THACKERY AND VANITY FAIR
Vanity Fair was a turning point in Thackeray's life
and career. A gentleman by birth and education, Thackeray was forced to
earn his living by writing because most of his money had been lost in a
financial crash. The articles, reviews, essays, and sketches he
produced for 
magazines and newspapers did not provide sufficient income either to
support a gentleman's status or to provide for the futures of his two
daughters. In addition, writing for a living made his status as a
gentleman somewhat tenuous. The serialization of Vanity Fair,
which was a financial success, quickly established Thackeray's literary
reputation. Thackeray was jubilant, "There is no use denying the matter
or blinking it now. I am become a sort of great man in my way--all but
at the top of the tree: indeed there if the truth were known and having
a great fight up there with Dickens." Though Thackeray's novels never
sold at the rate of Dickens's novels (in the tens of thousands), he
became financially secure with Vanity Fair. Also his social
status as a gentleman was assured because of his acknowledged genius;
he was no longer an amusing, talented hack writer, just one of a crowd
of London journalists.
CONTEMPORARY RESPONSE TO VANITY FAIR
Contemporary reviewers and novelists appreciated the brilliance of the
novel. John Forster wrote, "Vanity Fair is the work of a mind,
at once accomplished and subtle, which has enjoyed opportunities of
observing many and varied circles of society. . . his genteel
characters... have a reality about them... They are drawn from actual
life, not from books and fancy; and they are presented by means of
brief, decisive yet always most discriminative touches" (1848).
Charlotte Bronte, whose admiration for his genius was boundless, called
him "the legitimate high priest of Truth":
The more I read Thackeray's works, the more
certain I am that he stands alone--alone in his sagacity, alone in his
truth, alone in his feeling (his feeling, though he makes no noise
about it, is about the most genuine that ever lived on a printed page),
alone in his power, alone in his simplicity, alone in his self-control.
Thackeray is a Titan, so strong that he can afford to perform with calm
the most herculean feats; there is the charm and majesty of repose in
his greatest efforts; he borrows nothing from fever, his is never the
energy of delirium--his energy is sane energy, deliberate energy,
thoughtful energy. (1848)
George Eliot's praise was more restrained, "I am not conscious of being
in any way a disciple of his, unless it constitute discipleship to
think him, as I suppose the majority of people with any intellect do,
on the whole, the most powerful of living novelists" (1857).
Not all reviewers and readers agreed. Some were repelled
by his realism and his focus on society's moral corruption. Robert Bell
complained:
The people who
fill up the motley scenes of Vanity Fair, with two or three exceptions,
are as vicious and odious as a clever condensation of the vilest
qualities can make them. The women are especially detestable. Cunning,
low pride, selfishness, envy, malice, and all uncharitableness are
scattered amongst them with impartial liberality. It does not enter
into the design of Vanity Fair to qualify these bitter ingredients with
a little sweetness now and then; to shew the close neighbourhood of the
vices and the virtues as it lies on the map of the human heart, that
mixture of good and evil, of weakness and strength, which in infinitely
varied proportions, constitutes the compound individual. (1848)
An anonymous reviewer wondered, "is it advisable to raise so ruthlessly
the veil which hides the rottenness pervading modern society?" (1848).
Harriet Martineau could not finish the novel "from the moral disgust it
occasions" (1848).
From Thackeray's day to the present, Vanity Fair
has generally been regarded as a masterpiece and as his best novel.
What has changed is the flaw Thackeray, as well as Vanity Fair,
is most commonly charged with. Critical readers of his day called him
cynical and even depraved; comparable readers today call him
sentimental and even cloying.
HUMORIST, WRITER AND MORALIST
Until the publication of Vanity Fair, Thackeray was known as a
humorous writer; he wrote regularly for Punch. Thackeray
regarded humor as doing more than making readers laugh, "the best
humour is that which contains most humanity, that which is flavoured
throughout with tenderness and kindness." He was compelled to write the
truth about what he saw and how he understood what he saw:
To describe it otherwise than it seems to me
would be falsehood in that calling in which it has pleased heaven to
place me; treason to that conscience which says that men are weak; that
truth must be told; that faults must be owned; that pardon must be
prayed for; and that love reigns supreme over all.
