خیلی کتاب و دوست داشتم، خیلی هم طول کشید بخونمش و تمومش کنم نزدیک ۲ هفته طول کشید ولی خیلی خوب بود، اولش فکر میکنی از رمان های تکراری عه ولی بعد از این که اول داستان که یه کم خسته کنندست میگذره داستان جذاب میشه، درباره پول، طمع، کینه هست این که چطوری آدما به خاطر پول خودشون و میفروشن،
داستان طبقه مختلف از جامعه است ، داستان افراد عادی( کتاب معروف شده به داستانی که قهرمان نداره) . بعد از خوندن کتاب فیلم Vanity fair سال ۲۰۰۴ برای کشور انگلیس و ببینید ، کتاب قشنگ بهتون میچسبه.

Thackeray:

I never imagined, dear Thackeray, that my experience reading your most famous novel might end up being somewhat disappointing. You know what people usually say: perhaps it was not your moment to really enjoy that read, maybe if you give it a try again, in the future... or perhaps, it will never be for you. Either way, I want to be truly honest with you: overall, I didn't like reading your magnum opus, Vanity Fair. I'm sorry but, my moment or not, I prefer to say the whole truth, my truth, which is basically the way I felt throughout this journey. But firstly, Let's talk about the good stuff, is it fine? I've always believed if you have something good to say, say it first.

I completely enjoyed the funny, ironic way you decided to narrate this novel. Your narrator was the best part of the whole book; no, seriously, you have no idea how many times I laughed at something really simple, even ridiculous, and just because of the narrator. I suppose you are the narrator, aren't you? A memorable way to live in your own novel forever, I guess.
Your characters, especially the main ones: how can I not love them? Tell me, how am I going to forget them? There are things in life which are impossible to forget, and this is definitely one of those things. Amelia, Becky, Rawdon, Dobbin, Miss Crawley, Jos, Pitt, George, Jane, Georgy, Mrs. Bute (I just typed these names in the way they came to my mind) are an important part of me right now, and this feeling is possible because of you, Thackeray.
I found some of your thoughts/reflections* as well as some chapters which were crucial over the course of the story quite important and enjoyable to read. For instance, there is one chapter (chapter 35) that is present vividly in my mind, at which you talk about significant topics, so significant that I couldn't help but think of my own life and the place where I am right now. Thanks for such a meaningful moment.
And finally, those descriptions of the Napoleonic Wars... I'm still speechless, I can't find the right words to express my admiration for such powerful descriptions. For example, I'm remembering that one** which was very long, and at the same time, quite short to express everything you wanted to say; in my view, another notch on your belt.

So far, so good, right? and that was nonetheless the shorter part. Now, it is time to say the negative stuff, and explain why this book is only a 3-star novel for me.
Well, Thackeray, first of all, I want to ask you something so directly, with all due respect: why are you rambling a lot? 800 or so pages and you never, never stopped rambling. At the very beginning, I must confess it was interesting, but once you are on chapter 15, chapter 25, chapter 40, and so on, this experience turns out to be unbearable, underwhelming, disappointing. If you had had something important to say for the sake of the story, fine, no problem at all, but you were lost at some point, weren't you? You preferred a not-to-the-point book to a clear, maybe straightforward yet well developed story.
Now, let's say a 'rambling story' is not a problem: then, why were you rambling on insignificant topics and leaving the important ones out of the novel? When something necessary for the plot—main plot or subplots—happened, it was solved so fast that I, as a reader, wasn't able to enjoy or even appreciate what was happening, whereas when there was something completely unnecessary, for instance, those guests who were in a soirée whose names you had to mention, one by one, and also their titles, even what they were wearing, when such characters (almost) never came back to the story again – why on earth did you do that, Thackeray? Also, it was noticeable that you didn't know what to do with your main and secondary characters, and even you constantly introduced new ones; at some point there were too many characters, and some of them were less important for the story than Miss Crawley's lap dog.
Lastly, do you want to know why this novel is my biggest disappointment, only among all the Victorian novels I have read so far (and I believe I have read a decent amount of them, by the way)? Because you had no idea how to finish this story, and therefore, as a result, we had here one of the worst endings we can find in a novel: no ending at all. Two paragraphs to close Amelia's story, and as for Becky, there is no a proper, fair ending, one character who just ended up in 'the same place' she started. As for the rest of the characters, it was also disappointing, you can't finish all the subplots at the end of the last chapter as if you were writing a grocery shopping list: one paragraph, one ending, another paragraph, another ending. 67 chapters and this is what we got. It is not fair, Thackeray, it is unacceptable, unbelievable.
You knew I had a terrible experience with another massive book recently, and therefore, I had all my expectations for your novel. So, at this point I can't help but believe that perhaps huge books are not working for me right now, or maybe it was just a sad coincidence. Either way, Vanity Fair, even though its narrative was great (I can't complain about that), was one of those Victorian classics that I knew I would enjoy from beginning to end; unfortunately, my experience with your book turned out that I don't want to read any of your other novels, at least not for a long, long time.

Sorry again, Thackeray, you know this is not personal, and yet I don't regret saying the things I have said in this letter.

