SOCIETY
 Thackeray again and again points out that the folly,
social climbing, hypocrisy, cruelty, avarice, lovelessness, and
selfishness exhibited by individual characters have their origin and
counterpart in society as a whole. These values are learned early, as
the anecdote of the three children happily playing, until told that the
sister of one of them had a penny. All three ran to ingratiate
themselves with the penny-holder and followed her, "marching with great
dignity," toward a lollipop stall (pages 262-3, chapter XXIII).
To show the connection between the individual's values
and behavior and society's, Thackeray often generalizes from a
particular situation or an individual's action to the behavior and
value
of society. He universalizes the greedy fawning of the Crawleys over
Miss Crawley's £70,000 into a common behavior in society: "What a
dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's! How
tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative" (page 104, chapter
IX). He also identifies himself and the reader with this greed
and obsequious behavior; note the "we" and the "you" with which the
narrator addresses the reader throughout this passage. Vanity Fair is, after all, a mirror
in which the reader is expected to see himself or herself.
MARRIAGE
Using this technique of generalizing from the individual, he exposes
the mercenary and impersonal basis of marriage in an acquisitive,
money-oriented, status-conscious society.
Becky's desperate attempt to lure Jos into marriage
gives Thackeray the opportunity to discuss society's
institutionalization of husband hunting, which "is generally, and with
becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas" (page
32, chapter III). He then lists the approved and conventional
activities by which
young ladies find husbands. Amelia's idolatry of George is contrasted
with Miss Maria Osborne's feelings for her fiancé or, to be more
accurate, for his financial and social standing, which leads to a
discussion of mercenary marriages in fashionable society (pages 134-5,
chapter XII).
Maria, the narrator notes, would be as willing to marry the father as
the son. Her fiancé, Frederick Bullock, Esq., is equally
mercenary and refuses to marry unless Maria's dowry is increased; he
changes his mind only after Mr. Osborne moves some of his money out of
the Bullock firm and threatens to horsewhip Frederick whereupon
Frederick's father
and the senior partners of Bullock, Hulker, and Bullock urge him to go
through with the marriage. The horrors of marriages arranged for
financial and family considerations are revealed by the Steyne family's
alliances (pages 555-60, chapter XLVII).
CAPITALISM
The dominant class in this novel, as it was increasingly in Thackeray's
society, is the
middle class, and the middle class is the mercantile, capitalist
society. The predominant middle class value is money, as exemplified by
Mr. Osborne. The consequences of this focus are spiritual and
intellectual emptiness, a twisted morality, and corrupted emotions,
particularly the inability to love and an incapacity for friendship.
When Mr. Sedley commits the offense of losing his money, Osborne, a
long-time friend, bitterly turns against him. The Osborne home, with
its display of wealth and lack of love, is dreary and soulless. Things,
material objects, dominate this house, and Mr. Osborne uses his
children
as objects to fulfill his own needs; George, his favorite child, is to
fulfill his social ambitions by marrying wealth; J;ane, his elder
daughter, to attend to his personal needs and house.
The volatility of the economic system and the
unpredictability of financial markets are illustrated by Mr. Sedley's
bankruptcy; he is ruined because Napoleon escaped from Elba. The
pervasiveness of gambling in this novel reflects life in the Regency
period; it serves as more than a historically accurate detail–it is
another expression of economic unpredictability and instability.
CREDIT
Those who do not have fortunes but want to live a fashionable life
resort to credit. Credit is such an important feature of society that
Thackeray devotes two chapters on "How to Live Well on Nothing a Year"
(Chapters XXXVI and XXXVII). While giving close attention to Becky and
Rawdon's sharp practices, these chapters constantly describe other
individuals who also live on credit and who typify the middle and upper
classes.
