Ah, what a breath of sweet relief Becky Sharp is! If the sensitive bibliophile reads a Dickens or a Wilkie Collins (or numerous other writers of that day), he or she will swiftly become weary of the insipid, blonde haired heroines. They exist seemingly as pure and virtuous paragons, to be loved deeply by the hero, but to have very little personality behind that angelic air. Literature of the Nineteenth century is full of idealised women, portrayed without any warts or foibles and all the duller for it. That’s why Becky Sharp stands so far apart from her sisters in Victorian fiction – she is cunning, deceitful, ruthless, adulterous, callous and horribly self-centred. And the really brilliant part is that she isn’t even punished for it. ‘Vanity Fair’ bills itself as ‘A Novel without a Hero’ – but it does have Becky Sharp. Although she can hardly be described as an admirable heroine, Becky dominates most of the book and is one of the most interesting women ever to appear in fiction.

The problem ‘Vanity Fair’ has though is that it also contains Amelia Sedley – who is far closer to that insipid, blonde-haired, Victorian heroine. Thackery’s narrative might be fascinated by Becky Sharp, but it is Amelia it loves even as it acknowledges her own selfishness and want of a sparkling personality. I think the reader is similarly supposed to fall in love with her, but that doesn’t really happen and as such she drags the narrative down. It’s a particular problem in the final third of the book – where Becky disappears for a long stretch and we’re asked to care about the great sadness in Amelia’s soul. I haven’t read ‘Vanity Fair’ since I was an undergraduate, but I thought exactly the same thing now as I can remember thinking then – I bet you Becky is having a better time than we are at this point.

Vanity Fair is an excellent book, but if it’s subtitle was ‘The Life and Times of Becky Sharp’, rather than ‘A Novel without a Hero’, it would have a better claim to be one of the greatest novels in the English Language.

This book really wasn't for me. Don't get me wrong, some parts were very enjoyable and humorous, while others, not so much. The Rebecca, Becky character, I just couldn't stand! She was such a snob and just so full of herself! She just wanted to be one of the rich and famous! Three stars.

Vanity Fair is first and foremost a satire. William Thackeray laces numerous jibes and barbs into his writing, mocking the obsessions of Victorian British society, almost all of which have to do with fame, power, money, or at least the appearance of having at least one of those. But it's also a romance, as we follow William Dobbins' decades-long pursuit of Amelia Sedley; a coming-of-age story, as we follow Rebecca Sharp's continual efforts to advance herself in British society despite not having the appropriate background; and part classic Victorian family drama, with generations of descendants interweaving around and through each other's lives.

Overall, Thackeray is masterful at keeping these various balls in the air. In addition, he has created one of English literature's most compelling characters in Becky Sharp, whose independence, cleverness and ingenuity are well ahead of their time even if she uses them for selfish, if not malicious, purposes, and supports her with a rich array of fascinating and layered supporting and minor characters who appear and reappear throughout the story. Finally, he overlays all of it with an acerbic, even cynical wit, some of which remains laugh-out-loud funny today.

Unfortunately, the novel is not perfect. Thackeray goes back and forth on whether he's telling us the years in which these events took place. He calls at least one character by two different names. Several times characters appear in a location before having left to get there! In other words, he gets sloppy, which makes a long book with numerous characters that much more confusing. More frustrating, Thackeray "breaks the fourth wall" and speaks directly to the reader over and over again. Even making allowances for the greater frequency of that literary device in Victorian literature, Thackeray uses it too much – opening many, if not most, chapters with long essays about tangential topics to the plot and sprinkling various comments, typically concerning the supposed tendencies or character flaws of women, throughout the narrative. Obviously, the ongoing disruption of the plot does not make it easier to read!

Finally, I "read" this book by listening to it on Librivox, which is free, and I got what I paid for. Often, Librivox readers will be somewhat hit-or-miss, but in this book, there were several readers whose reading style actively impeded my ability to comprehend what was happening. That's not Thackeray's fault, but it did affect my enjoyment of the book – one that I would say is not well-suited for listening anyway, given his writing style, the complexity of the plot and the number of characters with speaking roles.

