperated me to no end. But I enjoyed the satire which enveloped the story. This was unchanged until towards the end when Thackeray decided to change the colour in favour of sentimentality. This is where the total estrangement ensued between him and me. When the only thing to which I have anchored my reading has been pulled out, I was completely drowned. However, I later learned Thackaray's reason for switching modes and adopting a sentimental tone - part of the story being semiautobiographical; but it didn't help me change my opinion about the book.
This is my personal perspective, and no one should be guided by it. Given its popularity, I feel the book deserves an audience. Although my response to the novel was poor, yours may be better. For my part, I was disappointed in my expectations.
More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/
Some of the lengthy Victorian novels have soap-operatic quality, and Vanity Fair would easily pass as one. The introduction chapters in which the author introduced his story and characters were unalluring, and I had to struggle to find my way through the novel. Despite my indifference to the story and the greater aversion for its characters, I found ground in Thackery's satire. The whole of Victorian society, from the people's individualistic behaviour to their morals and conventions, hasn't escaped Thackery's satirical eye. The caricature portrayal of the characters, whether they are from the houses of Crawleys, Osbornes, Sedleys, or Steyns, or individuals - either not attached to a prestigious house, like our "remarkable" heroine, Rebecca Sharp, or attached to a house to which much credit wasn't given, like that of our hero, Dobbin - was entertaining.
This brings us to the point where I must address the contradictory nature of the novel's subtitle: A novel without a hero. Notwithstanding Thackeray's protestations against a hero, he has unwittingly introduced two, not one, from both genders. If one can see the story of Vanity Fair as a battle between good and bad, the hero, Dobbins, and heroine, Becky, were the respective representatives of the two factions. Even though Thackeray was cynical of both sides, and unintentional in appointing a leader to each side, there is no denying that he has brought about a heroine and hero to a story.
I didn't care much about the story, nor I cared for the characters - they exasperated me to no end. But I enjoyed the satire which enveloped the story. This was unchanged until towards the end when Thackeray decided to change the colour in favour of sentimentality. This is where the total estrangement ensued between him and me. When the only thing to which I have anchored my reading has been pulled out, I was completely drowned. However, I later learned Thackaray's reason for switching modes and adopting a sentimental tone - part of the story being semiautobiographical; but it didn't help me change my opinion about the book.
This is my personal perspective, and no one should be guided by it. Given its popularity, I feel the book deserves an audience. Although my response to the novel was poor, yours may be better. For my part, I was disappointed in my expectations.
More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/
July 11, 2022
There are different ways of reading a novel. Reading a novel is a creative act in itself. Firstly there's the perspective from which we choose to read. The step on the stairs of our mind we choose to sit on from which to view the work of imagination. How high we crank up the volume of our critical faculties. How much historical context we give to what we're reading. How much of our own reading experience we bring to bear, to what extent all the other novels we've read shape and inform our appraisal. For example, I realised that Virginia Woolf stole many aspects of Thackeray's comic voice for Orlando. And because Orlando was a book she didn't take very seriously she's both mocking and paying tribute to Thackeray.
We're never as modern as we think. Novels from the distant past often point this out to us. Becky is a me, myself and I girl. She is self-indulgence personified. Morality for her is of little more importance than a daily newspaper. It's in the bin by the end of every day. But Vanity Fair is peppered with characters whose favourite emotion is moral disapproval, whose default setting is duty. They are dreary unhappy people, only half alive. (Thackeray himself is overly fond of doctrines.) Becky is by far the most alive and celebratory character in the novel. Everything she does is as if accompanied by uplifting dance music. She is contrasted in the novel by the dutiful Amelia. So respectful of duty is Amelia that she becomes estranged from her true feelings. Becky is never in doubt about her feelings; she owns them wholeheartedly. It's important that Becky is fatherless. This is a militantly patriarchal world. And the father was its figurehead. Supposedly a figure of trust and security, but more often as brutally self-serving as a fascist dictator. All the fathers in Vanity Fair are vain, egotistical self-righteous men. And it's Becky's determination to be seen and admired and have her share of the pie that brings into relief the hypocrisy and morally corrupt nature of the world she is compelled to live in. It's often morally flawed individuals who shine the brightest light on what is demoralisingly off kilter in the world we live in. There were times when I believed I could imagine the secret glee taken in Becky's behaviour by a 19th century female reader saddled with a despotic father and husband, compelled to live in a world where a woman's role was to be seen and not heard. Vanity Fair is a better feminist novel than most books written by overtly feminist authors.
We're never as modern as we think. Novels from the distant past often point this out to us. Becky is a me, myself and I girl. She is self-indulgence personified. Morality for her is of little more importance than a daily newspaper. It's in the bin by the end of every day. But Vanity Fair is peppered with characters whose favourite emotion is moral disapproval, whose default setting is duty. They are dreary unhappy people, only half alive. (Thackeray himself is overly fond of doctrines.) Becky is by far the most alive and celebratory character in the novel. Everything she does is as if accompanied by uplifting dance music. She is contrasted in the novel by the dutiful Amelia. So respectful of duty is Amelia that she becomes estranged from her true feelings. Becky is never in doubt about her feelings; she owns them wholeheartedly. It's important that Becky is fatherless. This is a militantly patriarchal world. And the father was its figurehead. Supposedly a figure of trust and security, but more often as brutally self-serving as a fascist dictator. All the fathers in Vanity Fair are vain, egotistical self-righteous men. And it's Becky's determination to be seen and admired and have her share of the pie that brings into relief the hypocrisy and morally corrupt nature of the world she is compelled to live in. It's often morally flawed individuals who shine the brightest light on what is demoralisingly off kilter in the world we live in. There were times when I believed I could imagine the secret glee taken in Becky's behaviour by a 19th century female reader saddled with a despotic father and husband, compelled to live in a world where a woman's role was to be seen and not heard. Vanity Fair is a better feminist novel than most books written by overtly feminist authors.
December 11, 2018
Cómo me sorprendió y divirtió este libro en el que el narrador mantiene un continuo diálogo con el lector y en el que disecciona en una mordaz caricatura a la sociedad de su tiempo, donde el tanto tienes tanto vales es ley y donde la mujer solo tiene una salida airosa: el matrimonio.