Many tradesmen who trustingly extend credit are cheated
and sometimes ruined. After Waterloo, the English are greatly respected
throughout Europe for their wealth and trusted as honorable. Becky and
Rawdon are "among the first of that brood of hardy English adventurers
who have subsequently invaded the Continent and swindled in all the
capitals of Europe" (page 433, chapter XXXVI). This abuse of credit and
trust not only
continues to Thackeray's day but extends to other abuses and crimes:
there is now hardly a town of France or Italy
in which you shall not see some noble countryman of our own, with that
happy swagger and insolence of demeanour which we carry everywhere,
swindling inn-landlords, passing fictitious cheques upon credulous
bankers, robbing coach-makers of their carriages, goldsmiths of their
trinkets, easy travellers of their money at cards, even public
libraries of their books. (page 433, chapter XXXVI)
Spending other people's money to maintain a position in fashionable
societiy, which is really what credit is in Vanity
Fair, brings no stigma no matter how much misery defaulting causes.
People willingly attend Becky's little parties, even as they gossip
about how she pays for them. When a "noble nobleman" fails because of a
debt of 6 or 7 million pounds, the public perceives his ruin as
"glorious even, and we respect the victim in the vastness of his ruin"
(page 439, chapter XXXVII). But his ruin has implications for many
others; Thackeray
asks,
But who pities a poor barber who can't get his
money for powdering the footmen's heads; or a poor carpenter who has
ruined himself by fixing up ornaments and pavilions for my lady's dejeuner;
or the poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes, and who
pledged all he is worth, and more to get the liveries ready, which my
lord has done him the honour to bespeak? When the great house tumbles
down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed... (page 439,
chapter XXXVI)
Thackeray does not present everyone who extends credit and is
consequently ruined as a complete victim. Mr. Raggles and the
servants in the Crawley househouse become victims, at least in
part, because of their own
corrupt values:
And I shame
to say, she would not have got credit had they not believed her to be
guilty. It was the sight of the Marquis of Steyne's carriage-lamps at
her door, contemplated by Raggles, burning in the blackness of
midnight, "that kep him up," as he afterward said; that even more than
Rebecca's arts and coaxings. (pages 528-9, chapter XLIVS)
Thus, Raggles's ruin--and the non-payment of the servants' salaries--is
caused mostly by a belief in Becky's adultery, not by a guileless
trust. Even if Raffles and others like him extend
credit willingly or even half-heartedly, is their punishment
disproportionate to their extending credit? Financially ruined, Raffles
is jailed, all his assets are seized, and his wife and chidlren becomes
homeless.
The moral corruption and callousness resulting from the
premium placed on wealth, ostentation, and status have spread
throughout society, from the aristocrat to the servants. Thackeray uses
the narrator to speak for society to express society's values: "‘I' is
here introduced to personify the world in general" (page 42, chapter
IV). The
narrator asserts that society is filled with people who cannot pay
their debts; they are so numerous that, if they were banished, "why,
what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would
be!" (page 603, chapter LI). Society is built upon an economy of
squandering other
people's money for one's own enjoyment and finally ruining oneself and
others: "Thus trade flourishes--civilization advances; peace is
kept; new dresses are wanted for new assemblies every week; and the
last
year's vintage of Lafitte will remunerate the honest proprietor who
reared it" (page 603, chapter LI).
PEOPLE AS COMMODITIES
Regarding others as commodities or objects to be used for one's own
ends is widespread, almost universal, in this society. Miss Crawley
uses Miss Briggs, Becky, and her relatives to amuse herself and drops
them without a pang when they no longer suit her needs. In turn, she
and her fortune are a commodity which her relatives want to secure for
themselves. After a stroke incapacitates Sir Pitt and his son takes
control of the estate, Sir Pitt becomes a worthless object and is kept
out of sight.
Things, possessions are more important than people.
Ironically, people's possessions outlast them or their wealth, as shown
by the numerous auctions resulting from bankruptcy or death. Things
express what passes for love in Vanity Fair; Becky receives scores of
gifts ranging from flowers to gloves and watches. The narrator dryly
comments on the amount of jewelry which men purchase for women
they are pursuing while
their wives do without.
