REVIEW: Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Dear Reader,
I will preface this review by stating that Vanity Fair is not a romance, nor is it remotely romantic. For those who are unfamiliar with Thackeray’s classic novel, it is subtitled “A Novel without a Hero”, and satirizes English society circa 1815. It may be of interest to those of us who cut our teeth on Regency-era romances; Vanity Fair presents a somewhat jaundiced view of the British upper classes of the time.
Becky Sharp completes her studies at Miss Pinkerton’s Academy, studies that were subsidized first by her artist father’s teaching at the school and later, after he dies, by her own teaching of French to the pupils. She leaves the school to stay with her good friend Amelia Sedley, who finishes matriculating at the same time. Becky needs to go into service and she has a position secured, but first she will spend some time with Amelia in the comfortably prosperous atmosphere of the Sedley household.
There, Becky meets Jos Sedley, Amelia’s brother, who is visiting, having made his fortune in India. Jos is fat and shy, especially around women, but also vain and given to cultivating and believing ridiculous puffery about himself and his exploits (after Waterloo he seemingly believes he was a vital part of the British victory, in spite of the fact that he spent the entire battle in town, desperately trying to flee to safer environs).
Becky sets her sights on Jos, believing he will offer for her and save her from a life of drudgery. But she’s not able to reel him in before being forced to depart for Queen’s Crawley to work as a governess for Sir Pitt Crawley, a baronet who is a nobleman in name only. Sir Pitt is crude and Queen’s Crawley is dirty and depressing, but Becky manages to do what she does best – charm and ingratiate herself with anyone who is capable of being charmed and willing to be ingratiated. She quickly has Sir Pitt eating out of her hand, and when she meets Sir Pitt’s wealthy relative Miss Crawley, Becky becomes fast friends with the old lady. The entire Crawley family fawns over Miss Crawley in hopes of gaining her inheritance, though Rawdon Crawley, Sir Pitt’s younger son, has long been her favorite and presumptive heir.
Positions in the Crawley family are thrown into disarray, however, after Sir Pitt Crawley’s mousy wife dies. This prompts Sir Pitt to propose marriage to Becky, only to find that she cannot marry him, as she is already secretly married to his son Rawdon. The secret and, some would say, unsuitable marriage (Becky’s mother was an opera dancer, after all) infuriates the entire Crawley family, none more than Miss Crawley. Rawdon was her favorite and she adored Becky for her ability to amuse (usually by cruel mockery of others – Becky knows how to tailor her talents to her audience), but Miss Crawley is at heart a snob and feels betrayed by both parties after the elopement. Rawdon is promptly cut off by his father and dropped from Miss Crawley’s will; all of Becky and Rawdon’s attempts to reingratiate themselves with Miss Crawley fail (in no small part to the machinations of other family members who are scheming to get their hands on the money, as well).
Becky reunites with her friend Amelia after marriage; Amelia has married under somewhat similar circumstances. Amelia had long been betrothed to George Osborne, son of her father’s business partner. But when Mr. Sedley undergoes a disastrous financial reversal, his old friend Osborne immediately turns on him and orders George to drop Amelia. George only demurs due to the very strong influence of his friend and fellow Army officer, William Dobbin. Dobbin is in love with Amelia himself, so in love that he selflessly wants her to have everything she wants, and she wants George. So George and Amelia are married, and like Becky and Rawdon are cut off financially. But it’s time for the men to head to Belgium to face Napoleon, so at least they don’t have to worry about trying to live in London with no incomes for the time being. Becky and Amelia accompany their husbands to Brussels.
The meaning of “A Novel without a Hero” isn’t hard to parse. The characters in “Vanity Fair” are all deeply flawed. At first glance it seems like the “best” characters in a conventional sense are Amelia and Dobbin, who demonstrate the selflessness and humility so integral to heroes and heroines in 19th century English novels. But Amelia is a total twit, devoted to George beyond reason and given to crying at the drop of a hat (Thackeray makes fun of her constant waterworks, which I appreciated; late in the book he refers to her as “our simpleton”, which I just loved). Dobbin is a tad more sympathetic, but he’s not exactly a relatable character, spending years pining after someone who is unworthy of his affection and lacking any sort of charm or sense of humor to lighten his character.
George Osborne is an idiot and a jerk, completely unworthy of Amelia’s devotion. His father is even worse; he justifies his horrible treatment of Mr. Sedley by acting even more horrible, renounces his only son for marrying against his wishes, and only relents partly years after George is killed at Waterloo by taking in Amelia and George’s child (thus taking the beloved child away from Amelia, who selflessly gives him up – gag – so he can have a better life). Oh, the kid is kind of a brat, too.
