What a riveting book! The cast of characters so very interesting. A good example of how greed and naivety can effect people's lives. A definite must read classic.

Innocence—and its Opposite

I was brought up on Vanity Fair—the place depicted by John Bunyan in The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), which my father used to read to me as a child. He even tried to market a Bunyan board game, and later used his illustrations for it as slides in an evangelical road show. But Daddy was an innocent, knowing little of the sexual, social, and financial chicaneries of the real world; his Vanity Fair was merely a midway whose thrill ride ended up in the Desert of Disillusion. Not so Thackeray, who knew exactly how the world works. He is at his very best when depicting the wiles of his anti-heroine, the near-criminal charmer Becky Sharp—and alas at his worst when he too becomes overly moralistic.

I first read the book almost sixty years ago, when I was an innocent myself. Of the two young ladies seen leaving school when the novel opens, I fell for the gentle Amelia Sedley and could not stand her companion, Becky Sharp, orphan daughter of an English painter and a French singer. I was in agonies as I watched Amelia marry a man not worthy of her and ignore the devotion of the one who truly loves her, the modest Captain Dobbin. The novel went into eclipse as the Sedley family suffered misfortune after misfortune. Yet all this while the morally despicable Becky was riding high, married to a scoundrel of her own dye, and propelled by her beauty, her brains, and her talent for falsehood. At that time, you see, I was a Dobbin myself, distantly in love with my unattainable Amelia; I had not met any Beckies and was frightened of the forces of disorder that such women could unleash around them.

And now? Not so innocent, in literary terms at least. I still feel for Amelia, but there are long passages of the book where she either disappears from view or is a bit of a bore in her long-suffering purity. Becky, by contrast, is always interesting: when she is onstage, the temperature rises; when she is absent, you wait impatiently for her return. Adventuress or not, she is the book's true heroine. And in a book subtitled "A Novel Without a Hero," you surely need one. For Thackeray means it; with the exception of the phlegmatic Dobbin, there is not a single male character in the book who is wholly admirable, and the women are not much better. Becky Sharp at least is, well, sharp!

I am no longer the innocent reader in another sense: I am now much more aware of the history of the English novel than I was at 19; all the time I was rereading it, I was trying to work out where Vanity Fair fits into the canon. It was published in 1847, the same year as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, yet this is a cooler book, lacking the Brontës' immediacy and passion. Though written thirty years after Jane Austen's last novel, Persuasion, it very much shares her humor, her focus on the domestic lives of the genteel classes, and her concern with money—though with Thackeray, money is everything; with her, it is merely a subtext. Dickens had been writing for ten years, similarly large novels with huge casts; I would say that Thackeray was his equal at this stage, though he does not have Dickens' extraordinary social range or, more importantly, his sympathy with his characters. No, if you are to find parallels for Vanity Fair you would have to look back to the 18th-century picaresque novel such as Moll Flanders or Tom Jones or forward to Trollope and The Way We Live Now.

For Thackeray is above all a satirist. He describes himself as a carnival barker, the manager of a puppet show, whose purpose is to amuse and perhaps to instruct. His voice is constantly in our ears, and it can be a charming one. Chapter 6, for example, starts thus:

n  I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one (although there are some terrific chapters coming presently), and must beg the good-natured reader to remember, that we are only discoursing at present about a stockbroker's family in Russell Square, who are taking walks, or luncheon, or dinner, or talking and making love as people do in common life, and without a single passionate and wonderful incident to mark the progress of their loves.n

Satire, on the whole, deals with everyday life and avoids the "wonderful incident." It is concerned with the hypocrisy of people buttering up a rich relative, or the little fibs that a lazy person tells to recast himself as a dashing hero. Yet the novel proceeds pretty rapidly for over 200 pages, leading up to a major incident indeed, the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. This alone distinguishes Thackeray from most of his contemporaries, who rarely brought world events onto the stage of their novels. Even Thackeray prefers to watch from the wings; disclaiming any claims to be a military novelist, he concerns himself with "the brilliant train of camp-followers [that] hung round the Duke of Wellington's army […] and led it dancing and feasting, as it were, up to the very brink of battle." The three main male characters in the novel are army officers; they are followed to Brussels by Becky and Amelia and Amelia's fat and indolent brother Jos, who will eventually flee in terror. Brussels becomes like Brighton or Bath at the height of the season; in describing the grand ball on the eve of Waterloo, Thackeray is developing Byron's famous passage from Childe Harold, "There was a sound of revelry by night." And in dwelling on the historical irony of the situation, he can for once forget his own cynicism, and reach considerable heights:

