I knew the title of Pendennis before I ever heard of William Makepeace Thackeray, because characters from other books read and talk about it. In Louisa May Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl, "One snowy Sunday afternoon Tom lay on the sofa in his favorite attitude, reading 'Pendennis' for the fourth time, and smoking like a chimney as he did so." I don't remember Alcott ever mentioning Thackeray by name, but at this point in the story Tom is an idle, expensive young man who is "sky-larking" his way through college. And he sits selfishly snug at home with book and cigar, rather than taking his little sister Maud to visit Polly. There is a parallel in his other sister Fanny, who stays indoors on a snowy day to curl up with Lady Audley's Secret. Given the context, I don't think Alcott approves of Pendennis or Lady Audley's Secret, but at least they aren't those dangerous "yellow-backed French novels" that tempt Rose Campbell and others. The book is also mentioned in Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night, where Miss Martin, the Dean, complains that the students "go about looking all bits and pieces, like illustrations out of Pendennis - so out of date of them! But their idea of modern is to imitate what male undergraduates were like half a century ago." There is a second, sly reference to the book in the old Professor Boniface, "ninety-seven and practically gaga," whom the Dean shepherds around one afternoon - Boniface being the college that the title character in Pendennis attends.
The first book of Thackeray's that I read was Vanity Fair, and it just bowled me over. I assumed that it was the start of a literary love affair, and I began collecting his other books. I read The History of Henry Esmond first, partly to discover why Anthony Trollope thought it was "the best novel in the English language." I found it a bit of a slog, but I kept reading even after I accepted it was no Vanity Fair. It would never make my "Best" of anything list. Last week I started Pendennis, a chunkster of 977 pages in my Oxford World's Classics edition. It begins well, with the young man of the title, Arthur Pendennis, in love at age eighteen with an actress ten years his senior, and determined to marry her. His uncle and guardian Major Pendennis posts down to the west country to break up the affair, though it means leaving a social London life for weeks of rural boredom. The Major is a friend of wicked Lord Steyne, who also appears in Vanity Fair, and I found them both a lot more interesting than young Arthur.
I persevered to page 412, but today I decided I didn't want to spend any more time on this book, even if it is a classic. I've never written a post before about a book I didn't finish, but I have been trying to figure out why these two books do not appeal to me, and whether Vanity Fair is an outlier among Thackeray's work. It is certainly not the length of his books that is the problem. I enjoy meandering Victorian narratives, with Trollope's at the head of the list. But there is an energy in his books, as in Dickens and Dumas, where these two books of Thackeray's just seem to drag. In part I think that's because the heroes are rather glum. They're active, getting into trouble, but boring. They don't seem to have much fun even in their scrapes. I finally admitted to myself today that I don't care enough about Pendennis to read any further.
I think the bigger problem for me - in these two books - is the women characters. In both they are angels of the home, who sit passively by the fireside, waiting for their adored sons or brothers to come home, so they can coddle and worship them. When the heroes are absent, out getting into trouble, the mothers and sisters cry over them and pray for them. And they pinch pennies so the boys can have their horses and drinks and fine clothes. The narrator of Pendennis tells us at one point that women like these "were made for our comfort and delectation, gentlemen, - with the rest of the minor animals." With hindsight, that sentence was probably the beginning of the end for me. Trollope's women characters are generally bound by the social conventions, but they have so much more life, not simply as adjuncts of the male characters. And then there are the women who break the rules, in Rhoda Broughton and Margaret Oliphant's books, who may not always get a happy ending but who come to vivid life. So does Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, for that matter.
Other than Vanity Fair, I don't see much about Thackeray's novels in discussions or on blogs, compared to Trollope, Dickens or Wilkie Collins. Do people still read his other novels, I wonder? I have two more on the TBR shelves. Barry Lyndon is a shorter novel, about "an accomplished rogue - a liar, a gambler, a libertine." The Newcomes is another 1000-page doorstop, about "the fortunes and misfortunes of a 'most respectable' extended middle-class family." I will probably give them the 50-page test. Meanwhile, I'll be passing Pendennis and Henry Esmond on to the library sale.
Showing posts with label William Makepeace Thackeray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Makepeace Thackeray. Show all posts
Monday, November 3, 2014
Friday, November 1, 2013
Henry Esmond's life and loves
The History of Henry Esmond, William Makepeace Thackeray
Anthony Trollope said in his autobiography that this is "the best novel in the English language," supplanting his first choice, Pride and Prejudice. We will just have to disagree about that. I don't think it is even William Thackeray's best novel, though I've only read two of them so far. To my mind, it can't compare with Vanity Fair, let alone Pride and Prejudice, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to his books.