Overall, I liked Vanity Fair, and I'm glad to have read it, but if you plan to jump in, I recommend 1) reading in print, 2) skimming past the authorial intrusions, and 3) pausing to read the Cliff's Notes analysis every 10 chapters or so.

I am dumping this. I should never have picked it up. I have listened to about 5 hours of 32 hours and 20 minutes. It rips me up to dump a book before it is done. I feel like a quitter. I feel like I have given up ....and what if I have made a mistake and have judged too hastily?!

I am quitting because I dislike the humor. At the beginning I laughed. I thought it was clever. Not any longer. The humor is caustic satire. It is used to deliver a message. In small doses it’s fine, but a behemoth of a book pounding in the same message over and over becomes tedious and just plain boring. The message, hammered in over and over, is the vanity of man and our obsession with money. Money determines who one marries, one's social standing and what one is worth.

The prose is easy to follow; it does not feel dated.

The author summarizes as one goes along. This is handy for such a long book.

I knew before I started that the story would be told by an unreliable narrator. I feel it is important to know this before you start.

I DO like long books, but not all of them and not this one. If I dump a book, I give it one star. It means I didn’t like it.

The audiobook I listened to is narrated by Georgina Sutton. I have no complaint with how the book is read. The problem lies with the book, not the narration.

Quando una frottola è accettata per verità, siete costretti a fabbricarne un'altra per tener su quella: e così il cumulo delle vostre bugie circolanti si moltiplica inevitabilmente, e il pericolo di essere scoperti cresce di giorno in giorno.

Questo libro è il classico romanzo dell'Ottocento, così abbondante, dispersivo, con un narratore invadente e che abbraccia la vita dei protagonisti a 360 gradi. Ma quante cose ha da insegnare questa immersione nella mondanità dell'alta borghesia europea! C'è una forte contrapposizione fra le due protagoniste Becky e Amelia, ma nessuno esce illeso dalla fiera delle vanità. Ciò che ho apprezzato maggiormente è che non c'è una distinzione netta tra la bontà e la cattiveria. Non è una lotta fra l'angelica Amelia e la diabolica Becky. Seppur il giudizio su quest'ultima è nettamente sfavorevole, Becky è essenzialmente il frutto della sua educazione. La differenza fra Becky e le gran dame che incontra è la posizione sociale. Lei infatti non accetta passivamente il suo destino di povertà, ma lotta per ottenere tutte quelle cose che le hanno insegnato a desiderare. Il giudizio sprezzante di Thackeray è infatti sulla società della vanità nel suo insieme, e non sul singolo individuo. Le due protagoniste pur non mutando il loro carattere vengono apprezzate o disprezzate in relazione alla posizione sociale che occupano in quel momento. Se la vanità di Becky ferisce in modo più aperto, quella di Amelia d'altro canto non fa meno danni... Legata a un falso ideale di principe azzurro che non esiste e non è mai esistito, allontana chi la ama trincerandosi dietro una coltre di solitudine.
Leggendo assistiamo a uno spettacolo che va in scena quotidianamente anche nelle nostre vite.
Perché non ha mai fine la giostra della Fiera delle vanità. È tutto un turbine di paure, ansie, brame... Era in piedi nel passato come nel presente, e oggi o domani andremo sempre in cerca di modi di piacere, di bugie per patinare la nostra immagine. Ma la vanità non appartiene solo a chi è frivolo; non ha a che fare solo con le cose mondane; è un sentimento che ci coinvolge tutti, possiamo essere vanitosi anche della nostra moralità e persino dei nostri errori... Ci leghiamo a un'immagine che abbiamo di noi e la sbandieriamo con vanità, appunto, diventando ciechi di fronte a ciò che di buono ci passa davanti ma è al di fuori dei nostri schemi. Possiamo solo sperare che qualche momento di lucidità ci colga e ci ridia un senso della realtà più onesto, aperto e sincero, rendendoci più liberi, sereni e magari anche felici...

Maybe I've matured as a reader now but I think I haven't enjoyed any classic as much as I did this one. It was thicker and longer than many a novel, but I enjoyed it the better for it. By the end, I understood why it was so long, the ending justified it. I was so daunted by its iconic title to read it before, but it was easier to read than most classics. The experience was complete, there wasn't anything missing, it had everything and so so much more.