Best,

A picky(?) reader

----

* “Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters, written in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you! What a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of dead affection! What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of love! What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us have got or written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons which we keep and shun.”

** “All our friends took their share and fought like men in the great field. All day long, whilst the women were praying ten miles away, the lines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and repelling the furious charges of the French horsemen. Guns which were heard at Brussels were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades falling, and the resolute survivors closing in. Towards evening, the attack of the French, repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened in its fury. They had other foes besides the British to engage, or were preparing for a final onset. It came at last: the columns of the Imperial Guard marched up the hill of St. Jean, at length and at once to sweep the English from the height which they had maintained all day, and spite of all: unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled death from the English line—the dark rolling column pressed on and up the hill. It seemed almost to crest the eminence, when it began to wave and falter. Then it stopped, still facing the shot. Then at last the English troops rushed from the post from which no enemy had been able to dislodge them, and the Guard turned and fled.”

Classic Victorian novel – “Novel without a hero” but with an anti-heroine, the charming but scheming and above all manipulative, upwardly mobile Becky Sharp.

Two main female characters – the rich Amelia Sedley and the grocer/singer’s daughter Becky Sharp. When they leave school, Becky almost receives a marriage proposal from Amelia’s brother Jos (an official in India but also a bon viveur), but he is too drunk and instead she goes to the drunken Baronet Sir Pitt Crawley as governess to his children. Pitt has a brother nearby Rev Bute Crawley and two children – Rawdon, a soldier who is a big favourite of his rich aunt Mrs Crawley and Rev Pitt (who isn’t!). When Sir Pitt’s wife dies he proposes to Becky who is then forced to reveal she is already married – to Rawdon who are then cast off by their family and cut out of Mrs Crawley’s will. Meanwhile Amelia has always been assumed by both sets of families to be due to be implicitly promised to the handsome but proud and shallow George Osborne. However, Mr Sedley is financially ruined costing Mr Osborne money and the two completely fall out and both separately renounce the union. William Dobbin, George’s best friend (who saved him from bullying at school but then whose family rose above him so that Dobbin is George’s officer) and a secret admirer of Amelia’s – convinces George to go ahead with the marriage as Amelia is otherwise dying of a broken heart. Both couples (as well as Dobbin and Jos as a civilian) immediately depart to Brussels in the build up to Waterloo. Becky flirts outrageously with George who promises his love to her within his first week of marriage but George is killed in the battle leaving Amelia with child.

Amelia returns to her financially ruined family and looks after George Jr while re-inventing her memory of her husband, Dobbin and Jos return to India while Dobbin secretly funds Amelia and the child. Amelia in desperation for the state of her son and parents gives George Jr over to Mr Osborne and his family to care for – thus securing more money and a partial reconciliation, while George Jr grows up to be as vain and pretentious and self-important as his Dad. Dobbin returns to England (with both character thinking the other has been married in the meantime) but when he explains his feelings to Amelia she rejects him saying she must remain faithful to (her false/idealised) memory of George. Eventually on Mr Osborne’s death he acknowledges Amelia and returns George’s custody to her.

Becky meanwhile plots an upward path in society – initially by her ability to string along creditors. Mrs Bute initially gains Mrs Crawley’s favour but overplays her hand and instead Pitt Crawley inherits the majority of her wealth. Becky then pulls a masterstroke of persuading Rawdon to congratulate Pitt on this and achieves the result of her and Pitt being re-recognised by the family, which then boosts her presence in society, which is further boosted by the favour of the rich and illustrious Lord Steyne (with whom she may be having an affair). Rawdon discovers this and vows to fight Steyne in a duel but is persuaded to instead take a governor position in the tropics – however he refuses to be reconciled to Becky and hands his son Rawdon Jr (who Becky has never cared for except when advantageous in public– a point which Thackeray seems to think summarises her character) to his brother to look after.

Jos, Dobbin, George Jr and Amelia tour Europe. While in Germany they meet the down-at-heel Becky who has been driven from city to city where her initial attempts to charm the local gentry is thwarted by rumours of her true character and situation coming, it is hinted, by Lord Steyne’s design. Dobbin finally repudiates Amelia, and decides she is not high-minded and worth enough if she will not respect his years of devotion to her and departs to England. Amelia has already repented of her behaviour and written a letter imploring him to return when Becky finally shatters her myth about George. Amelia and Dobbin marry (although not in a Jane Austen “happy ever after” way but almost because Amelia is too weary to resist any longer) while Jos and Becky travel together until Jos died (with some suspicion Becky did it for his will). The book ends with Amelia reflecting that Dobbin for all his kindness is fonder of their daughter than her and with the quote “which of us has his desire, or having it, is satisfied”.

This last piece summarises the book well – most of the characters are unhappy and there is much comment on the true state of human relationships (e.g. the lack of true care of children for their parents).

Whereas Jane Austen stops at the point of marriage - this book consciously explores what happens after marriages, marriages made out of love but frustrated by circumstances and particularly by family disapproval due to social conventions.