As the title suggests, it is the autobiography of Henry Esmond, written late in his life for his descendants. It is told mainly in the third person, with occasional notes from family members. At the time of its writing, Esmond has been living for many years on the family's Virginia estate, a grant from King Charles I. The estate, the family and Colonel Esmond himself are introduced in a brief Preface by his daughter Rachel Esmond Warrington, dated in 1778. The preface includes some key information about the Colonel and his wife, also named Rachel, and their immediate family, including her son Frank and daughter Beatrix from a previous marriage
When we meet Henry himself, in the first chapter, it is 80 years earlier. A twelve-year-old boy, he is living alone at the family estate of Castlewood, in Hampshire. His cousin Francis, the fourth Viscount Castlewood, who has just succeeded to the title and estate, arrives with his wife and their two young children. As the Viscountess tours the house, she comes across Henry in a gallery, and he falls instantly in love:
Henry finds a surrogate mother in the new Viscountess, Rachel, and becomes almost a step-brother to her children Frank and Beatrix. Lady Castlewood schemes to send him to Cambridge, so that he can be ordained and appointed to the family living of Castlewood. Henry feels no call to the ministry but accepts her choice. However, his education and his future career are cut short when he is drawn into standing as a second in a duel between Lord Castlewood and the notorious rake Lord Mohun, who has designs on Rachel. Henry is briefly sent to prison for his part, and after an angry parting scene with Lady Castlewood, he determines to join the army.
Serving under the Duke of Marlborough, he sees action at Blenheim and other major battles in various campaigns against the French. When he returns to London on leave, he falls in with literary men like Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. He also falls deeply in love with his cousin Beatrix, now a maid of honor at Queen Anne's court and the toast of London. She has no plans to throw herself away on a poor bastard cousin, though she enjoys tormenting him. He spends much of his time on leave pursuing her, when he isn't pouring out his frustrated love to Beatrix's mother, who both wants him to succeed and doesn't, partly because she believes her daughter unworthy of him. In the end, Henry gives up his military career. He accepts the Virginia estates from the 5th Lord Castlewood and settles down to a happy life as a plantation owner. His daughter assures us in her preface that his slaves were perfectly happy and well-treated, and that he was "as courteous to a black slave-girl as to the governor's wife."
There were definitely things I liked about this book. It is historical fiction, and Thackeray created a literary voice for Henry that sounds authentic - to me at least, though I have read very little from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. I studied British history in college, and have read some since, but I am not as familiar with the Stuart period, the Glorious Revolution or Queen Anne's reign. The edition I read is an old Classics Club hardback, without the notes or supplemental materials that I'm used to in Penguin or Oxford editions. I ended up doing some quick supplemental reading on my own. I was lucky enough to tour Blenheim on my last visit to England, so I had at least some background on Marlborough, who plays a big part in Henry's military career. Thackeray did a good job of blending his fictional and historical characters, though it sometimes took me a while to figure out which was which. I had heard of Joseph Addison, of course, but did not recognize Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator. (Henry helps Addison with his great poem The Campaign, commemorating Marlborough's victory at Blenheim.) I also enjoyed the twists of the Jacobite plotting, however misguided and unsuccessful. Henry has quite a shock when he actually meets the Chevalier of St. George, or James III as the Castlewood family usually refers to him.
I really enjoyed Henry's military exploits, his literary friends, and the Jacobite adventures. Unfortunately, they are woven into the story of his love for Beatrix, whom he hopes to win by military or literary fame. She is a bit of a Becky Sharp character, and he knows she will never accept him, but he can't accept that. So he goes off to war, comes home, moons over her, is rejected, whines for hours to her mother, goes back to war, and starts the whole cycle over again. He is rather a glum character at the best of times, and this brings out the worst in him. I found the repetition of these scenes, and his complaining, very tedious after a while, and I started to dread his returning to England. I had visions of smacking him like Cher in Moonstruck: "Snap out of it!" It was especially disconcerting, and a little creepy, that he spends so much time detailing his love for Beatrix to her mother, and that Rachel tries to convince her daughter to marry him, when we know from the preface that Henry marries Rachel in the end. There are hints throughout the book that Rachel has been in love with Henry for many years, though I can't figure out what she sees in him. She tries to disguise it as maternal love, calling him her third child (which is also a little creepy), and her children tease her about it, sometimes in front of Henry. To be fair, Henry does perform a service for the family, admittedly at great cost to himself. He does it willingly and in secret. Over the course of the story, each member of the family discovers the secret, and each time the story of the service is told again, and there is an emotional orgy of praise and thanks and repentance and reconciliation, which after a while also become tedious. I learned of this secret from a family tree that I came across while searching for cover images, which I couldn't resist copying out. Like maps in travelogues, I find genealogies very helpful in family sagas like this one, even if they contain spoilers.