n  The sun was just rising as the march began—it was a gallant sight—the band led the column playing the regimental march—then came the major in command, riding upon Pyramus, his stout charger—then marched the grenadiers, their captain at their head; in the centre were the colours, borne by the senior and junior Ensigns—then George came marching at the head of his company. He looked up, and smiled at Amelia, and passed on; and even the sound of the music died away.n

But the underlying problem is that a satire without sympathetic characters cannot be sustained indefinitely. Waterloo is won on page 266 of my edition; there are still 300 pages to come. And with them, Vanity Fair becomes a different, more diluted novel. From day-by-day activities, we now observe the passage of months or years. From a contained middle-class world, we now move down to a life of genteel poverty with one heroine and up into aristocratic circles with the other. From author-as-storyteller, we move too often to author-as-moralist, with chapters such as "How to live well on Nothing a Year," commenting on life at large rather than advancing his story. Until I learned to speed-read the moralizing and concentrate on the action involving the main characters, it was heavy going. Though just as I was about to give up, Thackeray would snap back into cracking form, as with Chapter 41, "In which Becky revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors," and its successors—nothing involving Becky Sharp can ever be dull. And he pulls it all together brilliantly at the end, with two chapters that contain as many plot twists as the previous two hundred pages. A happy ending? That would be telling. If innocence triumphs, it is innocence tempered by bitter experience.



One last point. Satire cannot work on the innocent reader; it needs one who recognizes the portrait with an Ouch! Thackeray's Vanity Fair is thus a very topical book; it depends on knowledge of the setting, of the life styles, of the language. I read this in the text-only hardback I bought in 1960. Even with my knowledge of London, Victorian literature, and some history, there was still a lot to look up. So be sure to get an edition with copious notes. And preferably with the illustrations that Thackeray drew himself. As works of art, they may not be very good, but they do perfectly capture the satirical mood in which he observes his characters from the outside—though rarely inhabiting them from within.

در ادبیات فارسی واژهٔ «خودفروشی» به معنای فاحشگی نبوده و به معنای جلوه‌فروشی، خودنمایی و خودستایی است.
کتاب تصویری تلخ و بی رحمانه از طبیعت پیچیده انسان نشان میده
مکانی پر از انواع فریب کاری ها، دروغ ها و ادعاهای واهی
در بازار خودفروشی انسان ها به دنبال منافع شخصی خودشون هستن و برای نیل به هدفهای خود از هیچ چیزی ابایی ندارند..
جایی که جز طمع و خودخواهی هیچ چیز ارزش واقعی نداره..
جایی که پول و‌ ثروت و مقام باارزش ترین چیزهاست...

“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”

Vanity fair! A novel without a hero! A puppet show! The puppets are the flawed and unlikeable characters and the acts are hypocrisy, callousness, betrayal and artfulness.
Narrated by Thackeray himself who is unreliable and voluble, the story is about two opposites. The manipulative, cunning, scheming and pleasure-seeking Becky Sharp and the weak, naive and kindhearted (in my opinion stupid and annoying) Emmy Sedley.
Vanity Fair is the portrayal of human nature at its worst. It is about the vanity of human affairs and not an easy book to like. It took me more than 3 months to read it, whereas I finished Les Miserables and War and Peace respectively in 3 and 4 weeks and devoured Charles Dickens novels like they were chocolate dipped peanut butter crackers!

And so as Dante says, “Abandon all hope - You Who Enter Here.”

