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

I did not expect this, but I had a fantastic time with Vanity Fair!

The length of this classic can be intimidating but I admit I was so entertained I just could not put it down and actually finished it in a few days. There is a lot happening over the course of many years and I did not find any dull moment.

Becky Sharp is a master of ingenuity and manipulation, you can’t pretend that you don’t admire her cleverness and cutthroat attitude. The cast of this masterpiece is brilliant and so full of nuances, you really get a full range of personalities and experiences.

I had a very good time, William M. Thackerey definitively has a great sense of humor. I will certainly re-read this again, such a great surprise, really recommend!

Thoughts Before Reading

It's a weird feeling, discovering a world-renowned classic author hailing from your home city when he was a British coloniser.

Thoughts While Reading

◻ Not that I want to, but if I were ever a character in a regency novel, I'd want to be like Ms Becky Sharp rather than any Austen heroine.

◼ "the girls have only to turn the tables, and say of one of their own sex, “She is as vain as a man,” and they will have perfect reason. The bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their toilettes, quite as proud of their personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette in the world."

I'm already loving this book!

◻ Potentially controversial take, but I get what the author of Bridgerton was trying to say when she defended her choice to completely exclude racial diversity from her historical romance books. I don't think any of our regency protagonists would have a nerdy Asian best friend, you know. At any rate, the racism in this book is nauseating but understandable.

◼ Live laugh love our feminist queen Ms Crawley.

◻ At one point the author went, "I know you readers don't give a shit about this character," and I was like yes, Sir, we don't, only for him to proceed to go on a three-chapter-long tangent about said unimportant character. Classics, amiright?

◼ Every smart gf lowkey needs a himbo boyfriend.

◻ Bring Becky back ! Bring Becky back ! Bring Becky back ! Bring Becky back !

Senryu Review:

Sprawling satire with
vicious wit and moral kicks
to the heart and head.

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.

The Good:
Probably the greatest cast of human beings ever written. Glorious, miserable and frustrating, these people were the British Empire’s middle management. It’s worth noting that this was set around the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) and published a generation later, like a contemporary novel taking the piss out of the 80s. It is caustic in its parody of absolutely everyone and everything, and often very funny. I thought it ended well too.

The Bad:
The second half of the novel is too long (yes I understand that if it was shorter it would be less than half) and drags on its way to the conclusion. The less-than-omniscient narrator frequently yanked me out of the story, and the language can be very f------ quaint.

'Friends' character the protagonist is most like:
Becky is a shark, an absolutely awesome and terrifying predator, just like Rachel. She is manipulative, ambitious and selfish, and loads of fun.

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.

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.

Quite unstimulating
I obviously missed something. I chose audio book format because the book is so long, but I felt like it was just one long ramble, the narrator droning on and on about nothing. I also own the paperback, so maybe down the road I'll give it another try.

4/11/18 Catching up with the Classics reread going to give the paper version a try and I’m taking tiny bites. This is a classic for a reason. I’m finding it.
So i dont know why I had such a hard time finishing this book in the past. It was an accurate depiction of the 19th century.
RTC

I read Vanity Fair (1847) a few decades back and loved it. Needless to say this remains a great novel. Thackeray stated Vanity Fair is "a novel without a hero" and it's true that no character here is entirely innocent, and ambition often seems to mean personal morality is rarely a factor in decision making.

Thackeray’s a great social commentator too as he takes aim at nearly every class and character in the novel, exposing the flaws and follies of the upper and middle classes.

The Vanity Fair title is of course an apt metaphor for the superficial, self-obsessed world depicted here. A place where social status and wealth dictate personal worth, and where appearance often matters more than substance

Thakeray's authororial voice is never far way and I enjoyed his witty and sardonic observations, and how he highlighted some of the absurd decision making which all adds a layer of fun and detached irony to proceedings

Having recently read and loved Trollope's Palliser series I was interested to compare his style with Thackeray. In some ways both seem to tread similar ground but I appreciate how Thackeray doesn't go off on long rambling digressions despite a long narrative spanning decades.

Central characters Becky and Amelia make such a great contrast: Becky is a brilliant anti-hero with no qualms about using manipulation and charm to climb the social ladder. Her resourcefulness and unflinching determination make her both reprehensible and admirable. By contrast, Amelia's naivety, passivity and loyalty means she is frustratingly ineffectual.

4/5



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.