In the end, I found this book interesting more than compelling, though it did keep me reading despite my frustrations. As I said, I don't think it can compare to Vanity Fair. I still have The Newcomes and Pendennis on the TBR shelves, both of which Trollope praised as well.
Anthony Trollope said in his autobiography that this is "the best novel in the English language," supplanting his first choice, Pride and Prejudice. We will just have to disagree about that. I don't think it is even William Thackeray's best novel, though I've only read two of them so far. To my mind, it can't compare with Vanity Fair, let alone Pride and Prejudice, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to his books.
As the title suggests, it is the autobiography of Henry Esmond, written late in his life for his descendants. It is told mainly in the third person, with occasional notes from family members. At the time of its writing, Esmond has been living for many years on the family's Virginia estate, a grant from King Charles I. The estate, the family and Colonel Esmond himself are introduced in a brief Preface by his daughter Rachel Esmond Warrington, dated in 1778. The preface includes some key information about the Colonel and his wife, also named Rachel, and their immediate family, including her son Frank and daughter Beatrix from a previous marriage
When we meet Henry himself, in the first chapter, it is 80 years earlier. A twelve-year-old boy, he is living alone at the family estate of Castlewood, in Hampshire. His cousin Francis, the fourth Viscount Castlewood, who has just succeeded to the title and estate, arrives with his wife and their two young children. As the Viscountess tours the house, she comes across Henry in a gallery, and he falls instantly in love:
she had come upon him as a Dea certè, and appeared the most charming object he had ever looked on. Her golden hair was shining in the gold of the sun; her complexion was of a dazzling bloom; her lips smiling, and her eyes beaming with a kindness that made Harry Esmond's heart to beat with surprise.Henry determines to devote his life to the lady and her family. He has been left orphaned at the death of his father Thomas, the 3rd Viscount Castlewood, but his place in the household was precarious even before that. Acknowledged as Thomas's bastard, he lived his first years with Huguenot weavers in London, before his father brought him to Castlewood. His father's wife, though aging, still hoped to produce an heir, and she initially resented her husband's son. Life in the household was precarious in other ways. The Castlewood family has always been loyal to the Stuarts, which cost them heavily at times. One of the second Viscount's sons was killed defending the house against Cromwell's forces, and another died at the Battle of Worcester. The family was "concerned in almost all of the plots against the Protector," and after the Restoration they were high in favor with Charles II. They stand as loyally by James II, equally concerned in plots to restore him or his son to the throne. Their Jacobite politics run all through Henry Esmond's story, though he himself admires William of Orange as the greatest king England ever had.
Henry finds a surrogate mother in the new Viscountess, Rachel, and becomes almost a step-brother to her children Frank and Beatrix. Lady Castlewood schemes to send him to Cambridge, so that he can be ordained and appointed to the family living of Castlewood. Henry feels no call to the ministry but accepts her choice. However, his education and his future career are cut short when he is drawn into standing as a second in a duel between Lord Castlewood and the notorious rake Lord Mohun, who has designs on Rachel. Henry is briefly sent to prison for his part, and after an angry parting scene with Lady Castlewood, he determines to join the army.
Serving under the Duke of Marlborough, he sees action at Blenheim and other major battles in various campaigns against the French. When he returns to London on leave, he falls in with literary men like Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. He also falls deeply in love with his cousin Beatrix, now a maid of honor at Queen Anne's court and the toast of London. She has no plans to throw herself away on a poor bastard cousin, though she enjoys tormenting him. He spends much of his time on leave pursuing her, when he isn't pouring out his frustrated love to Beatrix's mother, who both wants him to succeed and doesn't, partly because she believes her daughter unworthy of him. In the end, Henry gives up his military career. He accepts the Virginia estates from the 5th Lord Castlewood and settles down to a happy life as a plantation owner. His daughter assures us in her preface that his slaves were perfectly happy and well-treated, and that he was "as courteous to a black slave-girl as to the governor's wife."
