THACKERAY'S ATTITUDE TOWARD WOMEN
| I have listed a number of passages about the
role of women in Vanity Fair, for you to consider in deciding
what Thackeray's attitude is, toward women in general and toward Amelia
in particular, who fits the stereotypical image of woman and of the Angel in the House. |
Passage 1
The narrator is discussing the jealousy and
condescending attitude of women toward Amelia, who is greatly admired
by men. He also discusses the intimidating treatment she receives from
the Miss Osbornes and their governess Miss Wirt, who all wonder what
George sees in her.
How is this? some
carping reader exclaims. How is it that Amelia, who had such a number
of friends at school, and was so beloved there, comes out into the
world and is spurned by her discriminating sex? My dear sir,
there were
no men at Miss Pinkerton's establishment except the old dancing-master;
and you would not have had the girls fall out about him? When
George, their handsome brother, ran off directly after breakfast, and
drifted from home half-a-dozen times a week, no wonder the neglected
sisters felt a little vexation. When young Bullock (of the firm Hulker,
Bullock & Co., Bankers, Lombard Street), who had been making up to
Miss Maria the last two season, actually asked Amelia to dance the
cotillion, could you expect that the former young lady should be
pleased? (Chapter XII, page 130)
Passage 2
The narrator is describing the early days of Becky's
marriage and her successful efforts in pleasing Rawdon and hiding her
opinion of his abilities. What is Thackeray's attitude toward even the
"best" women's hypocrisy? How does this passage apply to Becky and to
Amelia
as wives?
The best of women (I have heard my grandmother
say) are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how
watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how
often those frank smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole
or elude or disarm–I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your
domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a
woman hide the dulness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a
savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for
it: we call this pretty treachery truth. A good housewife is of
necessity a humbug; and Cornelia's husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar
was–only in a different way. (Chapter XVII, page 197)
Passage 3
The narrator is referring to Miss Briggs and Miss
Crawley's abusive treatment of her,
all which attacks the poor companion bore with
meekness, with cowardice, with a resignation that was half generous and
half hypocritical–with the slaving submission, in a word, that women of
her disposition and station are compelled to show. Who has not seen how
women bully women? What tortures have men to endure, comparable to
those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women
are riddled by the tyrants of their sex? Poor victims! (ChapterXXXIII,
page 354-5)
Passage 4
Amelia has been blaming herself for selfishness in not
giving up Georgy to his grandfather and thereby denying him an
education, pleasures, and luxuries. The narrator comments:
I know few
things more affecting than that timorous debasement and
self-humiliation of a woman. How she owns that it is she and not the
man who is guilty; how she takes all the faults on her side; how she
courts in a manner punishment for the wrongs which she has not
committed and persists in shielding the real culprit. It is those who
injure women who get the most kindness from them–they are born timid
and tyrants and maltreat those who are humblest before them. (Chapter
L,
pages 590-1)
Passage 5
Amelia's grief is submerged or lessened by her nursing
her dying mother.
The illness
of that old lady had been the occupation and perhaps the safeguard of
Amelia. 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 acknowledgment 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. (Chapter LVI, page
674).
Passage 6
Amelia accepts money from Osborne, after giving up
Georgy to his wealth. The narrator comments on her lack of pride, which
stems from her being naturally simple and needing protection, her
suffering, poverty, humility and privations since her marriage. Many
women similarly sacrifice themselves.
O you poor secret martyrs and victims, whose
life is a torture, who are stretched on racks in your bedrooms, and who
lay your heads down on the block daily at the drawing-room table; every
man who watches your pains, or peers into those dark places where the
torture is administered to you, must pity you–and–and thank God that he
has a beard.... if you properly tyrannize over a woman, you will find a
h'p'orth of kindness act upon her and bring tears into her eyes, as
though you were an angel benefiting her. (Chapter LVII, pages 678-9)
Passage 7
The narrator describes Amelia's routine of watching for
Georgy and tending the sickbed,
to suffer the harassment and tyranny of
querulous disappointed old age. How many thousands of people are there,
women for the most part, who are doomed to endure this long
slavery?–who are hospital nurses without wages–sisters of Charity, if
you like, without the romance and the sentiment of sacrifice–who
strive, fast, watch, and suffer, unpitied, and fade away ignobly and
unknown.
The hidden and awful Wisdom which
apportions the destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast
down the gender, good, and wise, and to set up the selfish, the
foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity!
Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think,
what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of
temptation, whose success may be a mere change, whose rank may be an
ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire. (Chapter
LVII, pages 679-80)
Passage 8
The narrator describes Amelia's kindness to her father,
her taking care of him, and her listening to the same stories over and
over as "affectionate hypocrisy." (680)
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