Narrator is a strong character in the book – often commenting cynically on the vanities of mankind although also making contemporary comments (which make the book difficult to follow now). Although the crucial part of the book is set around the Battle of Waterloo there is explicitly no description of the battle, expect from the viewpoint of the non-combatants, this focus on those “left behind” was, for me, one of the most impressive parts of what is certainly an impressive and sweeping, if depressing, novel.

vanitas vanitatum!

ah, where to begin with this classic? it's long. that's for sure. but in place of the fact that one can find it daunting/overwhelming to read an 800-paged english classic, i encourage you to do so. this is your sign to read vanity fair, a novel without a hero. i may disagree with that tag line very much as i see major william dobbin as the foremost protagonist of the book, though introduced and written about in few scenes. the book mostly revolved on its two female characters, amelia and rebecca.

rebecca sharp, fronting the story, is one of the best representations of worldly spirits. damn, this book really gives you so much wisdom on greed, hypocrisy, betrayal, and ambition. however, do not be turned away by its satirical intent on such matters. it also dwells on rebecca's friendship with amelia, and how their adventure and growth intertwined throughout the chapters, resolving to the most realized act of friendship in the last few pages that i have read so far as my foray to classics is concerned.

from its historical-fiction type of writing, thackeray brings about his share of experiences in the napoleonic wars, the battle of the waterloo, and english society in the early 1800s. moreover its ties to reality, the book humorously condescends, and successful in doing so, the deepest pretensions of men and women through their caressed ego.

what i loved best about my journey with these characters is the fact that almost all of them (not you amelia) do know when another character is tricking them, but they brush off their awareness for a moment of flattery, and it's probably the gist of vanity fair: the vanity leaves you empty.

i highly recommend it to everyone, though it will benefit most diligent adult readers in terms of language, length, and themes

I read Vanity Fair as part of my occasional series of “forgotten classics”—meaning not classics that the rest of the world has forgotten, but classics that I have practically forgotten myself, having first read them several aeons ago.

It was an interesting experience to revisit this novel (interesting in the euphemistic sense of not entirely pleasurable.) There were some things I liked about it, certainly. There’s something attractively mobile about Vanity Fair. I like the way you’re never quite allowed to settle as a reader. Thackeray varies his narrative voice throughout, sometimes pulling us into the principal plot and its emotional entanglements, and sometimes pushing us away. Even though the novel is basically realist in its idiom, it never quite forgets its framing metaphor of the puppet show and the framing allegory, derived from Bunyon, of the world as a fair of all the vanities. The novel’s “real” characters cohabit their stage with a vast cast of cartoonish extras, equipped with comedy names (Lord Methuselah, Mr Tapeworm, Miss Mango, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone, Ensign Stubble.) Nor can we even distinguish clearly between these two levels of novelistic being, given that two of the principal “real” characters also have epitomizing names: Dobbin and Sharp.

As for the rest … hmm. I must say I had problems with the sheer unnevenness of this novel. You can make allowances, obviously, for how it was written (this is lovingly detailed in the World’s Classics edition I used, which is pretty scholarly.) The first four chapters were written a couple of years before the remainder; and the remainder was written on an instalment basis over almost two years, and very quickly (an episode a month.)

That’s all fine, and historically interesting, but, as a reader, my focus is on results, rather than process. Vanity Fair is kind of a mess, as you might expect from this process of composition. The first few chapters are woeful. It improves after that and gathers momentum pretty remarkably, but it’s still astonishingly hard to work out when you have finished reading whether the finished novel is simply incoherent, for historical reasons, or whether it’s brilliantly and challengingly unorthodox. The narrator’s stance towards some of his main characters changes dramatically in the final episode, for example—dramatically, to the point of unrecognizably. Is this a remarkable preemptive deconstruction of the entire Victorian moralizing-realist novelistic project? Or did Thackeray simply forget what he had written before?

Plot and narrative stance aside, the novel is also unneven at the level of style. Thackeray is capable of great moments. I loved this, from a description of a young woman sitting alone in her wealthy cavernous drawing room, gradually coming to terms with the fact that her life is to be one of involuntary spinsterhood, caring for her monster of a father.

The great glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console-glass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied between them the brown holland bag in which the chandelier hung; until you saw these brown holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and this apartment of Miss Osborne’s seemed the centre of a system of drawing-rooms.

(She should probably have guessed her fate long before, when she realized that the main clock in the room was “surmounted by a cheerful brass group of the sacrifice of Iphigenia.”) Away from such high points, though, Thackeray is sometimes capable of whole passages that are just repetitive and phoned-in, presumably dating from times when he was racing for his monthly deadlines and had a lot of dinner engagements. I’m not sure I have ever read a classic novel that so screamed for the red pen.

Last but far from least, I was put off Vanity Fair by the whiff of racism it gives off. There are quite a few snide comments about the abolitionist movement scattered throughout the novel and a distasteful (would-be) comic portrait of a “mulatto” heiress, Miss Swartz, never mentioned without her Homeric epithet of “woolly-haired.” I investigated a little and it’s clear that these sneers weren’t casual or a lapse, but rather that they reflect a consistent racism on Thackeray’s part, nastily documented in his letters:

http://blog.oup.com/2011/07/thackeray/

You might say that a lot of Victorians were similarly unregenerate in their views, but I’m not sure it excuses him. If everyone had held the same views on the subject as Thackeray, he wouldn’t have any abolitionists to sneer at.

Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity Fair is an English novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars.

A novel that chronicles the lives of two women who could not be more different: Becky Sharp, an orphan whose only resources are her vast ambitions, her native wit, and her loose morals; and her schoolmate Amelia Sedley, a typically naive Victorian heroine, the pampered daughter of a wealthy family.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «بازار خودفروشی»؛ «آملیا»؛ «بازار غرور»؛ «یاوه بازار» نویسنده: ویلیام تکری؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1990میلادی

عنوان: بازار خودفروشی؛ نویسنده: وی‍ل‍ی‍ام‌ ت‍ک‍ری‌‏‫؛ مت‍رج‍م: م‍ن‍وچ‍ه‍ر ب‍دی‍ع‍ی‌؛ تهران، نیلوفر، 1368؛ در 868ص؛ شابک9644481046؛ چاپ چهارم سال1396؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده 19م

عنوان: آملیا؛ نویسنده: دبلیو.ام. تاکری؛ تلخیص: ای.ام آتوود؛ مترجم: نوشین ریشهری؛ تهران، نگارینه، 1386؛ در 320ص؛ شابک9789648935455؛

عنوان: بازار غرور؛ نویسنده: ویلیام میکپیس تاکری (تاکرای)؛ مترجم: موحده السادات موسوی؛ سیرجان، نشر وافی؛ 1394؛ در 172ص؛ شابک9786009485321؛

عنوان: یاوه بازار؛ نویسنده: وی‍ل‍ی‍ام‌ م‍ک‌ پ‍ی‍س‌ ت‍ک‍ری‌؛ ت‍رج‍م‍ه‌ ف‍رح‌ ی‍ک‍رن‍گ‍ی‌ (دواچ‍ی‌)؛ تهران، بنگاه ترجمه و نشر کتاب، 1341؛ در 148ص؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، 1351؛ در 146ص؛

‏‫ای‍ن‌ ک‍ت‍اب‌ در س‍ال‌ 1334خورشیدی ب‍اع‍ن‍وان‌ «ی‍اوه‌ ب‍ازار» ب‍ا ت‍رج‍م‍ه‌ جناب «ف‍رح‌ دواچ‍ی‌ (ی‍ک‍رن‍گ‍ی‌)» در 148ص؛ و در سال 1341؛ و در سال 1351؛ در بنگاه ترجمه و نشر کتاب م‍ن‍ت‍ش‍ر ش‍ده‌ اس‍ت‌

بازار خودفروشی: رمانی بدون قهرمان؛ اثر «ویلیام تاکری» نویسنده «بریتانیایی» است که برای نخستین بار در سال 1847میلادی تا سال 1848میلادی منتشر شده‌ است؛ این رمان یکی از بیست رمان بزرگ سده نوزدهم میلادی است که از سوی «سامرست موآم» داستان‌نویس و نمایشنامه‌ نویس «بریتانیایی» برگزیده شده است؛ در کوی ما شکسته‌ دلی می‌خرند و بس - بازار خودفروشی از آن سوی دیگر است؛ حضرت حافظ