There were definitely things I liked about this book. It is historical fiction, and Thackeray created a literary voice for Henry that sounds authentic - to me at least, though I have read very little from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. I studied British history in college, and have read some since, but I am not as familiar with the Stuart period, the Glorious Revolution or Queen Anne's reign. The edition I read is an old Classics Club hardback, without the notes or supplemental materials that I'm used to in Penguin or Oxford editions. I ended up doing some quick supplemental reading on my own. I was lucky enough to tour Blenheim on my last visit to England, so I had at least some background on Marlborough, who plays a big part in Henry's military career. Thackeray did a good job of blending his fictional and historical characters, though it sometimes took me a while to figure out which was which. I had heard of Joseph Addison, of course, but did not recognize Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator. (Henry helps Addison with his great poem The Campaign, commemorating Marlborough's victory at Blenheim.) I also enjoyed the twists of the Jacobite plotting, however misguided and unsuccessful. Henry has quite a shock when he actually meets the Chevalier of St. George, or James III as the Castlewood family usually refers to him.
I really enjoyed Henry's military exploits, his literary friends, and the Jacobite adventures. Unfortunately, they are woven into the story of his love for Beatrix, whom he hopes to win by military or literary fame. She is a bit of a Becky Sharp character, and he knows she will never accept him, but he can't accept that. So he goes off to war, comes home, moons over her, is rejected, whines for hours to her mother, goes back to war, and starts the whole cycle over again. He is rather a glum character at the best of times, and this brings out the worst in him. I found the repetition of these scenes, and his complaining, very tedious after a while, and I started to dread his returning to England. I had visions of smacking him like Cher in Moonstruck: "Snap out of it!" It was especially disconcerting, and a little creepy, that he spends so much time detailing his love for Beatrix to her mother, and that Rachel tries to convince her daughter to marry him, when we know from the preface that Henry marries Rachel in the end. There are hints throughout the book that Rachel has been in love with Henry for many years, though I can't figure out what she sees in him. She tries to disguise it as maternal love, calling him her third child (which is also a little creepy), and her children tease her about it, sometimes in front of Henry. To be fair, Henry does perform a service for the family, admittedly at great cost to himself. He does it willingly and in secret. Over the course of the story, each member of the family discovers the secret, and each time the story of the service is told again, and there is an emotional orgy of praise and thanks and repentance and reconciliation, which after a while also become tedious. I learned of this secret from a family tree that I came across while searching for cover images, which I couldn't resist copying out. Like maps in travelogues, I find genealogies very helpful in family sagas like this one, even if they contain spoilers.
In the end, I found this book interesting more than compelling, though it did keep me reading despite my frustrations. As I said, I don't think it can compare to Vanity Fair. I still have The Newcomes and Pendennis on the TBR shelves, both of which Trollope praised as well.
Monday, August 6, 2012
The Classics Challenge: August and a little more Thackeray
For this month's round of her Classics Challenge, Katherine at November's Autumn asks us to post a memorable quote or two from our current classic. I'm still caught in the thrall of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, which I posted about yesterday, and when I read her prompt one quote, one scene, came immediately to mind. I'm going to redact names, to avoid spoilers.
"It is not that speech of yesterday," he continued, "which moves you. That is but the pretext, X, or I have loved you and watched you for fifteen years in vain. Have I not learned in that time to read all your feelings and look into your thoughts? I know what your heart is capable of: it can cling faithfully to a recollection and cherish a fancy, but it can't feel such an attachment as mine deserves to mate with, and such as I would have won from a woman more generous than you. No, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning; that I was a fool, with fond fancies, too, bartering away my all of truth and ardour against your feeble little remnant of love. I will bargain no more: I withdraw. I find no fault with you. You are very good-natured, and have done your best, but you couldn't - you couldn't reach up to the height of the attachment which I bore you, and which a loftier soul than yours might have been proud to share. Good-bye, X! I have watched your struggle. Let it end. We are both weary of it."
"A woman more generous than you" - "I will bargain no more" - "Let it end. We are both weary of it." I thought there was true, genuine emotion in those words - even before I learned that this scene may have echoed one in Thackeray's own life.