According to the description on the back of my copy, this book is "deliciously satirical." If that means the book is supposed to be taken as a joke, then I definitely read it the wrong way. Maybe I should try rereading it while repeating under my breath, "It's Oscar Wilde, it's Oscar Wilde, it's Oscar Wilde" until I see that it's funny, but frankly I'd rather not.
Here, presented in simple list form, are the reasons I disliked this book:
-William Makepeace Thackeray is a condescending ass. Maybe this was all part of the satire, but a danger of writing a satirical book is that people might accidentally take it seriously. I am one of those idiots, and because of this I just rolled my eyes at the book while reading quotes like this: "What do men know about women's martyrdoms? We should go mad had we to endure the hundreth part of those daily pains which are meekly born by many women. Ceaseless slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience, watchfullness, without even so much as the acknowledgement 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."
Hear that? It's the sound of me bringing my Angry Feminist Hat out of storage.
Also, if I had a nickel for every time Thackeray refers to either Becky or Amelia as "the little woman" I would have at least three dollars. I'm not even exagerrating.
-The whole book is at least 200 pages too long, bogged down with pointless anecdotes and background information that has no effect on the plot. Several times I found myself reading a long description of the random Army captain's wife's sister's marriage arrangements, and would mutter at the pages, "Why does this matter?" Seriously, Thackeray needs a good editor more than anything else.
-Almost all the characters irritated me beyond measure. Rawdon was an idiot, George was an asshole, Dobbin had "Hello, I'm a Tool" written on his forehead, and Amelia made Jane Eyre look like Gloria Steinem. Becky was the only exception to this - she was evil, conniving, smart, charming, and totally awesome. But she was only present for about a third of the book. Which leads me to my next point...
-Why is Becky only present for one third of the story? I had to sit through pages and pages of pointless chatter about minor characters and The Trials of Amelia the Adorable Martyr, and all I wanted to know was what Becky was up to. Towards the end of the book, once I had stopped even remotely caring about the latest evidence for Amelia's sainthood, Becky finally makes a reappearance. This is several years after her husband discovered that she had been hoarding money and may have been cheating on him, and left her to go be a mayor in Wherever-The-Hell Island. What, the readers wonder, could Becky have gotten up to in that time? Whatever it is, it's probably a lot more interesting than anything Amelia the Spineless Wonder has been doing.
Here's what Thackeray has to say about Becky while she wasn't in the story: "...when Becky is out of the way, be sure that she is not particularly well-employed, and that the less that is said about her doings is in fact the better."
Yeah. God forbid you should write about your most interesting character. Let's find out how Amelia is doing instead. I'm sure it's something sweet and selfless.
The worst part is that right after Thackeray tells us that he's not going to write about what Becky did after her husband left her, he spends the next eighteen pages telling us what Becky did after her husband left her. What. The hell. Remember what I said about this book needing an editor? Exactly.

داستان از مدرسه‌ی دخترانه‌ی میس پینکرتون آغاز می‌شود. دو دختر به نام‌های آملیا سدلی و بکی شارپ در حال ترک مدرسه هستند و دوران تحصیل آن‌ها به پایان رسیده است. پدر میس سدلی بازرگانی در لندن است و میس شارپ دختری از خانواده فقیر که به جای شهریه‌اش در مدرسه کار می‌کند. غیر از وضع مالی و طبقه‌ی اجتماعی متفاوت این دو دختر که دوست هستند، روحیه‌ و رفتار آن‌ها در زندگی هم متفاوت است و همین تفاوت باعث جذاب‌تر شدن داستان می‌شود. ادامه‌ی داستان را بعد از ازدواج این دو و ماجراهایی که برایشان پیش می‌آید ، دنبال می‌کنیم. در مورد عنوان کتاب و بحث در مورد آن در مقدمه‌ی کتاب اشاره شده است که دید هر مترجم و مفهوم عنوان را بیان می‌کند. اما والتر آلن رمان‌نویس و محقق ادبیات انگلیس می‌گوید که منظور تکری از عنوان کتاب به معنای خودستایی و میل وافر به آن است که مردم خود شخص را آدم خوبی بپندارند. از نظر تاریخی هم داستان در دوره‌ای است که انگلستان مهد انقلاب صنعتی شده است و این نویسندگان خواستار نشان دادن جنبه‌های اخلاقی و اجتماعی در این دوره هستند. رمان کلاسیک با تم عاشقانه است.
#بازار_خودفروشی #ویلیام_تکری