Un libro que llega a provocar carcajadas y que se lee siempre con una sonrisa, aunque no sea siempre alegre. No hay piedad por nadie, ni por los hombres ni por las mujeres, cuya situación parece denunciar aunque sin quitarles a ellas ni un gramo de su responsabilidad y con un cierto grado de misoginia. Por su parte, los hombres, que pueden ser ambiciosos, ridículos, vengativos, patéticos, antipáticos, vanidosos, son, en el fondo, nobles.
Fantástica la mala leche, la forma en que el narrador dice las cosas sin decirlas e incluso diciendo las contrarias; como juega con el lector, en ocasiones levantando el velo solo un poquito, en otras desvelándolo completamente, algunas más dejándonos todo a la imaginación. Sus continuos comentarios al margen dirigidos al lector son tan interesantes como la propia historia. Una delicia de libro.
Un libro que llega a provocar carcajadas y que se lee siempre con una sonrisa, aunque no sea siempre alegre. No hay piedad por nadie, ni por los hombres ni por las mujeres, cuya situación parece denunciar aunque sin quitarles a ellas ni un gramo de su responsabilidad y con un cierto grado de misoginia. Por su parte, los hombres, que pueden ser ambiciosos, ridículos, vengativos, patéticos, antipáticos, vanidosos, son, en el fondo, nobles.
Fantástica la mala leche, la forma en que el narrador dice las cosas sin decirlas e incluso diciendo las contrarias; como juega con el lector, en ocasiones levantando el velo solo un poquito, en otras desvelándolo completamente, algunas más dejándonos todo a la imaginación. Sus continuos comentarios al margen dirigidos al lector son tan interesantes como la propia historia. Una delicia de libro.
November 4, 2021
DNF na 150 stron przed końcem.
Wrzuciła mnie w zastój czytelniczy. Raczej nigdy do niej nie wrócę.
2,5/5
Wrzuciła mnie w zastój czytelniczy. Raczej nigdy do niej nie wrócę.
2,5/5
December 28, 2017
“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”
Vanity fair! A novel without a hero! A puppet show! The puppets are the flawed and unlikeable characters and the acts are hypocrisy, callousness, betrayal and artfulness.
Narrated by Thackeray himself who is unreliable and voluble, the story is about two opposites. The manipulative, cunning, scheming and pleasure-seeking Becky Sharp and the weak, naive and kindhearted (in my opinion stupid and annoying) Emmy Sedley.
Vanity Fair is the portrayal of human nature at its worst. It is about the vanity of human affairs and not an easy book to like. It took me more than 3 months to read it, whereas I finished Les Miserables and War and Peace respectively in 3 and 4 weeks and devoured Charles Dickens novels like they were chocolate dipped peanut butter crackers!
And so as Dante says, “Abandon all hope - You Who Enter Here.”
Vanity fair! A novel without a hero! A puppet show! The puppets are the flawed and unlikeable characters and the acts are hypocrisy, callousness, betrayal and artfulness.
Narrated by Thackeray himself who is unreliable and voluble, the story is about two opposites. The manipulative, cunning, scheming and pleasure-seeking Becky Sharp and the weak, naive and kindhearted (in my opinion stupid and annoying) Emmy Sedley.
Vanity Fair is the portrayal of human nature at its worst. It is about the vanity of human affairs and not an easy book to like. It took me more than 3 months to read it, whereas I finished Les Miserables and War and Peace respectively in 3 and 4 weeks and devoured Charles Dickens novels like they were chocolate dipped peanut butter crackers!
And so as Dante says, “Abandon all hope - You Who Enter Here.”
Read
September 3, 2019I finish the book and wonder how to best convert the muddy puddle of my impressions into some-kind of a coherent rich picture of a review.
Well what is is, imagine an exhibition of of George Cruikshank's drawings or of those of Gilray perhaps, there is wit and fun, but after a while , maybe they are a little wearisome. In this it reminds me of when I was a student and sometimes, not knowing any better I'd read The Economist, eventually I noticed whatever country or problem was discussed the analysis was the same: slash public spending, liberalise markets and open them to foreign trade as you open a person's chest for open heart surgery, and be smug. Then I moved on to Private Eye for a while - here the message was aside from the staff and readers of that journal that everybody is stupid and stupidly commits stupid acts, everything always has been stupid, everything always will be. This I felt was worse, because it was also depressing. About that time I suppose I also read Vanity Fair for the first time .
Again it is a classic, perhaps, at least in English, the classic moral sandwich book - a wafer of morality on either side of an oozing filling of vice and stupidity and greed.
Then again one might say it is an English War and Peace a family saga structured around the Napoleonic wars, with characters questing for self actualisation, except as satire rather than the seeking to satisfy the reader emotionally.
It is maybe an ancestor of Bonfire of the Vanities a slice of life in which everybody is reprehensible or ridiculous to varying degrees.
There is problem in terms of the book as a moral sandwich, in that the title would suggest that we are in the moral universe of Pilgrim's Progress hurrying through the vanity fair, shunning its sinners seeing only the self inflicted misery, however the author does not seem to wearing John Bunyan's shoes, his attitude to vanity fair is a relaxed amusement and from the first he suggests to the readers of the novel attitudes to the characters and their doings that don't really fit into the world of Pilgrims Progress instead he suggests that the reader can be sympathetic or amused. Of course by moving the story into the recent past, he is not suggesting that such dreadful goings on that place in Victorian society - oh no, it is the people of the reign of George IV who were so foolish and louche! The problem with laughing at the characters is that author has chosen the barrel and selected his fish, watching him shooting them for eight hundred pages, well I return to my original point.
Vanity Fair like so much nineteenth century novels was written for publication in instalments in a magazine, Thackeray earned himself a handsome £60 an issue (for about eighty printed pages) this was very good for him, the reader however can easily imagine sitting down with a sharp knife and a pot of glue and revealing the slim novel that may be struggling instead it to get out. It can be very droll and amusing as I hope the excerpts quoted below give some idea, it can also go on a bit, and if certain sections were not there would I have missed them?