A second quote, from the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo:
No more firing was heard at Brussels - the pursuit rolled miles away. Darkness came down on the field and city: and Y was praying for Z, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.
John Carey, who edited the Penguin edition that I read, calls this "the most shattering sentence in English literature . . . Nothing has prepared us for this. To remove [Z] so casually, in a mere subordinate clause, was unprecedented - sudden, callous, unreasonable and shocking, like real death." Reading his words, I felt rather callous myself, because I didn't find the sentence or Z's fate itself all that shattering, knowing how many died on both sides at Waterloo. But perhaps it's also partly from my own reaction to the character.
I'm tempted to quote some of Thackeray's confidential asides to his readers, but I'll restrain myself just to the last line: "Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out." It takes us back to the start of the book, when he addresses us "Before the Curtain," as "the Manager of the Performance."
"It is not that speech of yesterday," he continued, "which moves you. That is but the pretext, X, or I have loved you and watched you for fifteen years in vain. Have I not learned in that time to read all your feelings and look into your thoughts? I know what your heart is capable of: it can cling faithfully to a recollection and cherish a fancy, but it can't feel such an attachment as mine deserves to mate with, and such as I would have won from a woman more generous than you. No, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning; that I was a fool, with fond fancies, too, bartering away my all of truth and ardour against your feeble little remnant of love. I will bargain no more: I withdraw. I find no fault with you. You are very good-natured, and have done your best, but you couldn't - you couldn't reach up to the height of the attachment which I bore you, and which a loftier soul than yours might have been proud to share. Good-bye, X! I have watched your struggle. Let it end. We are both weary of it."
"A woman more generous than you" - "I will bargain no more" - "Let it end. We are both weary of it." I thought there was true, genuine emotion in those words - even before I learned that this scene may have echoed one in Thackeray's own life.
A second quote, from the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo:
No more firing was heard at Brussels - the pursuit rolled miles away. Darkness came down on the field and city: and Y was praying for Z, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.
John Carey, who edited the Penguin edition that I read, calls this "the most shattering sentence in English literature . . . Nothing has prepared us for this. To remove [Z] so casually, in a mere subordinate clause, was unprecedented - sudden, callous, unreasonable and shocking, like real death." Reading his words, I felt rather callous myself, because I didn't find the sentence or Z's fate itself all that shattering, knowing how many died on both sides at Waterloo. But perhaps it's also partly from my own reaction to the character.
I'm tempted to quote some of Thackeray's confidential asides to his readers, but I'll restrain myself just to the last line: "Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out." It takes us back to the start of the book, when he addresses us "Before the Curtain," as "the Manager of the Performance."
Sunday, August 5, 2012
My introduction to William Thackeray
Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
I have spent the last couple of weeks in Vanity Fair. How have I never read this book before? I bought a copy years ago, probably under some resolution to read more classics, and it has been sitting on the TBR stacks ever since (I've moved it at least twice to new apartments). I knew nothing about Thackeray at the time I bought it. I really became aware of him through Anthony Trollope. Early in his Autobiography Trollope writes,
I had already made up my mind that Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in the English language, - a palm which I only partially withdrew after a second reading of Ivanhoe, and did not completely bestow elsewhere till [Henry] Esmond was written.
I had never heard of Henry Esmond, nor did I know it is one of Thackeray's books. I take leave to doubt it is better than Pride and Prejudice (and I'd never rate Ivanhoe that highly), but I'm curious to read it, to see what Trollope might have seen in it. Later in his autobiography, he rates Thackeray first among the "English novelists of the present day" in the chapter of that title, discussing him at some length and noting faults as well as strengths (by the time he wrote, Thackeray had been dead for many years). From reading about Trollope I know that he loved and admired Thackeray, though their relationship had its difficulties.
Even more than Trollope, though, it was John Bunyan who led me finally to read Thackeray, because in The Pilgrim's Progress I found the original Vanity Fair. It is a city on the pilgrims' road, a terrible place of vice and temptation and trial, where Christian's companion Faithful is martyred. Louisa May Alcott uses it as a title for the chapter in Little Women where Meg spends a week with the worldly Moffats, whose luxurious and idle lives make her dissatisfied with her own hard-working one. Unlike Bunyan, Thackeray is not writing a spiritual work, though like Alcott he is a moralist.