بازار خودفروشی سرگذشت یک دورهٔ بیست ساله (از سال 1811میلادی تا سال 1830میلادی) را در فضایی واقعی و با شخصیت‌هایی غیرواقعی در برمی‌گیرد؛ در شرایطی که طبقهٔ بورژوآ به‌ نوعی حاکمیت جامعه را در دست گرفته است؛ حکایت زندگیِ خانواده‌ های اشرافی در برابر خانواده‌ های فقیر «بریتانیایی» است؛ محوریت داستان دو‌ شخصیت به نام‌های «آملیا» و «بکی»، دو دختر از طبقهٔ پولدار و تهی‌دست هستند، که درگیر ماجراهای بسیاری می‌شوند؛ «آملیا»، دختر رئوف و‌ خوش‌قلب داستان است، که بارها اسیر بدجنسی‌های «بکی» و همسر خیانتکارش می‌شود، و «بکی» با مکر و ‌‌دسیسه‌ های زنانه با پسر رئیسش ازدواج می‌کند، و داستانش این‌گونه رقم می‌خورد؛ اما این ظاهر رخداد است، خوانشگر از همان آغاز داستان با چیزی فراتر از یک داستان سادهٔ عشقی مواجه می‌شود؛ بازار خودفروشی داستان مردمانی عادی است و قهرمان ندارد؛ بازار خودفروشی شرح دردها و رنج‌ها و خوشی‌های طبقات گوناگون جامعه است، که دچار حرص و طمع و حسادت و کینه شده‌ اند؛ در بازار خودفروشی دلال‌ها کلاه‌برداری می‌کنند، زن‌ها را به بردگی خود درمی‌آورند، از گناه‌ کردن نمی‌هراسند، قمارخانه‌ ها پُر از کسانی‌ است که برای حفظ منافعشان دست به هر کاری دست می‌یازند، آدم‌ها را می‌خرند و می‌فروشند، به‌ راحتی به هم بهتان می‌زنند، و هزاران کار می‌کنند تا زندگی کنند، و در نهایت رضایتشان جلب نمی‌شود؛ در حقیقت این کتاب به جزئیاتی اشاره دارد تا به قول نویسنده در یک جمله نشان دهد که «آدم‌های درجه دهم همواره در کارند تا به درجه نهم برسند!»؛ در صفحه ی شماره265کتاب از اختلاف طبقاتی جامعه گفته شده است: -«امی» با اندوه گفت «کاش به من محبت پیدا می‌کردند؛ همیشه با من سرد بودند»؛ - «جورج» پاسخ داد «طفلک من، به تو هم اگر دویست هزار لیره داشتی محبت پیدا می‌کردند؛ اینها را این‌جور بار آورده‌ اند؛ جامعهٔ ما جامعهٔ پول و پَله است، ما در میان صرافان و کله‌ گنده‌ های بازار شهر زندگی می‌کنیم، که لعنت بر همه‌ شان باد، و هرکس که با آدم حرف می‌زند، صدای جرینگ‌ جرینگ لیره‌ های جیبش را درمی‌آورد.»؛ در بازار خودفروشی، پول و ثروت بهترین چیزهاست، لقب و کالسکه‌ های مجلل به‌ یقین ارزشمندتر از خوشبختی هستند، در میان مردان بازار خودفروشی، پیروزی در عشق پس از پیروزی در جنگ مایهٔ مباهات است! جای جای این رمان حکایت از این دارد که هرگونه رفتاری که از ما انسان‌ها سر می‌زند، طبیعی‌ است حتی اگر مثل کینه و حسد، اعمال نکوهش‌ شده‌ ای باشند؛ اما جهان به مرور همانند یک آینه، چهرهٔ هر شخص را به خودش نشان می‌دهد؛ پس چه بهتر که به آن بخندیم و با آن مهربان باشیم، تا بازتابش را در خود ببینیم؛ ما نیز همراه با تک‌ تک شخصیت‌های این رمان بزرگ می‌شویم، اشک می‌ریزیم، افسوس می‌خوریم، و گاهی هم به حماقت‌های آنان می‌خندیم؛ ابتدای داستان کمی کند و کسل‌ کننده است، اما هر چه پیش می‌رویم، مجذوب رویدادهایی می‌شویم که برای شخصیت‌ها رخ می‌دهند، و ریتم داستان هم تندتر می‌شود؛ و پایان داستان بر خلاف تصور خوانشگر رقم می‌خورد، و شاید این مورد، وجه تمایز این رمان با دیگر رمان‌های کلاسیک باشد؛ از نکات بسیار جالب در این کتاب، می‌توان به مواردی اشاره کرد که نویسنده گاهی رویدادهای فصلهای پیشین را برای خوانشگره مرور می‌کند، و گویی خارج از موضوع دارد با خوانشگر سخن می‌گوید، و دیگری طنز تلخ و پُر از کنایهٔ آن است: مارهایی هستند که آدم گرمشان می‌کند و سپس به آدم نیش می‌زنند، گداهایی هستند که شما سوار کارشان می‌کنید، و اول کسی که زیر لگد اسب آنها پامال می‌شود خود شما هستید (رمان بازار خودفروشی – صفحه 261کتاب)؛

برهان گزینش چنین عنوان پارسایی برای کتاب این بوده است که «ونیتی» به معنای بی‌حاصلی، و بیهودگی و بی‌ارزشی است، و در ادبیات فارسی، واژهٔ «خودفروشی» بر طبق «لغتنامهٔ دهخدا»، هرگزی به معنای فاحشگی نبوده، و به معنای «جلوه‌ فروشی»، خودنمایی و خودستایی است، و ازاین‌رو مترجم کتاب استاد «منوچهر بدیعی»، این عنوان را برگزیده‌ اند، که بسیار مناسب و در خورِ رخدادهای داستان است؛ ترجمهٔ بی‌بدیل استاد «بدیعی»، رمان را چنان دلنشین کرده که از ‌هر لحاظ ارزشمند و تحسین‌ برانگیز است؛ این اثر شامل شصت و هفت فصل است، و هر فصل عنوان ویژه ی خودش را دارد؛ شخصیت‌های داستان بسیارند، و گاهی باعث سردرگمی خوانشگر است، که نویسنده بعضاً آنها را از میانه های داستان، به خوانشگر یادآوری می‌کند؛ و‌ نکته ی پایانی اینکه عکس روی جلد کتاب اثر خود نویسنده است

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 12/04/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Yes! I finished with this book! And I'm so happy... not to have read it, but to have finished it! :D