The other problem about the weakness of the moral wafer is that we are left cheek by jowl with Thackeray. I read somewhere that Thackeray dropped early on the ever smiling Sambo the black servant and the 'amusingly' named Miss Swartz daughter of a German-Jewish father and a black Caribbean mother on account of reader criticism, I don't know if he was Racist as such, or it was more a case that all non-English people were inherently ridiculous in his opinion, indeed when Dobbin's regiment is posted to India his chief danger is that he may end up getting married to an Irish girl (steady the Buffs), though at least she isn't Roman-Catholic (for the benefit of the ladies and gentlemen at the back, smelling salts will be passed round), having said that if you are going to read it, don't read this edition, get this one or another with Thackeray's original illustrations - Glorvina looking at Dobbin across the dance floor is particularly fine. The flip side of this is if you've ever wondered where this British empire thing is in the British novel, it is mostly hiding out in vanity fair: the intrinsic humour of mixed race children, exotic servants, fancy shawls and foods
The joy of the novel I fear lies most in the side characters and the sketches of the hunting, shooting and boozing parish priest and his boxing gin drinking son (I guess also bound for the clergy town before the Great Reform Act 1832 which sent two people to parliament but which might have one or up to a handful of voters, perhaps all controlled by one family to rent out a seat in a Parliament, which brings in a few pennies.
A problem is that Thackeray's principal characters can never develop there always has to be some angle or several angles at which they are ridiculous and mocked by the author. Interestingly (from my point of view) Thackeray's conception seems Wordsworthian - the child is the father of the man admittedly in part because the child remains a child - I think I recall one of his drawings of his characters as children but flopping about in adult clothes to underline that idea - but then getting back to the moral sandwich idea you might ask where the adult is in the book - but there isn't one, this is a book resolutely without a hero. But digressing back to my digression I digress to Thackeray criticising Goethe's Elective affinities, which for Thackeray is morally dangerous, however we may feel psychologically much more sophisticated .
Rereading I felt a little more sorry than I remembered from previously for Becky Sharp as she comes across as the most intelligent - but in the way of tv cartoon villains - she knows her end desire, and she knows what she can do do, but she can't see that there is no road between the two. All the characters are so completely conditioned by their childhoods that there is no possibility of growth they are doomed to be slaves of satire forever, Dobbin so whipped and beaten as his name invites in childhood, that as an adult he has to visit the same on himself . Obviously Becky Sharp is your girl if you love the idea of always having the last word witty come back, more cutting than the world hairdressing championships, plainly in the contemporary world she'd be the leading edge CFO keeping a financial empire just about afloat by lending money to herself, currencies moving through jurisdictions like planes landing and taking off at an international hub airport. We get to enjoy her wheelings and dealings and then her comeuppance, yet I feel post vindication of the rights of woman and Jane Eyre that her fatal fault is that she is too French, it's all in the blood of course so it can't be helped but there you go. Biology is destiny. Ancestry is destiny. But it is all for laughs, the problem with satire is I feel sometimes the line between humour and a horrible world view, as with the treatment of non-English characters above, can be pretty fine
"Everybody is striving for what is not worth the having!" (p.563)
On the rereading I found less funny than I remember, though I suppose it is just possible that the book has stayed the same while I have grown less tolerant, it doesn't seem to me to be the kind of book that requires multiple readings or which grows and grows in the rereading, I did this time notice the tightness of the London geography - still, amusing, but if you are going to give it a go - get yourself an edition with the original illustrations!
Well what is is, imagine an exhibition of of George Cruikshank's drawings or of those of Gilray perhaps, there is wit and fun, but after a while , maybe they are a little wearisome. In this it reminds me of when I was a student and sometimes, not knowing any better I'd read The Economist, eventually I noticed whatever country or problem was discussed the analysis was the same: slash public spending, liberalise markets and open them to foreign trade as you open a person's chest for open heart surgery, and be smug. Then I moved on to Private Eye for a while - here the message was aside from the staff and readers of that journal that everybody is stupid and stupidly commits stupid acts, everything always has been stupid, everything always will be. This I felt was worse, because it was also depressing. About that time I suppose I also read Vanity Fair for the first time .
Again it is a classic, perhaps, at least in English, the classic moral sandwich book - a wafer of morality on either side of an oozing filling of vice and stupidity and greed.
Then again one might say it is an English War and Peace a family saga structured around the Napoleonic wars, with characters questing for self actualisation, except as satire rather than the seeking to satisfy the reader emotionally.
It is maybe an ancestor of Bonfire of the Vanities a slice of life in which everybody is reprehensible or ridiculous to varying degrees.
There is problem in terms of the book as a moral sandwich, in that the title would suggest that we are in the moral universe of Pilgrim's Progress hurrying through the vanity fair, shunning its sinners seeing only the self inflicted misery, however the author does not seem to wearing John Bunyan's shoes, his attitude to vanity fair is a relaxed amusement and from the first he suggests to the readers of the novel attitudes to the characters and their doings that don't really fit into the world of Pilgrims Progress instead he suggests that the reader can be sympathetic or amused. Of course by moving the story into the recent past, he is not suggesting that such dreadful goings on that place in Victorian society - oh no, it is the people of the reign of George IV who were so foolish and louche! The problem with laughing at the characters is that author has chosen the barrel and selected his fish, watching him shooting them for eight hundred pages, well I return to my original point.
Vanity Fair like so much nineteenth century novels was written for publication in instalments in a magazine, Thackeray earned himself a handsome £60 an issue (for about eighty printed pages) this was very good for him, the reader however can easily imagine sitting down with a sharp knife and a pot of glue and revealing the slim novel that may be struggling instead it to get out. It can be very droll and amusing as I hope the excerpts quoted below give some idea, it can also go on a bit, and if certain sections were not there would I have missed them?