When I sat down with Thackeray's Vanity Fair, I knew that it was about Becky Sharp, who is something of an adventuress, and I was expecting a book along the lines of a Victorian Moll Flanders. This book was nothing that I expected, and I was constantly surprised and delighted by it. I think the surprise and sense of discovery came in part because I had never read Thackeray before; with a new author, you don't know what he might do, how far you can trust her. Will he play fair? Is she the kind who will kill off a major character, just when you've gotten attached to her?
My first surprise was that, as entertaining as Becky Sharp's story is, this isn't just her story. Thackeray has a large cast of characters, and like Trollope he moves back and forth between them, following different plot lines. His cast spans all levels of society, including the rising merchant class, the army, and many servants. According to the introduction of my Penguin edition, he is considered a pioneer in the "Realism" school (to which Trollope also belongs), in part because of his inclusiveness. Thackeray explores the place of women in Victorian society, particularly through Becky Sharp and the other main female character, her friend Amelia Sedley, but also through others like the rich and unmarried Miss Crawley and her impoverished companion Miss Briggs. Ambition and greed condemn some women to unhappy marriages, yet he also shows the difficulties unmarried women face, particularly those without financial resources of their own.
The subtitle of this book is "A Novel Without a Hero," which is patently false. There is no mistaking the hero of this novel, even if he is presented unheroically, as ugly and ungainly, always tripping over his own large feet, afflicted with a lisp (I kept picturing Abraham Lincoln). Thackeray laughs at his hero, but then none of his characters is safe from his satirical eye. All of them are flawed, in very human ways, and their flaws are mercilessly exposed, from highest to lowest. Early in the book, he writes,
And, as we bring our characters forward, I will ask leave, as a man and a brother, not only to introduce them, but occasionally to step down from the platform, and talk about them: if they are good and kindly, to love them and shake them by the hand: if they are silly, to laugh at them confidentially in the reader's sleeve: if they are wicked and heartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms which politeness admits of.
Certainly he "steps down from the platform," he comments freely on his characters and laughs up his sleeve at them, inviting our laughter in turn. Even more than Trollope, his narrative voice is warm and confidential, and he frequently stops the action to address the reader (as in the quote above). Unlike Trollope, though, he has only one character that I think is truly "good and kindly"; the rest are presented as silly at best, if not wicked and heartless. They aren't monsters, I thought them very real and very human, but with a couple of exceptions all are motivated primarily by self-interest. Thackeray doesn't seem to care for his characters as Trollope does, and so while I was interested in them, and concerned about what happened to them, I didn't feel the same connection that I sometimes do, with Trollope.
My second surprise was the setting and scope of this book, including its large and varied cast. I was expecting a Victorian story, but Vanity Fair opens during the Regency, its action spanning fifteen years. I found myself thinking of Georgette Heyer, particularly in a chapter set at Vauxhall. Through two families of merchants, the Osbournes and the Sedleys, Thackeray tracks economic changes, including the India trade. He is also very interested in how people of limited means maintain themselves, particuarly those in the upper levels of society (or who aspire to those levels). Two of the main characters are in the Army, and eventually the story takes us to Belgium and the Battle of Waterloo. Thackeray proclaims that he is not a military historian, so we stay behind, in Brussels, watching the great events unfold amidst the crowd of British civilians who followed the army to Belgium. (According to the Penguin introduction, this section of the book had a major influence on Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.) Later, several characters take an extended tour of Europe, spending some time in the German Duchy of Pumpernickel - an affectionate tribute to Weimar, where Thackeray himself lived for several months. While he of course presents a comic portrait of English expatriates, it is also an interesting picture of life in Germany, before the tensions that later arose between the two countries.
From the little I have read about Thackeray, there seems to be a consensus that Vanity Fair is by far the best of his novels (Trollope may be alone in his appreciation of Henry Esmond). If that's so, I can't be sorry that I started with the best, and I am looking forward to reading more of his work.
I have spent the last couple of weeks in Vanity Fair. How have I never read this book before? I bought a copy years ago, probably under some resolution to read more classics, and it has been sitting on the TBR stacks ever since (I've moved it at least twice to new apartments). I knew nothing about Thackeray at the time I bought it. I really became aware of him through Anthony Trollope. Early in his Autobiography Trollope writes,
I had already made up my mind that Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in the English language, - a palm which I only partially withdrew after a second reading of Ivanhoe, and did not completely bestow elsewhere till [Henry] Esmond was written.
