Reading 1001 discussion

Just got this big one off my plate for TBR- Hurray!

Vanity Fair "a novel without a hero" begins with friends Amelia (Emmy) and Becky watching a puppet show at a London fair in 1814- a fitting motif for the unfolding hi-jinks of the book that takes us through the lives of these girls through marriage prospects, the Napoleonic Wars, widowhood, family dynamic clashes, the gain and loss of status and income, and motherhood. While there is a lot of time spent with uncompromising Rose-tinted-glasses guilty Emmy, the morally dubious social climber Becky is arguably the main character.

I won't spoil of lay down the whole intertwined complex soap-opera ish plot of the novel- but I will say I did find it entertaining and engaging. I can see how it would have worked especially well as a serial- as it was originally published.

On the thematic side of things- this novel was named after a town in the Pilgrim's progress that represents the folly of people's attachment to worldly things- apt considering Becky's follies with social climbing in the book- as well as things such as Emmy's attachment to the idea of her deceased husband (to her own disadvantage). I also liked the idea of the novel without a hero as Thackeray calls it- though I would argue some of the protagonists simply have human flaws within the realm of reason that I wouldn't necessarily say exclude them from heroism. Becky, however, I can see as the archetype of the anti-hero that likely makes this book a trailblazer on that front.

I also like that many of the tragic events of the novel are shrouded in ambiguity. This adds both to Becky's amoral and dubious but not outright evil nature, and also plays into the reader's own potential prejudices and assumptions of less affluent people who are "trying to make it".

This book is long and really felt like it at times, but I overall really enjoyed it and appreciate what it brought to the moral nature (or lack there of) of the novel. I gave it 4 stars.