The other problem about the weakness of the moral wafer is that we are left cheek by jowl with Thackeray. I read somewhere that Thackeray dropped early on the ever smiling Sambo the black servant and the 'amusingly' named Miss Swartz daughter of a German-Jewish father and a black Caribbean mother on account of reader criticism, I don't know if he was Racist as such, or it was more a case that all non-English people were inherently ridiculous in his opinion, indeed when Dobbin's regiment is posted to India his chief danger is that he may end up getting married to an Irish girl (steady the Buffs), though at least she isn't Roman-Catholic (for the benefit of the ladies and gentlemen at the back, smelling salts will be passed round), having said that if you are going to read it, don't read this edition, get this one or another with Thackeray's original illustrations - Glorvina looking at Dobbin across the dance floor is particularly fine. The flip side of this is if you've ever wondered where this British empire thing is in the British novel, it is mostly hiding out in vanity fair: the intrinsic humour of mixed race children, exotic servants, fancy shawls and foods
The joy of the novel I fear lies most in the side characters and the sketches of the hunting, shooting and boozing parish priest and his boxing gin drinking son (I guess also bound for the clergy town before the Great Reform Act 1832 which sent two people to parliament but which might have one or up to a handful of voters, perhaps all controlled by one family to rent out a seat in a Parliament, which brings in a few pennies.
A problem is that Thackeray's principal characters can never develop there always has to be some angle or several angles at which they are ridiculous and mocked by the author. Interestingly (from my point of view) Thackeray's conception seems Wordsworthian - the child is the father of the man admittedly in part because the child remains a child - I think I recall one of his drawings of his characters as children but flopping about in adult clothes to underline that idea - but then getting back to the moral sandwich idea you might ask where the adult is in the book - but there isn't one, this is a book resolutely without a hero. But digressing back to my digression I digress to Thackeray criticising Goethe's Elective affinities, which for Thackeray is morally dangerous, however we may feel psychologically much more sophisticated .
Rereading I felt a little more sorry than I remembered from previously for Becky Sharp as she comes across as the most intelligent - but in the way of tv cartoon villains - she knows her end desire, and she knows what she can do do, but she can't see that there is no road between the two. All the characters are so completely conditioned by their childhoods that there is no possibility of growth they are doomed to be slaves of satire forever, Dobbin so whipped and beaten as his name invites in childhood, that as an adult he has to visit the same on himself . Obviously Becky Sharp is your girl if you love the idea of always having the last word witty come back, more cutting than the world hairdressing championships, plainly in the contemporary world she'd be the leading edge CFO keeping a financial empire just about afloat by lending money to herself, currencies moving through jurisdictions like planes landing and taking off at an international hub airport. We get to enjoy her wheelings and dealings and then her comeuppance, yet I feel post vindication of the rights of woman and Jane Eyre that her fatal fault is that she is too French, it's all in the blood of course so it can't be helped but there you go. Biology is destiny. Ancestry is destiny. But it is all for laughs, the problem with satire is I feel sometimes the line between humour and a horrible world view, as with the treatment of non-English characters above, can be pretty fine
"Everybody is striving for what is not worth the having!" (p.563)
On the rereading I found less funny than I remember, though I suppose it is just possible that the book has stayed the same while I have grown less tolerant, it doesn't seem to me to be the kind of book that requires multiple readings or which grows and grows in the rereading, I did this time notice the tightness of the London geography - still, amusing, but if you are going to give it a go - get yourself an edition with the original illustrations!
May 2, 2026
What a saga! I can't believe I finally finished...I found that I would feel like I was getting the run around with Thackeray half chapter asides but before I knew it I'd be totally engrossed in the story once again. If you like tongue in cheek commentary, silly names, over the top parody of social conventions and hints of adultery that was never explicitly mentioned but you wonder just how enigmatic could Becky Sharpe be. Would all those men fall victim to just her charm? Amelia was at times such a wet blanket with her simple, narrow focus but still very pitiable. I liked the Mrs. Dowd parts and Dobbin is an admirable character. Overall I understand the hype and pull of this work.
January 4, 2015
Excessively Long Book Syndrome: It takes ages to read and it's more than a 100 years old, therefore it must be great, right? Wrong! So wrong, in this case, that the editor's claim that it "has strong claims to be the greatest novel in the English language" is laughable. It's not even the greatest such novel of its century by a huge stretch - seriously, the best works of Hardy, the Brontes and Austen are all better by a country mile, not least because they don't carry such a ridiculous weight of excess verbiage. A modern editor would need to employ slash and burn to prune this jungle back. Most of the excess is Authorial Voice going off along lengthy tangents before getting back to describing the action. It's extreme even by Victorian standards.
Leaving the sheer length aside, the tone of the book ranges from scathing, sarcastic and satirical to farcical, comical and ironical by way of such stations as bitter, sympathetic and moralistic - with the clear message that Earthly pursuits are all vanity, as encapsulated in the title metaphor, which is repeated ad nauseum through-out. Beyond that there are clear attitudes in regard to the conduct of both women and men that go back-and-fore across the line between cliche-Victorian stereotypes and socially progressive campaigner. The over-all bitter and satirical tone, however, seems to detract from rather than strengthen the power of these themes; Hardy's all-out Tragic approach is much more effective (and he is far more advanced in his views anyway). The same goes for Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, where the real terrors of marriage to an addict are laid bare. Austen's wit and humour and wish-fulfillment in Pride and Prejudice is far more entertaining and has a female character everyone can get behind and root for. That's completely absent here; the two contrasted female protagonists are on the one hand, increasingly evil as the story progresses and on the other, dull and lacking all perception of character in others. It's hard to like either of them after about the first third of the book. Instead we have a Stoic hero, who whilst admirable in many ways, is also unexciting for the most part.
By now you may be wondering why I staggered through all the 811p of relatively small print constituting the main text. (The rest is notes and other "apparatus'). Occasionally I wondered whether it was worth it, myself, but in fact, there is a good, if diluted, story here and some snort-worthy humourous cracks and comic scenes as well as drama: there are times when Thackeray focuses on his story-telling and the book becomes involving. Sufficiently so to drag the reader (or at least this one) through to the end simply to find out how the whole mess of family conflicts and marital disasters turns out for everybody (and there are so many characters that even Thackeray can't keep them all straight at times, renaming a serving maid or two here and there and the like.) And there are two great moments, two great sentences, one at the half-way point, at Waterloo, the other right at the end in the closing paragraphs, that show a way forward to a superior kind of writing - but I can't tell you what they are without spoiling everything.
Over-all, yes it was worth the effort, but when it comes to famous gigantic novels, Les Misearbles and War and Peace are vastly more rewarding.