From the first lines, I liked Thackeray’s writing and wit. He can be compared to some French writers that I love from the first half of the 19th century: a free spirit, a charming irony, a biting lucidity but not nasty, a pleasant sense of humour and an agreeable self-derision.
I didn’t know anything about this story except that I heard that Rebecca Sharp was a naughty girl. Well, in the beginning, I liked her as soon as I met her! In fact, as soon as the scene of the dictionary on chapter I. We see in this short scene all the talent of Thackeray: by this single gesture, he describes to us all the character of Rebecca:
By throwing the dictionary, Rebecca means:
As a young girl, I reject your old vision of an old world, a world that is not even mine. I reject your definitions, I will create mine. You want to give me this book, you, Miss Jemima, submissive person: I don’t accept it because I’m not one of yours, I’m an unsubmissive person. You, Miss Jemima, you’re even more cowardly than your sister Miss Pinkerton, who hasn’t been able to impose her authority on me; by giving me this dictionary without your sister knowing it, you show your cowardice to the world. To accept this dictionary would be like saying: never mind, it doesn’t matter to be cowardly, everyone is, I absolve you. Well, no, I'm not cowardly, I'm not afraid, and I dare to say it aloud, I don’t hide, I don’t want to hide what I am, that’s my proudness, that’s my sincerity. I don’t accept half measures, maybe because I'm young and whole and don’t know the nuances of things yet, or maybe because I'm hard, that's what we'll discover in the rest of the story.

Here’s an example, on chapter IV, of the cutting remarks I like :
“There is no need of giving a special report of the conversation which now took place between Mr. Sedley and the young lady; for the conversation, as may be judged from the foregoing specimen, was not especially witty or eloquent; it seldom is in private societies, or anywhere except in very high-flown and ingenious novels.”
This kind of 19th century delicate and biting wit delights me!

On chapter V, I agree with Thackeray’s passage about the children’s education. I don’t know about Thackeray’s life, but one can imagine, that he talks about his own experience. And he finishes this passage with William Dobbin reading,
“Well, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, and was away with Sindbad the Sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, or with Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful cavern where the Prince found her, and whither we should all like to make a tour.”
Here, Thackeray the writer becomes a reader and how pleasant it is to feel is reader’s happiness in his last sentence!

But this was only the beginning … then followed thousand pages of vanity until I felt nauseous about this subject! Maybe was this Thackeray’s goal?

Although Thackeray present us one of his character as selfish, another one as weak, another one as wrong or whatever, he seems to present unfairly women all in one basket:

Chapter IV:
“It is what sentimentalists, who deal in very big words, call a yearning after the Ideal, and simply means that women are commonly not satisfied until they have husbands and children on whom they may centre affections, which are spent elsewhere, as it were, in small change.”
Chapter IX:
“As the only endowments with which Nature had gifted Lady Crawley were those of pink cheeks and a white skin, and as she had no sort of character, nor talents, nor opinions, nor occupations, nor amusements, nor that vigour of soul and ferocity of temper which often falls to the lot of entirely foolish women, her hold upon Sir Pitt's affections was not very great.”
Chapter X:
“She was the most hospitable and jovial of old vestals, and had been a beauty in her day, she said. (All old women were beauties once, we very well know.)”
Chapter XI:
"She drank seven glasses of champagne," said the reverend gentleman, in a low voice; "and filthy champagne it is, too, that my brother poisons us with—but you women never know what's what."
Or:
“Mrs. Firkin had that natural jealousy which is one of the main principles of every honest woman.”
Or:
“The Captain had written her notes (the best that the great blundering dragoon could devise and spell; but dulness gets on as well as any other quality with women). ”
Chapter XIV:
“And regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable more was said by either of the young women. But it was destined to come out before long. ”

At the end of chapter XII, I'm going to make myself a tea, and I wonder: did Thackeray, at least once, make a compliment or say something kind about one of his characters?
I don’t think so.
I don’t know Thackeray, not that I'm not so old! but I have not read anything about this author yet. Was he a man of such cynicism to be able to write such a loooong book about so horrible characters each in their genre? And it seems it’s not only his characters whom he pitied, he despised, but still, he seems to despise the reader. Or rather, the female reader, because he suspects that his readership is rather feminine.

This said, I found two quotes which I liked:

« But oh, mesdames, if you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved until you all know the difference between trimeter and tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably! »
Is this sentence not scornful of women, or have I misunderstood it? Doesn’t he say: don’t worry about writing verses or prose, ladies, your natural charms are enough!
The greatest vain of this fair wouldn’t it be Thackeray himself?

And this one:
“Picture to yourself, oh fair young reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, religionless old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig. Picture her to yourself, and ere you be old, learn to love and pray!”
This last sentence is interesting and deep.
To love is not so easy as one believes. To love needs to have an open-mindedness, to accept the other, to reconcile with their faults, with what we think are faults.
To pray is to put oneself back in its place as a human being. It is admitting: ok, we’re maybe the most intelligent being on this planet, but let’s get down of our pedestal and admit the existence of a higher power beyond our understanding.
With some empathy and humility, maybe we can hope to become acceptable old persons.
Yes, this very small sentence by Thackeray, among all those we have already read and they are already many! this little sentence of nine words pleases me a lot.

On chapter XXI, I was already bored by this Vanity Fair. It's so easy to mock people's faults, but what’s the point? Perhaps, this can make me think, when I look at myself in the mirror: well, am I not a bit selfish or niggard or hypocritical? Ok, then this book reminds me to try to be better, it's a good thing, but... 1000 pages, isn't it a bit too long for only one purpose? And being better than the worst doesn’t mean being good.
Also, I find it more interesting to read a story about characters who have a beautiful soul, a beautiful spirit ... I prefer to look upwards to try to elevate myself than to look down to be able to say: ok, I'm not so bad! I feel it's like voyeurism (English?).
As for me, I’m not interested in reading about others faults, and as whoever loves himself will be loved only by himself, I didn’t like any of this Vanity Fair characters. And, God! what a book is long when there’s not even one character who can move you, even partly!