As a mother Becky, who expresses neither love nor
interest in her son, becomes an object for him. He admires her
appearance and her possessions: "She came like a vivified figure out of
the Magasin des Modes–blandly smiling in the most beautiful new
clothes and little gloves and boots. Wonderful scarfs, laces, and
jewels glittered about her.... She was an unearthly being in his eyes,
superior to his father–to all the world: to be worshipped and admired
at a distance" (449, chapter XXXVII). There follows a list of things in
her room which
define her for little Rawdon.
SPENDING MONEY: A FAVORABLE VIEW?
The narrator at times presents spending money in a favorable light. The
narrator (or is it Thackeray?) seems pleased that Amelia is not above
enjoying her shopping spree on her honeymoon; he asks, "Would any man,
the most
philosophic, give twopence for a woman who was?" (page 306, chapter
XXVI). Shopping
makes her mother happy for the first time since the bankruptcy. Is he
being ironic? is this an expression of his view of women? Buying things
seems to be connected to love or at least attracation when the narrator
says that he would
purchase all Mr. Lee's conservatories for one kiss from Amelia.
RESPECTABILITY
One of Becky's weaknesses is the desire to be respectable and accepted
into "the best" or fashionable society. As a token gesture toward the
rules governing a lady's behavior, she hires, but does not pay, Miss
Briggs to be her companion. She achieves her goal of respectability
after she is presented to King George IV at court. This presentation
vouches for her social status and, of course, her character, so that
some of "the best" foreigners and "the best English people too" visit
her. The emptiness of her achievement soon manifests itself; "Her
success excited, exalted, and then bored her" (page 597, chapter LI).
Listening to
the best people talk "about each others' houses, and characters, and
families–just as the Joneses do about the Smiths," she wishes she were
doing anything else, "oh, how much gayer it would be to wear spangles
and trousers and dance before a booth at a fair" (page 598, chapter
LI). "The best
society" is no better, is not more interesting, nor is it different
from lesser people, except in social status and wealth. Becky's
tendency to Bohemianism or even disreputableness is implied in her
reference to being a dancer.
Fashionable society is snobbish and hypocritical in
addition to being uninteresting. Its members accept Becky after her
presentation, with no more concern about her character. Lord Steyne,
whose immorality is generally known, is courted by fashionable society;
the most respectable, such as the Right Reverend Doctor Trail and the
self-righteous Sir Pitt Crawley, flock to his parties. The narrator
comments, "In a word everybody went to wait upon this great man" (page
560, chapter XLVII). In what sense is the despicable Steyne a "great"
man?
THE DEMIMONDE
The respectable world and the fashionable world have a shadow or
opposing world, that of the demimonde [demimonde: a class of
women who are not respectable because of sexual promiscuity or
indiscreet behavior]. It is this class of women that Rawdon pursued as
a young buck; Lady Crackenbury and Mrs. Washington White, friends whom
Becky cut after her presentation at court and her acceptance into
the most respectable and exclusive society, are demimondaines; it is
into this class that
Becky is perceived as belonging to before her presentation at court and
that she falls into during her later wanderings in Europe. It is to
entertain
the demimonde–and their aristocratic and even royal male
companions–that Lord Steyne maintains his private back apartment with
the
gold and silver kitchen utensils. It is in the company of the
demimondaine Madame de Belladonna that he dies in Naples.
Because of the prudishness of much of his audience,
Thackeray could not be explicit about the world of these women. He
resorted to hints and indirection. He refers to the demimondaines as
"ladies, who may be called men's women, being welcomed entirely by all
the gentlemen and cut or slighted by all their wives" (page 441,
chapter XXXVII). The
use of Lord Steyne's discreet, luxurious apartment is hinted at in the
useless gold and silver cooking utensils, the approach by a back
door, and the visits of the Prince and Perdita (Perdita means the lost one).
Writing at the same time in a less hypocritical society, Alexander Dumas fils, in The Lady
of the Camellias, explicitly details the world of the demimonde
in his tale of the doomed love of the courtesan Marguerite Gautier.
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