Αφού απογοητεύτηκα από μια σειρά αποτυχημένων αναγνωστικών επιλογών, σκέφτηκα να στραφώ σε κάτι σίγουρο. Σε ένα βιβλίο που είχα διαβάσει πολλά χρόνια πριν. Να ξαναδιαβάσω το Πανηγύρι της Ματαιοδοξίας του Thackeray. Nα ξανασυναντήσω την πανούργα Μπέκι Σαρπ και την γλυκιά κι αθώα Αμέλια Σέντλεϊ ( εκνευριστικά αθώα μερικές φορές).
Ο Thackeray μας αφηγείται την ιστορία των δύο γυναικών, μια ιστορία γεμάτη έρωτες και φιλοδοξίες, προδοσίες, φτώχεια, πλούτη , πολλά οικογενειακά μπλεξίματα και πολλά άτιμη κοινωνία άλλους τους ανεβάζεις κι άλλους τους κατεβάζεις στα Τάρταρα. Και κάθε τόσο σταματάει την αφήγηση και γυρνάει στο κοινό του, σε μας, μας κλείνει το μάτι και μας λέει τη γνώμη του για τα καμώματα των ηρώων του και την άποψη του για την κοινωνία. Κυρίως για τις ανώτερες τάξεις της κοινωνίας που η Μπέκι Σαρπ παίζει στα δάχτυλα για ένα μεγάλο διάστημα, ζώντας αεριτζιδικα και εκμεταλλευόμενη την χαζομάρα και την ματαιοδοξία των μελών της. Το ύφος του είναι καυστικό, κυνικό, με πολύ χιούμορ και απολαυστικό.
Το βιβλίο γράφτηκε για να εκδοθεί σε συνέχειες από εφημερίδα κι αυτό δυστυχώς φαίνεται. Υπάρχουν κάποια κομμάτια αρκετά κουραστικά που σε κάνουν να θες να πηδήξεις σελίδες. Κάποιες περιγραφές παιχνιδιών που έπαιζαν στα μεγάλα σαλόνια ας πούμε.
Αυτό όμως δεν μειώνει ούτε την αξία του βιβλίου ούτε την αναγνωστική απόλαυση και είναι ένα βιβλίο που το ευχαριστήθηκα πολύ και τις δύο φορές που το διάβασα.

I loved this book! All the characters were fascinating portraits complete with beauties and blemishes … and the narration through this world of vanity was witty and inspired … kind of reminded me of Lady Whistledown from Bridgerton …

This story follows three families, the Osbornes and the Crawleys and the Sedleys … Amelia Sedley brings home a friend, Rebecca Sharp, after graduating from finishing school, and chaos ensues as Rebecca manipulates the men from all three families at different times throughout the novel … there’s also Major William Dobbin, best friend of George Osborne, who pines for the love of Amelia, who marries George … will Amelia ever fall in love with William?

I love a book with a cast of fabulous supporting characters - there’s Joseph Sedley, the gluttonous brother of Amelia (will he fall for Rebecca’s charm?) … there’s Rawdon Crowley, who clandestinely marries Rebecca (will Rebecca destroy his life as well?) … and then there’s Lady Crawley, Rawdon’s aunt (will she be able to detect Rebecca’s greedy motives?) … all these story lines are so brilliantly intertwined, and the characters so masterfully flawed, that putting this book down for even a minute will drive one mad about what happens next, and you end up curled under the blankets in bed and snuggled in your pajamas until 2:00 pm to finish the book in a frenzy …

So yeah, read this book if 680 pages do not intimidate you … it’s worth every single page …

First things first: Don't get this edition! I recently attended my college reunion. Whilst ambling idly around the green lawns of that hallowed institution, I had chance to encounter my most distinguished and beloved professor of English. Exalted that I happened to be dandling Thackeray's baby on my knee (instead of the glossy monthly version of Vanity Fair, as is more common with me), with sparkling eyes and an enchanting smile I thrust my copy before his erudite and discerning nose. "My favorite novel!" the learned man exclaimed in raptures; however his face then fell as he flipped through my humble off-brand edition. "I had not," he informed me, "got the proper one." He went on to explain that Thackeray had devised a large number of amusing illustrations, which are reprinted in certain -- infinitely more desirable and impressive -- editions.

"But why, good sir," I wept, "do they then publish editions such as these, deprived of pictures and designed to lead astray and to ruin the reputation of unfortunate, innocent wretches such as I?"

"Because they're stupid," the scholar pronounced, and left me gazing sadly at my inferior edition.

That said, I managed to enjoy my (pictureless) experience of Vanity Fair immensely! This is the best novel I've ever read on the topic of money. It's also got maybe the most wonderful and fascinating narrator in English literature, which is no small feat considering there's some virile competition.