The Crawleys are also mostly awful, from the odious Sir Pitt to his namesake eldest son, whose pomposity and piety are as tiresome as his sire’s debauchery. Actually, Pitt Jr.’s eventual wife, Jane, is probably a fair candidate for least obnoxious character – she’s a good person without being a martyr about it. Rawdon Crawley is rather unprincipled and something of a happy idiot (at least Becky treats him so, after they marry), but he is redeemed somewhat by his love for their son, also called Rawdon.
Then there’s Becky. What to say about Becky? I really liked her for much of the novel; she fit the anti-heroine mold well. She is someone who clearly grew up via the school of hard knocks, and she’s learned to take care of herself, with a vengeance. She manipulates people, yes, but it helps that most of the people she manipulates are not that sympathetic themselves. I liked this description of her, mid-novel:
“When attacked sometimes, Becky had a knack of adopting a demure ingenue air, under which she was most dangerous. She said the wickedest things with the most simple unaffected air when in this mood, and would take care artlessly to apologize for her blunders, so that all the world should know that she had made them.”
At a certain point, though, Thackeray takes Becky too far, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. The first issue is her disdain for her child. I could accept benign indifference (punctuated by bouts of using him when it’s convenient to do so); that would be in line with the Becky the reader has come to know. But Becky seems to really take an active dislike to her son, and it becomes distasteful to read about and makes her seem a lot meaner. Previously she hadn’t been mean, exactly, except on occasion when she mocked someone. But there was usually a reason for it; Becky’s every action is calculated and chock-full of self-interest. Her hostility towards the boy has no purpose, and feels out of character.
It’s especially unpleasant contrasted with her husband’s fondness for his namesake. Rawdon Sr. is no great shakes, but at least he has some parental instinct. He actually seems to improve as a person through his love for the child.
Then there’s Becky’s treatment of Rawdon himself. For years into their marriage, she seems to be acting in both of their interests, and Rawdon seems fine with her flirting (and perhaps more than flirting) with other men if it means that they can continue to live a certain lifestyle without ever paying their bills. But Becky grows increasingly more contemptuous of her husband, and by the time she lets him languish in debtor’s prison, ignoring the pleading note he sends begging her to bring a small-ish sum that will free him, he becomes fed up with her, and so did I as the reader. I was actually sort of sorry to feel that way; I preferred her as an entertaining sort-of-villain, the type who you can never feel too bad about liking because the people she hurts are mostly those who’ve brought it on themselves. But by book’s end Becky is revealed to be thoroughly corrupted and capable of anything, even, perhaps, murder. I didn’t really like the transformation because it smacked too much of conventional morality, of a simplistic division of characters into “good” and “bad”, which clearly hasn’t been Thackeray’s thing for the majority of the book.
As much as I liked “Vanity Fair” (and I did really like it), I found myself wondering at how it had become so beloved. In 2003 it was voted the UK’s “Best Loved Novel” in a BBC poll. It struck me as strange because in some respects, it feels like a bit of a lightweight story. I’d compare Thackeray to Jane Austen, in that both write serio-comic takes on 18th century British life. Thackeray is about 1000 times more cynical and less concerned with morality than Austen, of course. But it’s mostly just an arch commentary on the times, not a big sweeping novel of deep philosophical themes like, say War and Peace. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (I liked Vanity Fair better than War and Peace!), but one wonders what makes a story that’s not after all a big, serious epic something that is remembered and loved 160+ years after it’s published?
Though that’s not a complaint. Vanity Fair is well worth reading, and I’m glad it’s famous enough that it came to my attention. My grade is a B+.
Best regards,
Jennie
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Becky has always reminded me of Undine Spragg of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, which is a biting, satiric look at American social climbing of the early 20th century. Surprisingly, though I had the same revulsion towards Becky that you did, I found Undine disturbingly entertaining to the end. Perhaps because we get into her young, neglected son’s POV, who also views the irony of her plight.
Yeah, I agree with your assessment of the book. I chewed my way through it a couple of years back and I remember it being a massive undertaking – not just because of the page count, because I’m used to longer books (I read loads of epic fantasy), but because of the characters.
I liked Becky as well, but was slightly fed up with her towards the end. The male characters were rather unlikeable and I remember wanting to shake Amelia to get her to wake up a bit.
That said, I liked the whole much better than some other classics, but I’d never say it’s the best British classic novel out there!
But I think that part of its popularity (and its resilient status in the canon) is that it was written at a time when not many books came out, so everyone read it and then recommended it and so forth, so it kind of snowballed into this classic status. I feel this way about a lot of classics, which we basically read just because they’re classics – even if we don’t really like them – and we feel they should be awarded more respect than novels from contemporary authors who hadn’t made it into the canon yet.
God, I’m sorry for such a rambling comment, I hope it’s not too much :) I just think it’s great that bloggers still review classics, not just hyped up ARCs!