And let’s remember that whenever vanity made someone happy on earth, surely that happy man was just a fool!

Wonderful, read in grad school in (relative) youth. Decades later, I often passed his house near the Kensington High Street (near the old Barkers Store), on the same square with John Stuart Mill.
I recall that Thackeray's daughter asked her father, "Can you write a book more like Mr Dickens'?"

Maybe a mile away is Apsley House, near Hyde Park's SE corner, not THE HP Corner. The Duke of Wellington's house, he known for the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo; but I urge you to read about that battle, won really by the Prussian troops who came in to Napoleon's rear. Here John Carey's intro notes that this, the only English novel comparable to War and Peace. Two gallant military beaux, including Amelia's Osborne, head to battle Napoleon in 1815. The English called Napoleon from his last name, "Boney."

Becky Sharp holds our attention, although Amelia is featured. I love Thackeray's idea of conversation, a battle. (As in Austen, though not explicit there.) In conversing with Becky, "Thus was George utterly routed" not that Rebecca was in the right, but she'd managed to put him in the wrong; "he now shamefully fled"(p.161, Penguin, 2001). Becky often "wins" by anticipation of her interlocutor's response. Others hope to "win" with slander, as Mrs. Bute wants to disinherit Becky and beaux, a Crawley --rich old Miss Crawley in decline, but Mrs. Bute almost killing her by slandering her nephew. Mrs. Bute's slanders provide the "provisions and ammunition, as it were, with which she fortified the house against the seige which Rawdon [the nephew} and his wife [Becky] would lay to Miss Crawley"(214).

Amelia's Sedley family is ruined--her father blames it on Napoleon's returning from Elba--so Capt. Osborne's father, whom old Sedley had helped early on, would never consent to his son's marrying the penniless Aemilia/ Emmy. Though Osborne himself may inherit enough from his mother to "purchase his majority," that is, buy the rank of Major! (222).

Thackeray writes with amusement, sometimes even using Dickensian names (Chopper at a counting housess, Dr Gulp for alcoholic patent medicines, Earl of Castlemouldy, Lady Slowbore, the Duchess of Pumpernickel [383]), but especially ironic juxtaposition, as when lowly soldiers write letters on being sent to Belgium (and Waterloo), "letters full of love and heartiness, pluck and bad spelling"(270). Irony grows, some profound, "is it because men are such cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, and place military valour so far beyond every other quality for reward and worship?"(343) The author makes great verbs from nouns, as when Briggs thinks back to her crush on the writing master, when they both intoned evening hymns, "writing-master and she were both quavering out of the same psalm-book"(169)

Fine writing buried in the midest of paragraps, like "She walks into a room as silently as a sunbeam" Dobbin thinks fo Amelia, his love for 15 years before dumped in favor of the fallen woman Becky. Ironically, he finally wins Emmy because Becky tells her about her over-admired Osborne having made a pass at her a day or two after he had married. So another fine irony, Dobbins leaving Emmy over Becky's admittance, without which...

As in Dickens, Britisms abound, like a snack called "parliament," which is gingerbread, amidst profound ironies, say on funerals surrounded "with humbug and ceremonies," the only one grieving for Sir Pitt, his Pointer dog, who "used to howl sometimes at first"(488).

In my doctoral dissertation on literary conventions "This Critical Age," I mention women swooning, very common in 19C English novels. Here, the elder Miss Crawley, on learning of Becky's marriage, "fell into a faint"(183). Thackery's chooses perfect verbs, as when married women use smiles to "cajole, or elude, or disarm" (191). Before radio, Becky plays piano and sings--as I heard down streets in Milano, and later in Napoli at the library attached to the Opera House.

Familiar with auctions in my grandparents' Norway, Maine, I was surprised to find the Sedley house auction only through agents. Here we find what I never noticed fifty years ago, racism against those agents, and my room-mates. Attending the high-achieving Amherst College, both my room-mates were smarter and more accomplished than I, and both Jews. Neither had the "Asian face" Thackeray remarks, nor "hooked beaks" Becky remarks (193). Every race in its place, every ethnicity like the French and African. Now Huck Finn is denounced for the common racial moniker of the time, which makes me speculate which of our common assumptions will be disapproved, even hated, in a few decades.

Vanity Fair is a masterpiece. This is the second time I've read it, and my opinion of it only increased. It's witty, it has a main character (Becky) who is memorable and complex (though, I will allow, not as complex as she would be if written in more modern times), and its style is engrossing and addicting.

It is this combination that makes the 700-plus pages worth the reading.

Much of the reader's interest is wrapped up in what could be oscillating feelings about Becky Sharp, a character who is much maligned in our novel, but who would, in our modern era, be a Twitter and YouTube star, with rumors of her ascent to the US Presidency at the ready. Becky is conniving, determined, clever and brash; and is in the end all the more sympathetic because one wonders what the country at that time could have offered her: servitude and unwanted advances, as is pointed out early in the novel.