Vanity Fair is supposed to be, as its title says, A Novel Without A Hero, and much fun is derived figuring out if this claim is true. In Vanity Fair, characters tend to be ruled either by love or money; by ruthless self-interest or slavish sacrifice to unworthy others. Thackeray's narrator slyly presents these modes and their virtues alongside society's supposed and actual values, forcing the reader to ask herself who, in this Fair, could possibly be called a true hero?

Of course, for this reader, the answer was clear: while there are some who may neither love nor delight in the antics of Becky Sharp, they're not in my social circle and would "cut" me rudely, should our open carriages happen to pass in the Park. Despite some superficial similarities, Becky Sharp is no odious Undine Spragg, and I can't imagine not cheering for this anti-heroine. Like the narrator, Becky's got the number of every character in Vanity Fair, and she illusionlessly proceeds based on this sound intelligence. Unlike even the noble Wm. Dobbin, Becky has no blind spots or weaknesses in judging character, and so she is that rarest of creatures: a truly charming realist who loves to have a great time. As Thackeray takes pains to remind us, Becky's not a pure cynic: she appreciates goodness in people, and doesn't begrudge others the virtue that she lacks. She is thoroughly lovable in her wickedness, as the best of us are.

What a great novel! All its considerable dramatic tension comes directly from its incredible characters -- Which will taste Success? Who shall be faced with Ruin? Will Becky triumph? Will Dobbin rally? Will Amelia ever grow a pair (or will she, one wonders hopefully, please drown herself in the Thames)? -- and from the brilliant commentary and manipulations of the narrative voice. As I said above, it's a novel focused on the topic of money, and is the best of these of any that I've ever read. Obviously, it's a comic novel, and is very funny; but it's also great literature, so beyond being funny, it's true.

O brother-wearers of motley! Are there not moments where one grows sick of grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells? This, dear friends and companions, is my amiable object -- to walk with you through the Fair, to examine the shops and shows there; and that we should all come home after the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and be perfectly miserable in private.

I cried three times while reading Vanity Fair! If you think that's pathetic, wait until you see how often the female characters in here fall to weeping. You might play a drinking game while reading Vanity Fair, and take a swig of brandy-and-water each time a character starts to cry; perhaps it might be a two-person game, in which one player drinks to the sincere and awful blubbering of dopey neurotic Amelia, while another takes a sip for each of "our little adventuress" Becky's crocodile tears. Or maybe, following the book's milieu, it wouldn't be based around drinking but instead a highly risky and addictive game of chance. There was an unholy amount of gambling in Vanity Fair, and indeed this vice seems to have been to moneyed Regency (?) England what crack cocaine was to impoverished 1980s American urban centers.

Anyway, this book was great and I definitely do recommend it. I know I said that going forward I was going to make a greater effort to start quoting from the source, but I've got things to do, and anyway, it's all so choice that I hardly know where to start. Just go read it yourself -- but remember! Get the one with the pictures!

[edit] Inizio a vedere la miniserie della BBC.







«Vanità delle vanità, tutto è vanità»*

Penso che, per i miei gusti, si tratti di un romanzo tirato un po' troppo per le lunghe, un po' tipo Il conte di Montecristo: evidentemente il feuilleton non è il mio genere preferito.
Mi sono piaciuti i continui ammiccamenti al lettore, il parlare di punto in bianco di famiglie e personaggi che non c'entravano nulla con la trama al solo scopo di contestualizzare e spiegare determinate situazioni, le uscite di scena senza troppi clamori, lo scenario politico (quante stoccate ai francesi!), i costumi e le usanze, un po' meno troppe lungaggini tipo le ormai famose sciarade.
Thackeray mette in scena una rappresentazione in cui tutti i burattini - proprio così li definisce! - non fanno altro che mettere in mostra, criticare e ridicolizzare i difetti del genere umano.
Nessuno si salva: uomini, donne, e persino bambini, non sono esenti da avidità e bramosia di potere, e tutti ruotano, come calamite impazzite, intorno al denaro, vero ed unico protagonista del romanzo.
Nessuno è perfetto, anche quelli che sembrano vittime buone, hanno i loro difetti (e Thackeray, nel dubbio che ci si possa affezionare ad un personaggio a discapito di un altro, non dimentica di sottolinearceli e mostrarceli dopo aver cercato di nasconderli per bene magari per tutto il romanzo!), così come i "cattivi" non sono mai completamente cattivi e del tutto negativi.