Published in 1847-1848, Vanity Fair is a Victorian satire and covers the English era during and after the Napoleonic Wars. The novel is about two women, totally opposite to each other, who after completing their education set out into the world. One an orphan, alone and friendless in the world except for her companion who is charming, witty, satirical, poised, manipulative, and striving to make her way into the world while the other, good-natured but passive and naïve, engaged from early childhood and belonging to a prosperous family. Thus the adventure begins, of love and loss, death and tragedy, trickery and deceit, innocence and naiveté, war and conflict.

Thackeray talks about British Raj of those times and the Battle of Waterloo which changes the course of the lives of the protagonists. The writing is rich with historical, Biblical, and literary allusions and references. The omniscient narration is most endearing.

The title of the novel, Vanity Fair, has been iconic to this day. Turns out it comes from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, a Christian allegory published in 1678. The author explains his title again and again in the novel bringing its significance to light.

The author declares the heroine of the novel in the very beginning but subtitled his novel "A novel without a hero" which I don't agree with, by the way. I recognized a hero in William Dobbin by the latter part of the novel.

Thackeray's writing portrayed a realism unfound among the writers of his time. Thackeray discusses the human nature, explores the hypocrisy of society, and takes the curtain off the mysteries of life for a moment and lets us take a peek in.

The novel is about sticking to the idols we make, ourselves, of people we think we love but which are nothing like the reality, our need to believe in our ideals no matter how false they may be, the egotism and of course the vanity of the innocent and the cunning, the rich and the poor alike, the human infidelity, the brutal reality of being poor, human greed, of closing our eyes to what is right in front of us, the truth, the frailty of relations, of friendship and opportunism.

Thackeray shows us and believes that love triumphs in the end, but so does villainy, it doesn't get retribution enough, but I had the underlying sense that depravity is a punishment in itself.

"All is vanity". Ecclesiastes 1.2.

(Originally published on: https://safafatima.wordpress.com/2017...)

”Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”

One giant scary monster-classic down, many more to go. However, I have to admit this was no picnic! Though it takes time to get used to the narrative and Thackeray’s unusually sardonic style filled with bitter irony, I managed to finalize the novel with love&hate feelings.
We all read the content, back cover, introduction and reviews, we know the drill and more or less what to expect but I wasn’t prepared for this. This novel is full of anti-heroes, unlovable characters and abhorrent behaviors. There’s not a single protagonist here that I related myself with or feel sympathetic towards. Thackeray knows how to criticize, belittle and make fun of society and I respect that. The English people we have here are civilized savages, who worship money, live in pretensions, prioritize names-titles and positions above anything else. The burning desire for status and greed is the main focus of the book and we watch the little minx Rebecca with awe while she climbs the societal ladders. The whole story centers around one thing and that is money: the privileges that come with money and the status it provides. The rise and fall of families, shifting dynamics and fugitive glories create an unstable atmosphere in the lives of the main characters. It’s quite fascinating to watch the evolution of the two friends Amelia and Rebecca starting from the first chapter, when they graduate from school and start their lives with fresh excitement and hope for the future until the last page and see how their lives ended up much different from their expectations.
A fun criticism of society and a precious classic novel for the lovers of the genre and overall an enjoyable read.

Vanity Fair is sometimes called the best British novel ever written, but it's totally not. Middlemarch is way better. Honestly, VF's not even in the top ten. So why do people love it so much? Because of Becky Sharp. Which is funny, because she's not what it was supposed to be about.

Becky Sharp is to Thackeray as Satan is to Milton. The argument has been made in both cases that the author secretly intended us to love their most memorable characters, but that's not true - or at least it's not that easy. While both dominate their stories, both authors are clearly uncomfortable with the fact that that's happened.

Vanity Fair didn't really take shape until Thackeray turned it into an autobiography: the Amelia / Dobbins story, which he thought of after he'd submitted the first few chapters and which caused an eight-month delay while he reconfigured the story, mirrors his own one-sided love affair with his friend's wife. Dobbins is based on himself. And their story is an important counterweight to Becky's; without it, the novel would be a slighter work about a femme fatale, arguably more fun but less important. With them it turns into a sprawling landmark in realist literature, one that unarguably influenced War & Peace.