Thackery was experimenting with novelistic form, a practice of many authors of the time (The Female Quixote, Tristram Shandy). Now, having a story without a hero seems almost prerequisite (the TV series Search Party, or Pretty Little Liars, two more recent examples). Yes, stories like these seem more realistic, as we live in a world (or, at least, have a government) overrun by those who seek out their own self-interest and a great many who are content to bemoan a situation but are inclined to be silent. However, Thackery had what now seems a quaint interest in morality; behind his humor is critique of a self aggrandizing society and a small plea for something more. There is no sermonising in Vanity Fair, just humor. We may be beyond the overt morality of the Victorian era, but it does us some good to live there once in a while. We tend to emerge with a greater sense of purpose. I have every sense I will return to this novel again; greatness, as this novel suggests, is hard to find.

A+

“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.”

This is a very different sort of tome. The author refers to it as a puppet play, and it has a removed quality. You have to be willing to see the characters as caricatures, to see the author is making fun of them, and not to mind when he does. It was hard for me to adjust to this. I wanted more nuanced characters, more empathy from the author. It took me hundreds of pages to figure this out, but I did end up liking the second half more than the first, just because I got used to the style.

I’d heard about and was looking forward to Becky Sharpe, but was very disappointed. I wanted, if not to like her, to find her a fun and fascinating bad girl. Unfortunately though, she just reminded me of manipulative tyrants I’ve known: those people who use their good looks or God-given talents or turns of fortune to connive their way to their goals, treading on those with morals in the process.

I tried to appreciate her anyway, for her cleverness, but I didn’t see a lot of cleverness in her. Scarlett O’Hara was clever. Becky was just ruthless, and frequently helped along by men who admired her. (Maybe it’s just a different twist. Scarlett was written by a woman, after all.) Becky may have been smart, good with languages, and had style. But Scarlett made a dress out of a drapery for heaven’s sake. That’s clever.

But this is the problem I kept having. I wanted characters, and I got caricatures. I wanted empathy, but the author called his creatures “our simpleton,” or “a spooney.”

For what it is--especially for what it was: a serial published for 19th century readers--it has brilliance. I’m glad I read it and experienced Thackeray’s satire. On finishing though, I wished I could speak to dearly departed authors, two in particular. I’d say to Charlotte Brontё, “Your over-the top gushes about Thackeray were misplaced, my dear. Jane Eyre was infinitely better than this!” And then I’d pat Dickens on the shoulder and say, “No threat to you, old man. No threat at all.”

There are different ways of reading a novel. Reading a novel is a creative act in itself. Firstly there's the perspective from which we choose to read. The step on the stairs of our mind we choose to sit on from which to view the work of imagination. How high we crank up the volume of our critical faculties. How much historical context we give to what we're reading. How much of our own reading experience we bring to bear, to what extent all the other novels we've read shape and inform our appraisal. For example, I realised that Virginia Woolf stole many aspects of Thackeray's comic voice for Orlando. And because Orlando was a book she didn't take very seriously she's both mocking and paying tribute to Thackeray.

We're never as modern as we think. Novels from the distant past often point this out to us. Becky is a me, myself and I girl. She is self-indulgence personified. Morality for her is of little more importance than a daily newspaper. It's in the bin by the end of every day. But Vanity Fair is peppered with characters whose favourite emotion is moral disapproval, whose default setting is duty. They are dreary unhappy people, only half alive. (Thackeray himself is overly fond of doctrines.) Becky is by far the most alive and celebratory character in the novel. Everything she does is as if accompanied by uplifting dance music. She is contrasted in the novel by the dutiful Amelia. So respectful of duty is Amelia that she becomes estranged from her true feelings. Becky is never in doubt about her feelings; she owns them wholeheartedly. It's important that Becky is fatherless. This is a militantly patriarchal world. And the father was its figurehead. Supposedly a figure of trust and security, but more often as brutally self-serving as a fascist dictator. All the fathers in Vanity Fair are vain, egotistical self-righteous men. And it's Becky's determination to be seen and admired and have her share of the pie that brings into relief the hypocrisy and morally corrupt nature of the world she is compelled to live in. It's often morally flawed individuals who shine the brightest light on what is demoralisingly off kilter in the world we live in. There were times when I believed I could imagine the secret glee taken in Becky's behaviour by a 19th century female reader saddled with a despotic father and husband, compelled to live in a world where a woman's role was to be seen and not heard. Vanity Fair is a better feminist novel than most books written by overtly feminist authors.

MegaFan, después de Charlotte Brontë, de La Feria de las Vanidades. Un libro que se va directo a la lista de mis clásicos preferidos imprescindibles, maravilloso derroche de ironía y humor el de el ingenioso y satírico William M. Thackeray en esta genial obra. Lo bien que me lo he pasado a pesar de lo mucho que me han enervado casi todos sus personajes jajaja.. Cerrar el libro y echar en falta seguir leyéndolo ha sido todo en uno, y es que a veces ochocientas ochenta y cinco páginas parecen insuficientes cuando han pasado volando.
Voy a consolarme viendo la serie.