There may be wishful thinking in his statement that as the writer
"finds, and speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem
him–sometimes love him." In order to tell the truth, the novelist must
"convey as strongly as possible the sentiment of reality." Language
should identify exactly, not elevate or exaggerate; for instance, a
poker was just that--a poker, not a great red-hot instrument and a coat
was only a coat, not an embroidered tunic. He disliked Dickens's highly
emotional outbursts and vivid personification of objects; Thackeray
protested that the very trees in Dickens's novels "squint, shiver,
leer, grin and smoke pipes." A realist, Thackeray consistently deflated
the heroic and the sentimental both in life and in literature.
Thackeray saw the writer as serving a necessary
function–to raise the consciousness of his readers. Concerned, he asked
his mother in a letter, "Who is conscious?" He came to see himself as a
Satirical-Moralist, with a dual responsibility--to amuse and to teach,
"A few years ago I should have sneered at the idea of setting up as a
teacher at all... but I have got to believe in the business, and in my
other things since then. And our profession seems to me as serious as
the Parson's own." He aimed not only to expose the false values and
practices of society and its institutions and to portray the selfish,
callous behavior of individuals, but also to affirm the value of truth,
justice, and kindness. This double aim is reflected in his description
of himself as satiric and kind: "under the mask satirical there walks
about a sentimental gentleman who means not unkindly to any mortal
person."
Though Thackeray set his novel a generation earlier,
Thackeray was really writing about his own society (he even used
contemporary clothing in his illustrations
for the novel). Thackeray saw how capitalism and imperialism with their
emphasis on wealth, material goods, and ostentation had corrupted
society and how the inherited social order and institutions, including
the aristocracy, the church, the military, and the foreign service,
regarded only family, rank, power, and appearance. These values morally
crippled and emotionally bankrupted every social class from servants
through the middle classes to the aristocracy. High and low,
individuals were selfish and incapable of loving.
Well aware of himself as flawed, he identified with the
self-centered and foolish characters he portrayed in Vanity Fair;
his object in writing the novel was
to indicate, in cheerful terms, that we are for
the most part an abominably foolish and selfish people "desperately
wicked" and all eager after vanities....I want to leave everybody
dissatisfied and unhappy at the end of the story–we ought all to be
with our own and all other stories. Good God don't I see (in that maybe
cracked and warped looking glass in which I am always looking) my own
weaknesses wickednesses lusts follies shortcomings?.... We must lift up
our voices about these and howl to a congregation of fools: so much as
least has been my endeavour.
His identification with the fools and the sinners of
Vanity Fair could not be stated more clearly. The image of the
cracked-mirror provided the basis of the drawing for the frontispiece
when the serialized novel came out in book form in 1848.
What were some of his flaws? By temperament, he inclined to be
self-indulgent, liked to eat and drink well, and until he lost his
money gambled enthusiastically; today, we might, perhaps, say he
had a
gambling problem. The Bohemian lifestyle and Bohemians had a strong
attraction for Thackeray, as he acknowledged:
I like Becky in that book. Sometimes I think I
have myself some of her tastes. I like what are called Bohemians and
fellows of that sort. I have seen all sorts of society--dukes,
duchesses, lords, and ladies, authors and actors and painters--and
taken altogether I think I like painters the best, and Bohemians
generally.
As you read the novel, think about whether Thackeray's identification
with the characters and perhaps the life of Vanity Fair affects the
novel. Does he show a compassion for the follies he describes and for
the characters who commit those follies? Is there a sense of connection
with them, or does Thackeray adopt a superior stance and look down on
them, judging them harshly? Or is Thackeray ambivalent? Is Vanity
Fair, as A.E. Dyson says, "one of the world's most devious novels,
devious in its characterization, its irony, its explicit moralising,
its exuberance, its tone. Few novels demand more continuing alertness
from the reader, or offer more intellectual and moral stimulation in
return"?
THACKERAY WEBSITES
Vanity Fair: A
Novel Without a Hero, by William Makepeace Thackeray
Online text of the entire novel, search engine.
Biographical note. Criticisms and interpretations of the novel by eight
critics. A list of characters.
William
Makepeace Thackeray
This entry in the Victorian Web contains biography,
works, political history, social history (discusses social class and
the gentleman), religion, economic contexts, literary relations,
themes, etc. as these are relevant to Thackeray. Well worth exploring.
William
Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63)
List of Thackeray Websites and chronological list of
events in Thackeray's life
WIlliam
Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Note on Thackeray. Links to nine of Thackeray's online
works.
|