Leaving the sheer length aside, the tone of the book ranges from scathing, sarcastic and satirical to farcical, comical and ironical by way of such stations as bitter, sympathetic and moralistic - with the clear message that Earthly pursuits are all vanity, as encapsulated in the title metaphor, which is repeated ad nauseum through-out. Beyond that there are clear attitudes in regard to the conduct of both women and men that go back-and-fore across the line between cliche-Victorian stereotypes and socially progressive campaigner. The over-all bitter and satirical tone, however, seems to detract from rather than strengthen the power of these themes; Hardy's all-out Tragic approach is much more effective (and he is far more advanced in his views anyway). The same goes for Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, where the real terrors of marriage to an addict are laid bare. Austen's wit and humour and wish-fulfillment in Pride and Prejudice is far more entertaining and has a female character everyone can get behind and root for. That's completely absent here; the two contrasted female protagonists are on the one hand, increasingly evil as the story progresses and on the other, dull and lacking all perception of character in others. It's hard to like either of them after about the first third of the book. Instead we have a Stoic hero, who whilst admirable in many ways, is also unexciting for the most part.
By now you may be wondering why I staggered through all the 811p of relatively small print constituting the main text. (The rest is notes and other "apparatus'). Occasionally I wondered whether it was worth it, myself, but in fact, there is a good, if diluted, story here and some snort-worthy humourous cracks and comic scenes as well as drama: there are times when Thackeray focuses on his story-telling and the book becomes involving. Sufficiently so to drag the reader (or at least this one) through to the end simply to find out how the whole mess of family conflicts and marital disasters turns out for everybody (and there are so many characters that even Thackeray can't keep them all straight at times, renaming a serving maid or two here and there and the like.) And there are two great moments, two great sentences, one at the half-way point, at Waterloo, the other right at the end in the closing paragraphs, that show a way forward to a superior kind of writing - but I can't tell you what they are without spoiling everything.
Over-all, yes it was worth the effort, but when it comes to famous gigantic novels, Les Misearbles and War and Peace are vastly more rewarding.
September 1, 2022
With this, completing 10 of 339 from The Rory Gilmore Reading List.
4.5/5 stars
Yet another book from the rory gilmore reading list that I enjoyed reading. The show didn't disappoint me, neither did its reading list. I'd a fantastic time reading Vanity Fair.
Would you be convinced to read Vanity Fair if I told you that this is a novel without heroes. No? Okay. Would you be convinced enough to read it if I told you that Vanity Fair was an inspiration for Tolstoy's War and Peace? Yes? Thought so.
At first, I was intimidated by the size of the book, but once I started reading the first chapter, there was not stopping it. I just could not put the book down. Thackeray created a classic that stood the test of time and that can still keep us on our toes. Throughout the novel I felt like I was reading a drama series. And I mean that in the best possible way.
Becky Sharp is one who is a master in manipulation. You might hate her but you can't pretend that you don't admire her cleverness and practical attitude. Amelia, on the other hand is the purest soul you can find on Earth. If I've to describe both, Becky is the brain whereas, Amelia is the heart.
I'd read Gone with the Wind just before Vanity Fair and I somehow found analogy between two of the characters of Vanity Fair to that of Gone with the Wind. Becky's character was somewhat similar to Scarlett O'Hara's and Amelia's character was similar to that of Melanie's. Having said that I want to state this too that Scarlett O'Hara was cleverer. Scarlett was written by a woman after all.
Vanity Fair has brilliance and we can't deny it. I'm glad I read it and experienced Thackeray's satire. His writing style was so on point. It was infuriating. It revealed awful truths about the world we live in. Thackeray didn't care if his readers were having a great time with the novel. He wanted to make a statement. He wanted to disturb us from our comfortable seats and boy do I love him for that.
I would like to end my review with a question that I'm leaving for you. Should we be like Rebecca, smart, intelligent and practical who knows how to extract the best out of a situation and transform according to the situation's demand? Or should we continue to live by our qualities and virtues and never change just to gain worldly belongings?
Review Posted: 19 August 2022.
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4.5/5 stars
Yet another book from the rory gilmore reading list that I enjoyed reading. The show didn't disappoint me, neither did its reading list. I'd a fantastic time reading Vanity Fair.
"Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?"
Would you be convinced to read Vanity Fair if I told you that this is a novel without heroes. No? Okay. Would you be convinced enough to read it if I told you that Vanity Fair was an inspiration for Tolstoy's War and Peace? Yes? Thought so.
At first, I was intimidated by the size of the book, but once I started reading the first chapter, there was not stopping it. I just could not put the book down. Thackeray created a classic that stood the test of time and that can still keep us on our toes. Throughout the novel I felt like I was reading a drama series. And I mean that in the best possible way.
Becky Sharp is one who is a master in manipulation. You might hate her but you can't pretend that you don't admire her cleverness and practical attitude. Amelia, on the other hand is the purest soul you can find on Earth. If I've to describe both, Becky is the brain whereas, Amelia is the heart.
I'd read Gone with the Wind just before Vanity Fair and I somehow found analogy between two of the characters of Vanity Fair to that of Gone with the Wind. Becky's character was somewhat similar to Scarlett O'Hara's and Amelia's character was similar to that of Melanie's. Having said that I want to state this too that Scarlett O'Hara was cleverer. Scarlett was written by a woman after all.
"A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise."
Vanity Fair has brilliance and we can't deny it. I'm glad I read it and experienced Thackeray's satire. His writing style was so on point. It was infuriating. It revealed awful truths about the world we live in. Thackeray didn't care if his readers were having a great time with the novel. He wanted to make a statement. He wanted to disturb us from our comfortable seats and boy do I love him for that.
I would like to end my review with a question that I'm leaving for you. Should we be like Rebecca, smart, intelligent and practical who knows how to extract the best out of a situation and transform according to the situation's demand? Or should we continue to live by our qualities and virtues and never change just to gain worldly belongings?
Review Posted: 19 August 2022.
Visit My Blog to read this and all my other reviews.
January 22, 2012
There was a girl I knew in school that made my formative years (for this purpose I'm considering the "formative years" to be 11-14) a 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 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.
March 1, 2017
Ok, ok...I'm reading this as a break between books for classes in Grad School. Is that the dorkiest thing you could ever imagine? Yes. It is. It just is.