La Fiera delle Vanità è prima di tutto un romanzo corale, in cui spiccano le figure di Rebecca, unico esemplare umano non appartenente alla piccola aristocrazia inglese che Thackeray ci descrive, che cerca in tutti i modi e con ogni astuzia (più o meno lecita) di conquistarsi un posto da protagonista tra "i ricchi", e di Amelia, destinata invece per estrazione ad un futuro pieno di agi, il cui unico desiderio è quello di coronare il suo sogno d'amore sposando il caro George Osborne, giovane ufficiale e suo promesso sposo fin dalla tenera età; è un bellissimo affresco dell'epoca Vittoriana, che ci mostrerà come tutto sia serio e niente importante fino in fondo: persino la battaglia di Waterloo, e prima ancora i preparativi per la partenza dei battaglioni inglesi diretti in Belgio, sembreranno agli occhi del lettore come i carrozzoni di un circo itinerante, chiassosi, variopinti, spesso volgari ed espressione di un mondo in cui, anche per andare in guerra, era necessario partire scegliendo il cappello adatto e con la moglie al seguito.
Preferirete la dolce e remissiva Amelia o l'intrigante e manipolatrice Rebecca? Farete il tifo per il fedele e servizievole Dobbin o per l'affascinante e limitato Rawdon? Riderete del pingue Jos o dell'imbalsamato Sir Pitt?
Sappiate in ogni caso che chiunque sceglierete, di chiunque deciderete di prendere le parti, non sarà altro che frutto della vostra imperdonabile e irrefrenabile vanità.

«Ah Vanitas Vanitatum! Chi di noi è felice in questo mondo? Chi di noi raggiunge quello che desiderava, o avendolo raggiunto, è soddisfatto? Venite, ragazzi, riponiamo baracca e burattini: la commedia è finita.»

Per una volta mi viene da fare un raffronto che forse sarà campanilistico ma:
1844 - Il Conte di Montecristo (Dumas) - Francia
1848 - La Fiera delle Vanità (W.M. Thackeray) - Inghilterra
1894 - I Viceré (F. De Roberto) - Italia
È vero, tra i primi due e I Viceré ci sono circa cinquant'anni di differenza, ma non c'è confronto: una volta tanto, "mattonazzo per mattonazzo", c'è un abisso a nostro vantaggio .

*Vi ricorda qualcosa? :-)

I finish the book and wonder how to best convert the muddy puddle of my impressions into some-kind of a coherent rich picture of a review.

Well what is is, imagine an exhibition of of George Cruikshank's drawings or of those of Gilray perhaps, there is wit and fun, but after a while , maybe they are a little wearisome. In this it reminds me of when I was a student and sometimes, not knowing any better I'd read The Economist, eventually I noticed whatever country or problem was discussed the analysis was the same: slash public spending, liberalise markets and open them to foreign trade as you open a person's chest for open heart surgery, and be smug. Then I moved on to Private Eye for a while - here the message was aside from the staff and readers of that journal that everybody is stupid and stupidly commits stupid acts, everything always has been stupid, everything always will be. This I felt was worse, because it was also depressing. About that time I suppose I also read Vanity Fair for the first time  unless I didn't, its hard to tie these things down sometimes, it was before I had a computer let alone be introduced to Goodreads.

Again it is a classic, perhaps, at least in English, the classic moral sandwich book - a wafer of morality on either side of an oozing filling of vice and stupidity and greed indeed a vanity fair, maybe even vanity fayre.

Then again one might say it is an English War and Peace a family saga structured around the Napoleonic wars, with characters questing for self actualisation, except as satire rather than the seeking to satisfy the reader emotionally.

It is maybe an ancestor of Bonfire of the Vanities a slice of life in which everybody is reprehensible or ridiculous to varying degrees.