But Amelia and Dobbins are such milquetoasts that Becky insists on running away with the book. They're nice people, and you root for them, but during their chapters...you wish it would get back to Amelia's frenemy.

And Thackeray attacks Becky, again and again, viciously. His most telling attack is in her constantly reiterated failure to love her son, which is a mortal sin in Victorian novels as it is in the rest of them. A father can occasionally be forgiven for not loving his children; never a mother. But there's also this deadly passage toward the end of the novel, in which he defensively compares her to the old-school, evil mermaid:

"Has [the author] once forgotten the rules of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling around corpses, but above the waterline, I ask, has not everything been proper?"

It frankly feels like Thackeray is punishing Becky for taking over the book that he'd tried to take over himself. He sounds confused: like he wishes the whole novel was a moral one, and realizes only now that it's failed to be that. (Remember, this book couldn't be retooled; it was released in installments, and everyone had already read the rest of them.)

Consider also the ending. Becky has a moment of magnanimity and reconciles Dobbins and Amelia. Then she turns around and murders Jos. (Don't try to argue that she didn't murder him. Thackeray may not say it, but he leaves little doubt.) Which feels more honest to you? Which feels like something Becky would do? She's a calculating, immoral woman who may have been (but probably wasn't) involved in countless affairs by this time, but did you get the sense that she's a murderess? Thackeray's book has gotten away from him, and he's betraying her in an attempt to snatch it back.

Compare this with Middlemarch, also a landmark realist novel, and also one released in installments, but one in which it's perfectly clear that Eliot had the entire plot, thread by thread, perfectly planned from the beginning. Eliot never lets her book get away from her. And when I say that, and when you consider the fact that Middlemarch includes no character as compelling as Becky Sharp - she would have despised Dorothea - it sounds like Vanity Fair might be more fun than Middlemarch, but it's not. Thackeray's sense of human nature isn't as strong as Eliot's (or as Tolstoy's), and the novel isn't as satisfying.

It's good, because Becky Sharp escaped from somewhere in Thackeray's brain and took it from him. What doesn't belong to her is just okay.

‘Vanity Fair’ is a witty satire, full of nasty but true social commentary in a not entirely fictional world of early 19th-Century English society. I was delighted by the book and laughed out loud several times. I think it is a terrifically fun and interesting novel, but there are a couple of negatives for modern readers. The one BIG negative of the book is it is about 1,000 pages long, depending on the print edition. A small negative, to me, is the archaic florid overwriting style, but after all, it was written several centuries ago. My recommendation is read it anyway, even it you have to buy a bigger dictionary (or use Google) and use a ruler to read the dense sentences. (When I was a young child, I read books like this with rulers as well as writing out the sentences on lined notepaper. I was a nerd, but I haven’t changed much, gentle reader, which I suppose is a warning to those following my reviews.)

The story is a 360-degree look at the author William Makepeace Thackeray’s London, focussing on its class divisions and its rules of upper-class society in the years of 1815 to 1847. Several generations are followed, determined by their relationship and proximity to two young girls: poor but clever amoral Becky Sharp, and innocent pious middle-class Amelia Sedley. They meet in a girls’ finishing school, Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for Young Ladies. Their lives entangle for a couple of weeks after they graduate, but due to some fateful circumstances, the girls’ lives take completely different paths. After several decades, their lives intersect again in an amusing scene when Becky and Amelia are middle-aged widows. Both women end up surprising themselves when the serendipitous encounter causes each of them to step away from the internalized rules of behavior each had adopted to live. Basically, for one minute, they are simple human beings without the encrusted veneer of class and social discriminations. It changes everything, and nothing.

None of the characters are heroic. Everybody is a victim of the personality and talents and beauty they were born with and of the social class and gender they were born into. Basically, no one wants to be poor and everybody wants to be richer than they are. One of the characters with little interest in money is shown to be a fool because she is overly dependent on conventional piety and good-looking surface beauty and class. Another is a failure because she cannot resist making fools of everyone she meets, throwing personal safety and honor to the vagaries of the four winds, despite her useful knowledge a sucker is born every minute. I could go on, because every single character, of which there are at least 50 or so of interest, are idiots and foolish, true to real life. I am positive some characters will strike readers as recognizably much like real people they know, and other characters will cause readers to recognize their own brand of ridiculous idiocy. Of course, some readers are oblivious to their own faults, or simply have not lived long enough, and they will not recognize themselves at all. Amelia is the character who I was most like until I was about 44 years old (except very poor), I am sad to reveal. Hopefully, I will not disappoint too many people who never knew this about me, but at the same time, it is what it was. Currently, I am a bitter bitch. It is what it is.