But the first two pages, the author's introduction....greatest two pages of introductory prose I've ever seen. Better than Kafka, better than Nabokov, better than whatever. Fucking brilliant- vivid, funny, rambunctious, wise, sarcastic, immortally satirical. I was hooked each time I picked up the book and read through it. Sometimes there's that first blush kind of thing going on, when a book seems amazing in the first few minutes of poking around in it in a bookstore and then it loses its shine when you take it home and read it.
Not so w. Vanity Fair...
I'm maybe a hundred pages in and I'm savoring it. It's deliciously wise and cyncial and knowing and filled with its own combustion engine, perpetual storytelling (ie serialization, 'let's throw in a subplot so we can go out to eat for the next week') is a lost art. this is prose I already know I'm going to re-read after I'm finished.
One thing, an objection anticipated-
Story being overtold? Concision? Legitimate grounds...in context. How much story does one really need? What is a story without the very thing which comprises it? The protein in the beef, the fiber in the bread....LANGUAGE.
For me as a reader, it's all about language- the way things are said, not (as much) what's said. How many buildungsroman 'idealistic young man from the sticks hits the big city and gets more than he bargained for" stories does one need to read (The Red And the Black, On The Road, Huck Finn, Great Gatsby, Portrait, whatever....all these can arguably be included in the genre but they're not the same novel at all, because they're not written by the same author) and that individual stamp can indeed be read in any amount of ways but it best manifests itself in language.
But the first two pages, the author's introduction....greatest two pages of introductory prose I've ever seen. Better than Kafka, better than Nabokov, better than whatever. Fucking brilliant- vivid, funny, rambunctious, wise, sarcastic, immortally satirical. I was hooked each time I picked up the book and read through it. Sometimes there's that first blush kind of thing going on, when a book seems amazing in the first few minutes of poking around in it in a bookstore and then it loses its shine when you take it home and read it.
Not so w. Vanity Fair...
I'm maybe a hundred pages in and I'm savoring it. It's deliciously wise and cyncial and knowing and filled with its own combustion engine, perpetual storytelling (ie serialization, 'let's throw in a subplot so we can go out to eat for the next week') is a lost art. this is prose I already know I'm going to re-read after I'm finished.
One thing, an objection anticipated-
Story being overtold? Concision? Legitimate grounds...in context. How much story does one really need? What is a story without the very thing which comprises it? The protein in the beef, the fiber in the bread....LANGUAGE.
For me as a reader, it's all about language- the way things are said, not (as much) what's said. How many buildungsroman 'idealistic young man from the sticks hits the big city and gets more than he bargained for" stories does one need to read (The Red And the Black, On The Road, Huck Finn, Great Gatsby, Portrait, whatever....all these can arguably be included in the genre but they're not the same novel at all, because they're not written by the same author) and that individual stamp can indeed be read in any amount of ways but it best manifests itself in language.
April 29, 2020
Vanity Fair may be brilliant, but it is extremely bloated and uneven. For each page that features interesting characters and compelling dialogue, one must trudge through a greater measure of dull, relentless and misplaced description, aside and detail. Thackeray just goes on and on, spilling onto the page everything he can possibly think of, without any consideration for what is interesting and what is not. The story seems not to be driving anywhere in particular, but it drives on regardless, and the driver enjoys nothing more than tediously pointing out each minute element of the scenery passed along the way.
This is a novel built on comic wit and satire, which, I've come to realise, aren't really my thing, especially when coupled with Nineteenth Century concerns and sensibilities and packaged in bland realism. Give me a metaphor now and then, or something! Of the mostly unappealing and forgettable cast of characters, Becky was the one I felt least indifferent too, and she represents almost all of what I enjoyed about this novel. I found myself frequently tuning out when she wasn't around, barely expending the effort to keep track of which Crawley was which, or who was married to whom, or in which park did each now happen to take their walks of an afternoon (as compared to last week), and who enjoys a little claret with their meals now and then, and is tonight's veal to their liking? - all for very little payoff.
I think to enjoy this novel you have to have some sort of affinity for its excesses, to be captivated by its time and place, its wit and voice and style, in order to follow, eagerly and attentively down each unremarkable cul-de-sac. For my part, I followed, but reluctantly, and with very little enthusiasm. If Vanity Fair were about 300 pages shorter I might have enjoyed it, but as it stands I'm just pleased to have gotten through it.
This is a novel built on comic wit and satire, which, I've come to realise, aren't really my thing, especially when coupled with Nineteenth Century concerns and sensibilities and packaged in bland realism. Give me a metaphor now and then, or something! Of the mostly unappealing and forgettable cast of characters, Becky was the one I felt least indifferent too, and she represents almost all of what I enjoyed about this novel. I found myself frequently tuning out when she wasn't around, barely expending the effort to keep track of which Crawley was which, or who was married to whom, or in which park did each now happen to take their walks of an afternoon (as compared to last week), and who enjoys a little claret with their meals now and then, and is tonight's veal to their liking? - all for very little payoff.
I think to enjoy this novel you have to have some sort of affinity for its excesses, to be captivated by its time and place, its wit and voice and style, in order to follow, eagerly and attentively down each unremarkable cul-de-sac. For my part, I followed, but reluctantly, and with very little enthusiasm. If Vanity Fair were about 300 pages shorter I might have enjoyed it, but as it stands I'm just pleased to have gotten through it.
October 5, 2025
Plănuiesc să citesc de mult acest roman și mărturisesc că m-a fermecat nu numai modul de scriere, dar și ironia fină a autorului. Lăcomia, dorința de a parveni, lingușala, prefăcătoria și prostia au fost redate în multe romane, dar în acesta sunt atât de firesc redate și cu atâta ironie încât te fac să te întrebi ce s-a schimbat dealungul timpului.
December 4, 2013
Spoilers!
Miss Rebecca Sharp's Guide to the Regency Society
1. If a young lady is not born into either rank or fortune, she will be looked down upon by good society and forced to exist in a humiliating dependency on others for life, unless the said young lady is willing, nay, not merely willing, but most strenuously strive to improve her situation.