There is problem in terms of the book as a moral sandwich, in that the title would suggest that we are in the moral universe of Pilgrim's Progress hurrying through the vanity fair, shunning its sinners seeing only the self inflicted misery, however the author does not seem to wearing John Bunyan's shoes, his attitude to vanity fair is a relaxed amusement and from the first he suggests to the readers of the novel attitudes to the characters and their doings that don't really fit into the world of Pilgrims Progress instead he suggests that the reader can be sympathetic or amused. Of course by moving the story into the recent past, he is not suggesting that such dreadful goings on that place in Victorian society - oh no, it is the people of the reign of George IV who were so foolish and louche! The problem with laughing at the characters is that author has chosen the barrel and selected his fish, watching him shooting them for eight hundred pages, well I return to my original point.

Vanity Fair like so much nineteenth century novels was written for publication in instalments in a magazine, Thackeray earned himself a handsome £60 an issue (for about eighty printed pages) this was very good for him, the reader however can easily imagine sitting down with a sharp knife and a pot of glue and revealing the slim novel that may be struggling instead it to get out. It can be very droll and amusing as I hope the excerpts quoted below give some idea, it can also go on a bit, and if certain sections were not there would I have missed them?

The other problem about the weakness of the moral wafer is that we are left cheek by jowl with Thackeray. I read somewhere  but have forgotten where and so am unsure if this is true or just speculationthat Thackeray dropped early on the ever smiling Sambo the black servant and the 'amusingly' named Miss Swartz daughter of a German-Jewish father and a black Caribbean mother on account of reader criticism, I don't know if he was Racist as such, or it was more a case that all non-English people were inherently ridiculous in his opinion, indeed when Dobbin's regiment is posted to India his chief danger is that he may end up getting married to an Irish girl (steady the Buffs), though at least she isn't Roman-Catholic (for the benefit of the ladies and gentlemen at the back, smelling salts will be passed round), having said that if you are going to read it, don't read this edition, get this one or another with Thackeray's original illustrations - Glorvina looking at Dobbin across the dance floor is particularly fine. The flip side of this is if you've ever wondered where this British empire thing is in the British novel, it is mostly hiding out in vanity fair: the intrinsic humour of mixed race children, exotic servants, fancy shawls and foods  i>'Oh I must try some, if it is an Indian dish,' said Miss Rebecca. 'I am sure everything must be good that comes from there.'
'Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear,' said Mr Sedly, laughing
Rebecca had never tasted the dish before.
'Do you find it as good as everything else from India?' said Mr Sedley.
'Oh, excellent!' said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the cayenne pepper.
'Try a chilli with it, Miss Sharp,' said Joseph, really interested.
'A chilli,' said Rebeeca, gasping. 'O yes!' She thought a chilli was something cool, as its name imported, and was served some. 'How fresh and green they look!' she said, and put one in 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).(p.61), I quote at length because this is a good taste  ha, ha (sorry) of Thackeray's humour - Miss Sharp trying here to ingratiate herself  ie snare herself a husband with Sedly Junior - just back from a spell in India with the east India company, here for once Miss Sharp out done by an even sharper meal I think it is pretty funny, but if you don't then I warn you fair and square this is about as good as it gets but my sense of humour is fair cruel, I am still amused at the memory of my father complaining about my greatgrandfather urging him to pick up a rabbit which then scratched him, admittedly this particularly funny because my father was still indignant twenty years after the event, mind you I'm still amused and they're all dead now, (especially the rabbit)

The joy of the novel I fear lies most in the side characters and the sketches of the hunting, shooting and boozing parish priest and his boxing gin drinking son (I guess also bound for the clergy  sobriety after-all is generally preferred in most other professionstown before the Great Reform Act 1832 which sent two people to parliament but which might have one or up to a handful of voters, perhaps all controlled by one family  to rent out a seat in a Parliament, which brings in a few pennies.

A problem is that Thackeray's principal characters can never develop there always has to be some angle or several angles at which they are ridiculous and mocked by the author. Interestingly (from my point of view) Thackeray's conception seems Wordsworthian - the child is the father of the man admittedly in part because the child remains a child - I think I recall one of his drawings of his characters as children but flopping about in adult clothes to underline that idea - but then getting back to the moral sandwich idea you might ask where the adult is in the book - but there isn't one, this is a book resolutely without a hero. But digressing back to my digression I digress to Thackeray criticising Goethe's Elective affinities, which for Thackeray is morally dangerous, however we may feel psychologically much more sophisticated .