I first heard of William Makepeace Thackeray while reading Charlotte Bronte's Villette. I think she references Becky Sharp but not certain on that point but I am certain that the second edition of Jane Eyre is dedicated to this man unknown personally to her except a love of his novels. So Vanity Fair was a book I was looking forward to reading. This book is a gem of a book for many reason & the first being it tells a fine tale of life 19th century England. Published in 1848 it tells the story of two young woman in the early quarter of the century. It has many memorable characters which has the reader undecided should you like or dislike this person. He brings such human qualities like selfishness to almost all characters that has you confused & not really hating anyone you probably should at least that is my feeling throughout. It also had many little history lessons which could be classified as a historical novel because some of it takes place during the Napoleonic Wars but it is more a coming to age novel for Becky Sharp & Amelia Sedley with all the happenings occurring around them or their family & friends. Becky & Amelia meet at Miss Pinkerton's Academy for Young Ladies and are the antithesis of each other. The girls both are leaving school to start their lives. Emily welcomes Becky to stay with her affluent family & visit a week before Becky starts her work as a governess in the country. Becky is extremely manipulative & works on others feeling to advance her position & desires. It is interesting to see how both these young women encounter life from youth to their mid thirties. Emily's family is closely attached to the Osborne family whereas Becky becomes attached to Sir Crawley's family. Social status & wealth of the English society is an important theme of this story but selfishness is not limited to only the wealthy. The wealthier characters seem to have a pride that looks down on the lower class. Thackeray uses satire throughout the novel of all he tells but has a sentimental side which is displayed to the reader. The novel is narrated by a male who tells all because he knows all. It has many locations that Thackeray himself visited in his life. The title Vanity Fair was taken from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress published in 1678. Vanity Fair is a place where sin & attachment to things in this book. Thackeray's Vanity Fair is this & the vain characteristic of all in life but we hope for something better than their own vain thoughts. A few quotes I liked-“Vanity Fair" for a title, and that Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbug and falseness and pretensions"


Old time radio link Campbell's Playhouse January 7, 1940

https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com...

"Vanity Fair" is set in England, in the years around Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. However, William Makepeace Thackeray's portrait of human nature isn't limited to any time or place. The novel is made up of nothing but super-rigidly-defined cliques; complicated rules about who is allowed to talk to whom, when, where, and for how long; small levels of popularity subdivided into types; and a bunch of people who are constantly trying to reach the top of the heap and avoid becoming social pariahs. No wonder I’ve loved this book as a teenager… it sounds just like highschool!

In a nutshell, “Vanity Fair” is the story of two young women whose lives take them in and out of every segment of English society, each of which can be mocked and displayed for laughs in turn. But what's more important than the plot is the style of the novel: its bitter and caustic humor. And it really does have something for everyone to laugh at: snobby merchants, greedy social climbers, illiterate aristocrats, nosy servants, evil nobles, macho soldiers, bossy women, bumbling men, British people, German people, Belgian people, and every other kind of group of humans that can be crammed in.

What sets this aside from the novels of its time is that it's not about very nice people. These are people who make disliking them so easy -- which makes them, all the more, interesting. I sensed that Thackeray got into everything he ever witnessed or suspected about human motives. It's a profoundly skeptical book. He pits worldliness against goodness with no illusions about which quality usually triumphs. Put it this way: In a Dickens novel, a small boy rescued from the torments of a bully will almost certainly grow up to be an exemplar of kindness and gentleness. The same boy, in Thackeray, grows up to be a snob and a rotter, and hateful to the friend who saved him from the bully. Multiply those incidents into a panorama that stretches nearly the entire height of early 19th century English society, and you have an overwhelmingly coherent and devastating satiric vision. And in the midst of it all is Thackeray's protagonist: the scheming, status-seeking Rebecca “Becky” Sharp.

A poor orphan of low birth, Becky is a born hustler and almost sociopathic striver who manages to raise herself to the upper limits of high society and wealth -- only to see her achievements crumble under the weight of her bad deeds. Evil temptress or misunderstood woman ahead of her time? You be the judge. "Vanity Fair" is inevitably a feminist tale, because Becky will not be kept down. But there's another way of looking at the story which doesn't preclude the feminist treatment, and which seems potentially richer: its inescapable revelation that in 19th century England, a woman had to be a genius to achieve success -- or even to fight life to a draw.

Her foil, Amelia Sedley, is also compelling. While Becky is self-reliant and action oriented, with a scheme or two always on the backburner, Amelia is dependent on the kindness of the next stranger to come around the corner. If you want to get fancy about it, she entirely lacks agency. In almost any other novel, she would be the heroine, and her sad-sack ways would be disguised a little better so that instead of coming across like a lump of nothing she would seem like a paragon of femininity. You know the drill: dainty, small, semi-pathetic, and needing some white-knight rescue action. Here, though, we are shown exactly what happens when you take those supposed ideals of femininity to the extreme -- you get Jell-O in human form.

Thackery's narrator, who's telling a "true" story based on the accounts of the principal characters he has met, satirizes early 19th century British and European culture (class, religion, education, business, war, tourism, etc.) so as to expose human vanity in general. He is keenly honest about their failings, yet you don't get the feeling that he despises people for their weaknesses. He tells the story almost as if he is a fond old uncle, slightly detached, amused at the foibles of, but still having affection for, his characters.

“Vanity Fair” is a very long novel, written in serialization. Sentences are complex and very long, florid, and decorative. There is a lightness in its tone, even when your emotions are being tugged a bit. The book may not be uplifting --but it’s certainly entertaining, thought provoking, and often moving. After reading this again, I could still say that this must be the most decorous, savage novel ever written -- and it's one of a handful of books I’ve encountered to describe an honest vision of the world.