2. If the said young lady, despite being a poor orphan, happens to have the good fortune of being admitted into an exclusive academy for young ladies as an articled pupil, she has to ensure that she makes the utmost effort to learn everything that she could in that fine establishment. The modern languages, Greek, Latin and the rudiments of Hebrew, as well as music and dancing are important subjects that need to be mastered by an accomplished young lady, but most important of all is the ability to speak good French with the purest Parisian accent, for it enables the speaker to pass herself off as a daughter of the French aristocracy, even though in reality her mother is a mere stage actress.
3. “A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes”. A wealthy husband should be prospected immediately after the young lady completes her education. The brother of a school friend is most suitable, even if the said young man is a fat dandy and not very sensible, as long as he is of ample inheritance. Beware of the gluttonous young buck though, for an overindulgence in a bowl of punch might thwart a young lady’s designs on him!
4. “Schoolmistresses' letters are to be trusted no more nor less than churchyard epitaphs”. There are notable exceptions, it must be admitted, but they are exceedingly rare. Nevertheless, the young lady, should she fail in her initial effort to land a wealthy husband, should endeavour to gain a letter of introduction that would recommend her as a governess to the most respectable of households. Such households, though populated by dissolute aristocrats, might house a number of potential spouses. A younger son of a baronet, even though he is a scoundrel, gambler, swindler and murderer, is a most suitable prospect, provided that he is to inherit an elderly relative’s fortune.
5. “Let them show ever so little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once: old or ugly, it is all the same”. A little sweet talk and a wink, and they all fall on your feet bearing trinkets of pearls and gold. It doesn’t matter a whit if he happens to be your best friend’s husband, nor if you yourself is somebody’s else’s wife. It is best, however, if the gentleman admirer is a wealthy, powerful nobleman, for the advantages that a clever lady could get from him, financially or otherwise, is great indeed. Why, not only is he able to provide the lady’s household with a thousand-pound cheque at a whim, he is also able to bestow a profitable colonial governorship on the lady’s husband. Beware of the jealous husband, though, who through an imaginary affront to his honor might destroy all of the lady’s clever schemes!
6. How To Live Well On Nothing A Year. Appearances must be kept: a residence in Mayfair, a smart carriage, the best game and wines for one’s entertainments, and the latest Parisian fashions. How to afford all these when one has no regular income? Not to despair, the ingenious lady always has means to do so. Prevail upon the generosity of friends and relatives. Impose upon your landlord and your greengrocers, washerwomen and other domestics. Unlike banks or Hebrew money-lenders, these little people are very unlikely to set loose a bailiff upon your respectable self, especially if they are in awe of your noble family.
7. If all these schemes fail, and both your husband and gentleman admirer abandon you in a cloud of scandal, despair not! A lady of some talent can always flee abroad and sing for her supper, if necessary. Better still, if you could rekindle a relationship with a former beau, now older and ailing, who though his own fortune is much encumbered, would take a life insurance naming your pitiful self as a beneficiary. The small fortune that ensues from such a settlement is surely enough to tide you over until your estranged son succeeds into his baronetcy and is finally able to provide you with a generous allowance. Then you can spend your declining years as an admirably pious and charitable society lady. Thus a penniless orphan girl need not condemn herself to a life of servitude and penury, but instead rise into the pinnacle of society through her industry and ingeniousness!
Miss Rebecca Sharp's Guide to the Regency Society
1. If a young lady is not born into either rank or fortune, she will be looked down upon by good society and forced to exist in a humiliating dependency on others for life, unless the said young lady is willing, nay, not merely willing, but most strenuously strive to improve her situation.
2. If the said young lady, despite being a poor orphan, happens to have the good fortune of being admitted into an exclusive academy for young ladies as an articled pupil, she has to ensure that she makes the utmost effort to learn everything that she could in that fine establishment. The modern languages, Greek, Latin and the rudiments of Hebrew, as well as music and dancing are important subjects that need to be mastered by an accomplished young lady, but most important of all is the ability to speak good French with the purest Parisian accent, for it enables the speaker to pass herself off as a daughter of the French aristocracy, even though in reality her mother is a mere stage actress.
3. “A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes”. A wealthy husband should be prospected immediately after the young lady completes her education. The brother of a school friend is most suitable, even if the said young man is a fat dandy and not very sensible, as long as he is of ample inheritance. Beware of the gluttonous young buck though, for an overindulgence in a bowl of punch might thwart a young lady’s designs on him!
4. “Schoolmistresses' letters are to be trusted no more nor less than churchyard epitaphs”. There are notable exceptions, it must be admitted, but they are exceedingly rare. Nevertheless, the young lady, should she fail in her initial effort to land a wealthy husband, should endeavour to gain a letter of introduction that would recommend her as a governess to the most respectable of households. Such households, though populated by dissolute aristocrats, might house a number of potential spouses. A younger son of a baronet, even though he is a scoundrel, gambler, swindler and murderer, is a most suitable prospect, provided that he is to inherit an elderly relative’s fortune.
5. “Let them show ever so little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once: old or ugly, it is all the same”. A little sweet talk and a wink, and they all fall on your feet bearing trinkets of pearls and gold. It doesn’t matter a whit if he happens to be your best friend’s husband, nor if you yourself is somebody’s else’s wife. It is best, however, if the gentleman admirer is a wealthy, powerful nobleman, for the advantages that a clever lady could get from him, financially or otherwise, is great indeed. Why, not only is he able to provide the lady’s household with a thousand-pound cheque at a whim, he is also able to bestow a profitable colonial governorship on the lady’s husband. Beware of the jealous husband, though, who through an imaginary affront to his honor might destroy all of the lady’s clever schemes!
6. How To Live Well On Nothing A Year. Appearances must be kept: a residence in Mayfair, a smart carriage, the best game and wines for one’s entertainments, and the latest Parisian fashions. How to afford all these when one has no regular income? Not to despair, the ingenious lady always has means to do so. Prevail upon the generosity of friends and relatives. Impose upon your landlord and your greengrocers, washerwomen and other domestics. Unlike banks or Hebrew money-lenders, these little people are very unlikely to set loose a bailiff upon your respectable self, especially if they are in awe of your noble family.