I no longer need rulers, but I still occasionally copy out sentences I enjoy (and to be honest, ones I can’t understand). However, age has given me an appreciation of books with insightful intelligence, and ‘Vanity Fair’ is one of those.

Quotes from the book I really really liked:

“I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of "Vanity Fair." Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such, with their servants and families: very likely they are right. But persons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery and brilliantly illuminated with the Author's own candles.”

Thackeray, William Makepeace (2009-08-17). The Collected Works of William Makepeace Thackeray: 18 Novels and Short Stories (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 7246-7251). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.


“Although schoolmistresses' letters are to be trusted no more nor less than churchyard epitaphs; yet, as it sometimes happens that a person departs this life who is really deserving of all the praises the stone cutter carves over his bones; who IS a good Christian, a good parent, child, wife, or husband; who actually DOES leave a disconsolate family to mourn his loss; so in academies of the male and female sex it occurs every now and then that the pupil is fully worthy of the praises bestowed by the disinterested instructor.”

Thackeray, William Makepeace (2009-08-17). The Collected Works of William Makepeace Thackeray: 18 Novels and Short Stories (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 7300-7303). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.


“Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing, and the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, and the servants to superintend. But why speak about her? It is probable that we shall not hear of her again from this moment to the end of time, and that when the great filigree iron gates are once closed on her, she and her awful sister will never issue therefrom into this little world of history.”

Thackeray, William Makepeace (2009-08-17). The Collected Works of William Makepeace Thackeray: 18 Novels and Short Stories (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 7314-7316). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.


“"Oh, excellent!" said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the cayenne pepper. "Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp," said Joseph, really interested. "A chili," said Rebecca, gasping. "Oh yes!" She thought a chili was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. "How fresh and green they look," she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork. "Water, for Heaven's sake, water!" she cried. Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse man, from the Stock Exchange, where they love all sorts of practical jokes). "They are real Indian, I assure you," said he. "Sambo, give Miss Sharp some water." The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital. The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor Rebecca suffered too much. She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humoured air, "I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the Arabian Nights. Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?" Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured girl. Joseph simply said, "Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in Bengal. We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know, I've got to prefer it!”"

Thackeray, William Makepeace (2009-08-17). The Collected Works of William Makepeace Thackeray: 18 Novels and Short Stories (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 7595-7604). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.


“Otherwise you might fancy it was I who was sneering at the practice of devotion, which Miss Sharp finds so ridiculous; that it was I who laughed good-humouredly at the reeling old Silenus of a baronet--whereas the laughter comes from one who has no reverence except for prosperity, and no eye for anything beyond success. Such people there are living and flourishing in the world--Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and fools: and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that Laughter was made.”

Thackeray, William Makepeace (2009-08-17). The Collected Works of William Makepeace Thackeray: 18 Novels and Short Stories (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 8446-8450). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.

I could fill up a 600-page book with quotes from Vanity Fair which highly entertained and amused me, gentle reader! I’ll quit while yet having given you a taste of the droll humor with which the author indulges. I may have been most like Amelia in my youth, but at present Becky Sharp is the character I find most inspirational. I suspect I am no longer a good person, like Becky, too. However, I DO like children and animals, so I have not quite gone entirely to the dark side.

; p

After reading this book I'm left with one question I keep asking myself: Did I like this book? The truth is: I still don't know.

The story revolves around two women: Rebecca and Amelia. The first a daughter of an artist and an opera singer. The second a daughter of a wealthy merchant. The writer uses them to prove his point about society being vain, shallow and full of hypocrites. That makes for interesting reading, but also some frustrating moments. Especially Rebecca is one annoying person. She pushes herself into society in which she doesn't "belong" by lying, cheating and mentally hurting people. Every bit of her character just rubs me the wrong way. But on the other hand: who can blame her for wanting to be a part of society? The part of society you are born in doesn't define you. So my feelings toward her are very conflicting. Without her scheming ways she wouldn't be able to move up.

