Vanity Fair (Penguin Classics)

Vanity Fair must have been a phenomenon not unlike `Sex and the City' which debuted some years ago on HBO television. Vanity Fair, when it was released, was done in "monthly numbers" for over one and one-half years in periodicals. Readers were drawn into the lives of Becky and Amelia and had no quips about producing their hard-earned pounds to read of what would ultimately become of the two fascinating girls. Purposely suspenseful plots "hooked" the London public. Thackeray became a star amongst the literary supreme of London. By inserting himself and his thoughts and views of England, the nature of man, war, poverty and the boastful aristocratic society into the work, he presents himself and his own opinions to the world through Vanity Fair.

This novel is as important today as it was when it was released, especially for one studying historical life as it was from day to day. We are given plain viewpoints of somewhat normal, fashionable, destitute and poverty striken women of the era. Very interesting, always charming, a splendid read--albeit a very long one.


Has not aged gracefully   March 4, 2004
A.J. (Maryland)
27 out of 39 found this review helpful

The reputation of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" perseveres to this day, but I'm not sure it demands to be read in preference to many of its contemporaneous peers. In the twenty-first century it simply fails to entertain on the level it was intended when it was written in the 1840s, and even its literary value is dubious. The novel asks rhetorically why we are never satisfied with the things we achieve in life, and the question reverberates in a canyon of echoes as Thackeray repetitively beats the theme to death with a story that is too long and too dull. Of course it satirizes the hypocrisy, materialism, and frivolity in the higher strata of English society, but it hardly excels in this regard when compared to so many other novels, particularly Dickens's, of the same era that do likewise with more subtlety and intelligence. If "Vanity Fair" can be considered a socially valuable novel merely because it satirizes society, then nearly any novel can be considered socially valuable.

Set in the 1810s and 1820s, "Vanity Fair" is basically the tale of two young women, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp, making their respective ways through English society after leaving school. Amelia, a virtuous girl from an affluent family, marries George Osborne, the son of a man with whom her father has a financial quarrel. Becky, a beautiful, vivacious girl from an artistic but broken family, takes a job as a governess for a repulsive old man named Sir Pitt Crawley and eventually marries his son Rawdon. Both husbands are British military officers who fight under the Duke of Wellington against Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo; only one comes home alive. The novel then becomes a study in reversal, followed by a sort of restoration, of fortune -- Becky uses her charm to climb the ladder of high society while Amelia struggles to support herself and her young son.

My biggest problem with "Vanity Fair" is Thackeray's general style. His prose is serviceable but unrefined; he has a poor sense for the arrangement of detail, constructing lopsided paragraphs and dispensing useless information like complimentary mints at the door of a restaurant. His serious characters fail to invoke sympathy and his few comical characters fail to amuse. Perhaps it was his intention to avoid caricatures, but he can't fairly be called a realist either. Additionally he chooses to write with the voice of a narrator whose tone is gossipy bordering on the obnoxious. Occasionally he does offer a psychological or social insight that is interesting if not profound, but these moments seem more like digressive interjections than integral parts of the story.

I know I'm being picky with this novel, but I expected better considering its permanent status in the English literary canon. As a Victorian novelist, Thackeray cannot compete with Eliot, Hardy, Dickens, the Brontes, or even Wilkie Collins or Samuel Butler; rather, he unfortunately seems to be on the same level as Anthony Trollope, whose voluminous chronicles of the straight-laced middle class are written well but leave a bland aftertaste. Despite its purport to be something more, "Vanity Fair" is merely a genteel, fluffy, uneventful soap opera penned by an author who attempts to be wry but instead compels his reader to wade through a Slough of Despond.