7. If all these schemes fail, and both your husband and gentleman admirer abandon you in a cloud of scandal, despair not! A lady of some talent can always flee abroad and sing for her supper, if necessary. Better still, if you could rekindle a relationship with a former beau, now older and ailing, who though his own fortune is much encumbered, would take a life insurance naming your pitiful self as a beneficiary. The small fortune that ensues from such a settlement is surely enough to tide you over until your estranged son succeeds into his baronetcy and is finally able to provide you with a generous allowance. Then you can spend your declining years as an admirably pious and charitable society lady. Thus a penniless orphan girl need not condemn herself to a life of servitude and penury, but instead rise into the pinnacle of society through her industry and ingeniousness!
December 4, 2018
"Vanity 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 super-rigidly-defined 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 I’ve 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 early 19th 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, status-seeking 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 in 19th 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 self-reliant 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 sad-sack 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, semi-pathetic, and needing some white-knight rescue action. Here, though, we are shown exactly what happens when you take those supposed ideals of femininity to the extreme -- you get Jell-O in human form.
Thackery's narrator, who's telling a "true" story based on the accounts of the principal characters he has met, satirizes early 19th 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 it’s 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 I’ve encountered to describe an honest vision of the world.
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 early 19th 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, status-seeking 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 in 19th 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 self-reliant 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 sad-sack 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, semi-pathetic, and needing some white-knight rescue action. Here, though, we are shown exactly what happens when you take those supposed ideals of femininity to the extreme -- you get Jell-O in human form.
Thackery's narrator, who's telling a "true" story based on the accounts of the principal characters he has met, satirizes early 19th 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 it’s 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 I’ve encountered to describe an honest vision of the world.
Want to Read
August 27, 2025Update
I had DNFed it back in July, but just got myself a physical copy, and rest assured, I'll be reading my money's worth. Back to the TBR it goes!
Thoughts Before Reading
Finding out that a world-renowned 19th-century author was born where you live is all fun and games until you realise he was literally a British coloniser.
Thoughts While Reading
◻ Not that I want to, but if I were ever a character in a regency novel, I'd want to be like Ms Becky Sharp rather than any Austen heroine.
◼ "the girls have only to turn the tables, and say of one of their own sex, “She is as vain as a man,” and they will have perfect reason. The bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their toilettes, quite as proud of their personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette in the world."
I'm already loving this book!
◻ Potentially controversial take, but I get what the author of Bridgerton was trying to say when she defended her choice to completely exclude racial diversity from her historical romance books. I don't think any of our regency protagonists would have a nerdy Asian best friend, you know. At any rate, the racism in this book is nauseating but understandable.
◼ Live laugh love our feminist queen Ms Crawley.
◻ At one point the author went, "I know you readers don't give a shit about this character," and I was like yes, Sir, we don't, only for him to proceed to go on a three-chapter-long tangent about said unimportant character. Classics, amiright?
◼ Every smart girl lowkey needs a himbo boyfriend.
◻ Bring Becky back ! Bring Becky back ! Bring Becky back ! Bring Becky back !
I had DNFed it back in July, but just got myself a physical copy, and rest assured, I'll be reading my money's worth. Back to the TBR it goes!
Thoughts Before Reading
Finding out that a world-renowned 19th-century author was born where you live is all fun and games until you realise he was literally a British coloniser.
Thoughts While Reading
◻ Not that I want to, but if I were ever a character in a regency novel, I'd want to be like Ms Becky Sharp rather than any Austen heroine.
◼ "the girls have only to turn the tables, and say of one of their own sex, “She is as vain as a man,” and they will have perfect reason. The bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their toilettes, quite as proud of their personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette in the world."
I'm already loving this book!
◻ Potentially controversial take, but I get what the author of Bridgerton was trying to say when she defended her choice to completely exclude racial diversity from her historical romance books. I don't think any of our regency protagonists would have a nerdy Asian best friend, you know. At any rate, the racism in this book is nauseating but understandable.
◼ Live laugh love our feminist queen Ms Crawley.
◻ At one point the author went, "I know you readers don't give a shit about this character," and I was like yes, Sir, we don't, only for him to proceed to go on a three-chapter-long tangent about said unimportant character. Classics, amiright?
◼ Every smart girl lowkey needs a himbo boyfriend.
◻ Bring Becky back ! Bring Becky back ! Bring Becky back ! Bring Becky back !
November 27, 2025
"Vanity Fair - A Novel Without Heroes," Thackeray's work is first and foremost a critique of early 19th-century English society, and in a way, of the human condition itself, to the point that there are virtually no endearing characters: humanity is a mere puppet, and the novelist can only adopt an ironic distance from this farcical spectacle of human turmoil. Attacking the hypocrisy and contradictions of humankind, Thackeray excels at evoking complex, ambivalent, and ever-shifting feelings toward his characters. Becky Sharp, in particular, is a striking figure, a fascinating character, one of those you don't forget. Rebecca is beautiful, intelligent, gifted, lively, and seductive, but her poverty and her desire to make a name for herself in this vanity fair that is the world lead her to abandon all scruples, even all capacity for love—and one can hardly blame her when she says to herself:
"I believe I could be virtuous if I had an income of five thousand pounds sterling." An admirable and detestable manipulator, both a victim and a perpetrator, the brilliant Becky exposes the hypocrisy of the Vanity Fair that drives her to adopt behavior this same society condemns, in her own life, but obviously not in that of the wealthy Marquis of Steyne. Vanity Fair offers us the captivating spectacle of a human comedy, all too human, where social and psychological analysis, with humor and subtlety, highlights the deleterious effects of the importance given to money, the ugliness and hypocrisy of a society that refuses to acknowledge its profound immorality.
"I believe I could be virtuous if I had an income of five thousand pounds sterling." An admirable and detestable manipulator, both a victim and a perpetrator, the brilliant Becky exposes the hypocrisy of the Vanity Fair that drives her to adopt behavior this same society condemns, in her own life, but obviously not in that of the wealthy Marquis of Steyne. Vanity Fair offers us the captivating spectacle of a human comedy, all too human, where social and psychological analysis, with humor and subtlety, highlights the deleterious effects of the importance given to money, the ugliness and hypocrisy of a society that refuses to acknowledge its profound immorality.
June 27, 2019
This book really wasn't for me. Don't get me wrong, some parts were very enjoyable and humorous, while others, not so much. The Rebecca, Becky character, I just couldn't stand! She was such a snob and just so full of herself! She just wanted to be one of the rich and famous! Three stars.
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