I was more fed up with Amelia by the end than Becky. I think it’s always interesting the kind of automatic revulsion we have towards fictional (and real) mothers who reject their children. I must admit I kind of liked? admired? Becky as a character for disliking her own son so openly. She reminds me somewhat of book Scarlett O’Hara, although Scarlett is more uninterested in her various progeny than downright cruel to them.
It’s been years since I read this, but my memory is that I turned against Becky when she left some bill (a landlord?) unpaid, and Thackeray offhandedly mentions that this lead to the ruin of that family. Such careless cruelty — especially when she’d grown up relatively poor herself — was the dealbreaker for me. As for Dobbin, whom I’d viewed as the closest thing to a hero the novel had, his love for Amelia (whose personality defined twit and doormat) became a negative rather than a positive. IIRC, at the very end he comes to realize that she is not worthy, but by then it’s too little, too late.
@Kaja: I promise you, there were plenty of Victorian novels which never reached ‘classic’ status. The thing is, most of us have never read them or heard of them because they never reached classic status.
Vanity Fair was a DNF for me. I managed Anna Karenina, War and Peace and most of the works of Dickens, but just couldn’t get through this. I get that it’s a classic (and I can even see why), but for me, it’s a one-star read.
Dear author: you are in good company when I give your book one star. It’s a personal opinion. Nothing more.
@Evangeline Holland: I may have to try that one – the only Wharton I’ve read is Ethan Frome, which seems somewhat thematically different from her other books.
@Kaja: I am the biggest rambler there is, so….
I get what you’re saying, but at the same time there are a lot of novels (and novelists) that have sunk into obscurity, too. I think it’s maybe a matter of the books being popular at the time, but then there’s *something* that makes them continue to be popular long enough for them to be sort of enshrined in the canon.
I do sometimes real classics that I don’t strictly like (Jude the Obscure, anyone?). I’m loath to put down a book once I start it, and since classics can be hard to get into (old-fashioned writing styles, etc.) if I allowed myself to toss each one that didn’t grab me, I’d never read any. And I’d miss some good stuff, I think.
I do wonder what current authors and books will be canonized eventually.
@Elaina: I think for me the problem was that Becky was generally not shown as being malicious (well, not *very* malicious, and sometimes it was to advance herself by amusing others, so it had another purpose rather than plain meanness). So her hostility struck a false note with me.
Yes, probably some of it has to do with the fact that she was his mother – but again, I wouldn’t have minded her being indifferent to him. Honestly I blame Thackeray more than Becky for introducing what felt like a quality that didn’t really fit what we knew of Becky’s personality. It felt a little like character assassination to me. I may be a little protective of Becky. :-)
@Susan/DC: Yes, Dobbin finally gets a clue, but it’s sort of anti-climatic. You can’t really like him, though I felt a little sorry for him.
As for Becky and the unpaid bills, that behavior is such a ubiquitous feature of Regency-era romances (and I guess it was somewhat of a reality?) that I confess I didn’t even bat an eyelash at it. It is pretty harsh.
@Iola:I guess each reader is different because Vanity Fair was way more readable to me than War and Peace, which was a true slog.
Becky’s antipathy toward her child is an interesting problem but I don’t think it’s at all inconsistent with her character type. It would indeed be harder to believe if an amoral, self-seeking, social climber like Becky were maternal in any way. Add the fact that she has so little respect for her hapless husband and it seems only natural that she disdains his even more dependent and inconvenient little namesake. This most distasteful side of Becky’s personality is both quite realistic and prevents her from being just another attractive charlatan that practices her wiles on mostly deserving victims. In addition, Thackeray seems to be asking us to weigh the distastefulness of Becky’s relationship with her husband and son against Emmy’s with her husband and son. No, the problem with Becky’s dislike of Rawdon Jr is that Thackeray, uncharacteristically, makes so little of it. I mean for an author who intervenes so frequently, insightfully, and entertainingly into his own narrative, I expected that WMT would have made made some notable comments on mothers and sons.
The thing I find interesting about this correspondence is that it is entirely female.I know that novel reading now,as in the 19th and 20th centuries,is a largely female activity (apart,of course,from the brutish blood and bullets fiction that men seem to enjoy),but as a long retired teacher of English I cannot but deplore this sad division.Becky Sharpe ,perhaps the sexiest little piece in English literature (green eyes and famous frontal development) deserves to be better known and more widely admired.She is,of course,an absolute bitch,but she is a model for modern women.Let me make it clear that I am a man,a very old man,who reveres and delights in women.
Don’t you be hitting on me Thomas. I’m a guy. Like you I also think women are awesome. Luckily every one I’ve ever known has been better than Becky. She’s interesting, sure, but just on paper. Cheers buddy!