DOBBIN'S LOVE FOR AMELIA
Dobbin's love for Amelia becomes the
determining factor of his life. He thinks about her constantly, does
everything he can to provide for her welfare and happiness, and devotes
his life to her. He falls in love with her at first sight, as she comes
into the room singing. He knows nothing about her character, her
interests, her personality, so, why does he fall in love with her? Does
he fall in love because of his own needs or psychological makeup?
 There are hints in the text that Dobbin is an
idealist and a romantic in the sense that he projects idealized
(romantic) images onto others.
Before his epic fight with Cuff, Dobbin is happily reading the Arabian
Nights; lost in imagination, he is with Sinbad and with "Prince
Ahmed and the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful cavern where the
Prince found her" (page 53). As a result of his victory, his life
improves significantly, but, "from some perverseness," he attributes
the happy change to George, rather than to his own actions. He regards
George as a character in the romantic tales he reads; he loves George
with the affection "we read in the charming fairy-book... He believed
Osborne to be the possessor of every perfection, to be the handsomest,
the bravest, the most active, the cleverest, the most generous of
created boys" (pages 60-1). In other words, he idealizes George into
Prince Charming by attributing virtues to George which he does not
possess. Does he then devote himself to the image of George he himself
created?
Does his love for Amelia follow the same pattern? When
Amelia, unaware that he is in the room, comes in singing, does he fall
in love with an idealized image rather than the actual Amelia, since he
has no idea of what she is really like? (Is "falling in love at first
sight" itself a literary cliche, a sentimental ideal he might have
learned from reading books?) Thackeray,
in discussing the nature of love, refers to the lover who projects
idealized traits onto the love object; in the example, he is discussing
a woman and at the end of the passage applies it to Amelia, but the
principle applies equally to men in love:
Perhaps some beloved female subscriber [to
love] has arrayed an ass in the splendour and glory of her imagination;
admired his dulness as manly simplicity; worshipped his selfishness as
manly superiority; treated his stupidity as majestic gravity, and used
him as the brilliant fairy Titania did a certain weaver at Athens....
But this is certain, that Amelia believed her lover to be one of the
most gallant and brilliant men in the empire: and it is possible
Lieutenant Osborne thought so too.
Does this process, which Stendhal called crystallization, apply to
Dobbin's falling in love with Amelia at first sight?
The narrator recounts an incident that supports a "yes"
answer. Dobbin's image of Amelia filled his thoughts; the narrator
comments,
Very likely Amelia was not like the portrait
the Major had formed of her: there was a figure in a book of fashions
which his sisters had in England, and with which William had made away
privately, pasting it into the lid of his desk, and fancying he saw
some resemblance to Mrs. Osborne in the print, whereas I have seen it,
and can vouch that it is but the picture of a high-wasted gown with an
impossible doll's face simpering over it–and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's
sentimental Amelia was no more like the real one than this absurd
little print which he cherished.
Or is an attachment to an idealized image of the love object what love
commonly is? The narrator seems to suggest this possibility when he
generalizes, "But what man in love, of us, is better informed?–or is he
much happier when he sees and owns his delusion?" (page 515). The truth
of the second question is suggested at Dobbin's unhappiness and sense
of having wasted his life when he finally faces the truth about Amelia.
Is it possible that Dobbin's idealizations of George
and then of Amelia are an expression of a sense of his inferiority,
which can also be called a low self-esteem? His physical
unattractiveness and his clumsiness are emphasized in the text and in
the drawings, e.g., his first meeting Amelia. Is part of their
attraction for him their physical attractiveness, since he is
physically unprepossessing?
FACING THE TRUTH ABOUT AMELIA
 Just as Amelia holds
tenaciously to her false image of George, so Dobbin tenaciously holds
on to his false image of Amelia. The process of his disillusionment in
her is long and slow. When he reads the letter in which she
congratulates him on his supposed engagement, he cries out at the
injustice of her disregard of his years of faithfulness. He despairs
and reads all her letters and notes and sees "how cold, how kind, how
hopeless, how selfish they were!" (page 517). And yet he keeps on
loving her and continues faithful. Why? The easy answer is true love.
But is that the only explanation? Is it possible that he remains a
faithful lover because he has no one else to love? The narrator
speculates,
Had there
been some kind gentle soul near at hand who could read and appreciate
this silent generous heart, who knows but that the reign of Amelia
might have been over, and that friend William's love might have flowed
into a kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina... It was not
jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him, and Glorvina had
nothing more (pages 517-8).
DOBBIN AS A MEMBER OF VANITY FAIR
More than any other character, Dobbin qualifies to be the hero, based
on his solid moral qualities and kind, considerate actions. But he,
like all the other characters, lives in Vanity Fair; he is selfish in
his constant thinking of Amelia, to the exclusion of his family. Is it
selflessness or selfishness that moves him to push George into
marriage? After discussing reasons why Dobbin thinks Amelia and George
should marry, the narrator asks, "Was he anxious himself, I wonder, to
have it over?–as people, when death has occurred, like to press forward
the funeral..." (page 228). Later, Dobbin wonders whether he encouraged
them to marry as soon as possible because he couldn't bear to see
Amelia suffer "or because his own sufferings of suspense were so
unendurable that he was glad to crush them at once..." (page 265).
Thackeray leaves the question of his motive or motives
in encouraging the marriage ambiguous. Thackeray, however, asserts
unequivocally Dobbin's folly in loving Amelia. A paragraph that
describes her tyranny over him and her giving him orders like a dog,
which he likes to obey, concludes, "This history has been written to
very little purpose if the reader has not perceived that the Major was
a spooney" (page 791). (The OED defines a spooney as "A
simple, silly, or foolish person; a noodle.") The Major is a fool in
love, in other words. His folly in love and his self-delusion also
qualify him for membership in Vanity Fair.
DOBBIN DISILLUSIONED
After the confrontation in Pumpernickel, Dobbin loses his illusions
about Amelia and his hopes that she will one day come to love him. She
has worn out his love, but he does not blame her; he takes
responsibility for deluding himself,
It was myself I deluded and persisted in
cajoling; had she been worthy of the love I gave her, she would have
returned it long ago. It was a fond mistake. Isn't the whole course of
life made up of such? And suppose I had won her, should I not have been
disenchanted the day after my victory? Why pine, or be ashamed of my
defeat? (page 810).
Dobbin's defeat in love and his life's ambition to marry
Amelia becomes even greater than it is at this point. He does win
Amelia, after all, and marries her, though he no longer loves her and
knows, as Thackeray said he would in a letter to a friend, that she is
not worth winning. As an honest and so an honorable man, he feels he
has no choice but to return, when she writes to him, and return, of
course, means marriage. For a fuller discussion of the break with
Amelia and their marriage, see the discussion of Amelia: The Ending.
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