Rereading I felt a little more sorry than I remembered from previously for Becky Sharp as she comes across as the most intelligent - but in the way of tv cartoon villains - she knows her end desire, and she knows what she can do do, but she can't see that there is no road between the two. All the characters are so completely conditioned by their childhoods that there is no possibility of growth they are doomed to be slaves of satire forever, Dobbin so whipped and beaten as his name invites in childhood, that as an adult he has to visit the same on himself For native speakers of British English it is impossible to see anybody called "Dobbin" as a hero, but perhaps one needs to be over a certain age now to know that  particularly since it is a long while since Brian Cant was on the TV . Obviously Becky Sharp is your girl if you love the idea of always having the last word witty come back, more cutting than the world hairdressing championships, plainly in the contemporary world she'd be the leading edge CFO keeping a financial empire just about afloat by lending money to herself, currencies moving through jurisdictions like planes landing and taking off at an international hub airport. We get to enjoy her wheelings and dealings and then her comeuppance, yet I feel post  vindication of the rights of woman and Jane Eyre that her fatal fault is that she is too French because your French woman of course, unlike an English woman is never a mother, sure, sure she make give birth and all, that but they are hopelessly compelled to be floozies at them there soirées what they has in France, while your English woman, she'll have none of that, devote herself to her babies she will because she's a mother, and if she don't, you scratch her she'll be no Englishwoman but foreign o some sort French most probably like this here Becky Sharp with her French mum, it's all in the blood of course so it can't be helped but there you go. Biology is destiny. Ancestry is destiny. But it is all for laughs, the problem with satire is I feel sometimes the line between humour and a horrible world view, as with the treatment of non-English characters above, can be pretty fine  but then I am humourless except when it comes to people eating chillies imagining they will be delightfully cooling  as to be fair, their name implies, or being indignant over having been scratched by rabbits twenty years previously


"Everybody is striving for what is not worth the having!" (p.563)


On the rereading I found less funny than I remember, though I suppose it is just possible that the book has stayed the same while I have grown less tolerant, it doesn't seem to me to be the kind of book that requires multiple readings or which grows and grows in the rereading, I did this time notice the tightness of the London geography - still, amusing, but if you are going to give it a go - get yourself an edition with the original illustrations!

'Le ambizioni sbagliate'

Libro di metà '800, colloca le vicende narrate tra l'inizio del secondo decennio e gli anni '30 di quel secolo, per un'estensione temporale quindi di oltre un ventennio.
"La fiera delle vanità" ben rappresenta il periodo di transizione fra la cultura romantica e quella realistica : sicuramente c'è l'intento di tracciare un quadro della società del tempo; l'autore però non rimane estraneo alle vicende, anzi quasi manzonianamente commenta, induce esplicitamente il lettore a riflettere.
Possiamo cogliervi anche istanze illuministiche nell'uso della satira per correggere i vizi di arrivismo e ipocrisia, falso perbenismo e raggiro.
Protagoniste della scena, borghesia e nobiltà. Diversamente dall'Italia però, dove la borghesia arricchita tendeva a vivere come l'aristocrazia parassitaria, in Inghilterra i nobili ambivano a far fruttare i loro beni economici con spirito imprenditoriale borghese, tanto da determinare una certa commistione fra le due classi privilegiate. Ed è proprio in questo ambito che si muovono i nostri personaggi.

Il concatenarsi degli eventi, con rapide svolte e colpi di scena, risente delle esigenze dell'iniziale pubblicazione a puntate del romanzo. Altra carenza che ho rilevato riguarda lo scarso approfondimento psicologico.
Tali aspetti 'deboli' risultano compensati da una capacità di forte rappresentazione socio-economica, da cui emergono gli stili di vita di un mondo tutto volto all'ostentazione e al successo sociale, delineato con acuminata vena satirica, che dà allo stile una vivacità e un'arguzia che contribuiscono a rendere piacevole la lettura. La deliziosa scrittura dona alle pagine una lieve patina d'antan, con quella gradevolezza ottocentesca che la buona letteratura inglese del tempo sa elargire a piene mani.

Lo scrittore ci avverte che nel testo non ci saranno eroi.
A mio avviso, ciò non risulta del tutto vero : il personaggio positivo, in qualche modo accostabile a Pierre di "Guerra e pace", emerge gradualmente lungo la narrazione, carattere che si scopre ben prima della conclusione del poderoso romanzo. E il lettore, ovviamente, fa il tifo per lui.