Almost every character in Vanity Fair is of course vain and I appreciate the point the writer is trying to make. But does it make it an enjoyable book to read? Not necessary, no. Some passages I liked and got through quickly. Some passages were agonisingly tedious and long. The book is too long. Thackeray could make his point in 300 pages and make it a great book.

I guess I did enjoy some of the book. I liked the satire, but the novel was way too long.

This is one of the Victorian classics I read as a kid, probably at the age of 13 or 14 (certainly no older); the 1999 date refers to a second reading, when I was home schooling my daughters in British Literature, and felt that I needed a refresher on this one. Though this is Thackeray's best-known novel, it's not his only one; but it's the only one I've read (although I have read his excellent short story "Dennis Haggerty's Wife," which is included in the anthology Great English Short Stories).

At 784 pages, this is a sprawling novel, beginning around 1811 or so, when Thackeray was born, and continuing until around the time the book was first published in 1848. The real protagonist is self-serving, social-climbing Becky Sharp, whom we first meet as a teen girl, when she's an "articled pupil" (that is, a student who has to work for her tuition) at a boarding school catering to middle and upper-class girls. But there are a host of other, also well-drawn, characters (including Becky's school friend Amelia Sedley and her family, the Crawley family for whom Becky becomes a governess, and the army officers William Dobbin and George Osborne). Few of these people are very likeable, and they're not intended to be. Thackeray's main purpose here is holding the class-conscious, money-obsessed well-to-do society of his day --with its snobbery, its shallowness, and its indifference to genuine character or ethics, while paying them hypocritical lip service-- up to well-deserved ridicule. (And there's not a great deal of difference between that level of high society in 2017 and in 1848.) He takes his title from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, a work almost as familiar to his original readers as the Bible; and what he essentially demonstrates in the novel is that the upper-crust England of his day is the moral image of Bunyan's Vanity Fair.

Stylistically, Thackeray, though he wrote in an era when the Romantic school was dominant in literature, was himself a proto-Realist. His observation of society, character and daily life is eminently realistic, and he appeals to the intellect, not primarily the emotions. Satirical humor is one of his chief weapons (perception of humor, of course, is an intellectual function), as it was for classical satirists like Juvenal and for many of the writers of the 1688-1789 Neoclassical period. (It's not coincidental that he felt a profound affinity for the 18th century.) Even as a kid, I could detect a significant difference in the way Thackeray writes compared to the novels I'd read by his more Romantic contemporary, Dickens. (However, the two men were longstanding friends --they quarreled in 1858, but reconciled shortly before Thackeray died, a fact that Dickens was thankful for afterwards.) He's also wildly fond of the technique of authorial intrusion and direct address to the reader; this wasn't uncommon in 19th-century fiction (though deprecated by modern critics), and I usually don't mind it in reasonable doses, but Thackeray, IMO, tends to carry it too far. (Though the first edition of this novel, which was the one I read the first time, has more of these; the second edition deletes some of the most egregious ones. The older Thackeray deemed that an improvement, and I agree.)

It could fairly be said that Thackeray, at least here, demonstrates a deeply pessimistic, and even cynical and jaundiced, perception of human life and human personality. (This is particularly noticeable at the end, although I won't discuss that in more detail, to avoid spoilers.) The effect of this can be depressing, though not so much so as in some of the novels of Thomas Hardy, in the next generation. And despite the Bunyan allusion of the title, there's not a lot of spiritual content and perception here. (A slight exception to all this is one of the minor characters, Lady Jane, who's apparently an evangelical, and who's actually treated much more positively, sympathetically and respectfully than the author treats most of his characters; we get the impression that she's the kind of genuinely good person that the rest of us ought to be. But as I said, she's a minor character.)

I've never regretted reading this novel; I found it substantial and rewarding enough to earn four stars. But the unappealing personalities of many of the characters and the generally downbeat perspective kept me from giving it the fifth star, and Thackeray never became an author I wanted to read more of, unlike some of his fellow Victorian writers.

Estou compradora deste livro: alguém tem para venda?
Li uma versão livre da Romano Torres. Gostei tanto que necessito a versão integral (em português), urgentemente.
Obrigada.