I had never heard of Henry Esmond, nor did I know it is one of Thackeray's books. I take leave to doubt it is better than Pride and Prejudice (and I'd never rate Ivanhoe that highly), but I'm curious to read it, to see what Trollope might have seen in it. Later in his autobiography, he rates Thackeray first among the "English novelists of the present day" in the chapter of that title, discussing him at some length and noting faults as well as strengths (by the time he wrote, Thackeray had been dead for many years). From reading about Trollope I know that he loved and admired Thackeray, though their relationship had its difficulties.
Even more than Trollope, though, it was John Bunyan who led me finally to read Thackeray, because in The Pilgrim's Progress I found the original Vanity Fair. It is a city on the pilgrims' road, a terrible place of vice and temptation and trial, where Christian's companion Faithful is martyred. Louisa May Alcott uses it as a title for the chapter in Little Women where Meg spends a week with the worldly Moffats, whose luxurious and idle lives make her dissatisfied with her own hard-working one. Unlike Bunyan, Thackeray is not writing a spiritual work, though like Alcott he is a moralist.
When I sat down with Thackeray's Vanity Fair, I knew that it was about Becky Sharp, who is something of an adventuress, and I was expecting a book along the lines of a Victorian Moll Flanders. This book was nothing that I expected, and I was constantly surprised and delighted by it. I think the surprise and sense of discovery came in part because I had never read Thackeray before; with a new author, you don't know what he might do, how far you can trust her. Will he play fair? Is she the kind who will kill off a major character, just when you've gotten attached to her?
My first surprise was that, as entertaining as Becky Sharp's story is, this isn't just her story. Thackeray has a large cast of characters, and like Trollope he moves back and forth between them, following different plot lines. His cast spans all levels of society, including the rising merchant class, the army, and many servants. According to the introduction of my Penguin edition, he is considered a pioneer in the "Realism" school (to which Trollope also belongs), in part because of his inclusiveness. Thackeray explores the place of women in Victorian society, particularly through Becky Sharp and the other main female character, her friend Amelia Sedley, but also through others like the rich and unmarried Miss Crawley and her impoverished companion Miss Briggs. Ambition and greed condemn some women to unhappy marriages, yet he also shows the difficulties unmarried women face, particularly those without financial resources of their own.
The subtitle of this book is "A Novel Without a Hero," which is patently false. There is no mistaking the hero of this novel, even if he is presented unheroically, as ugly and ungainly, always tripping over his own large feet, afflicted with a lisp (I kept picturing Abraham Lincoln). Thackeray laughs at his hero, but then none of his characters is safe from his satirical eye. All of them are flawed, in very human ways, and their flaws are mercilessly exposed, from highest to lowest. Early in the book, he writes,
And, as we bring our characters forward, I will ask leave, as a man and a brother, not only to introduce them, but occasionally to step down from the platform, and talk about them: if they are good and kindly, to love them and shake them by the hand: if they are silly, to laugh at them confidentially in the reader's sleeve: if they are wicked and heartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms which politeness admits of.
Certainly he "steps down from the platform," he comments freely on his characters and laughs up his sleeve at them, inviting our laughter in turn. Even more than Trollope, his narrative voice is warm and confidential, and he frequently stops the action to address the reader (as in the quote above). Unlike Trollope, though, he has only one character that I think is truly "good and kindly"; the rest are presented as silly at best, if not wicked and heartless. They aren't monsters, I thought them very real and very human, but with a couple of exceptions all are motivated primarily by self-interest. Thackeray doesn't seem to care for his characters as Trollope does, and so while I was interested in them, and concerned about what happened to them, I didn't feel the same connection that I sometimes do, with Trollope.
My second surprise was the setting and scope of this book, including its large and varied cast. I was expecting a Victorian story, but Vanity Fair opens during the Regency, its action spanning fifteen years. I found myself thinking of Georgette Heyer, particularly in a chapter set at Vauxhall. Through two families of merchants, the Osbournes and the Sedleys, Thackeray tracks economic changes, including the India trade. He is also very interested in how people of limited means maintain themselves, particuarly those in the upper levels of society (or who aspire to those levels). Two of the main characters are in the Army, and eventually the story takes us to Belgium and the Battle of Waterloo. Thackeray proclaims that he is not a military historian, so we stay behind, in Brussels, watching the great events unfold amidst the crowd of British civilians who followed the army to Belgium. (According to the Penguin introduction, this section of the book had a major influence on Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.) Later, several characters take an extended tour of Europe, spending some time in the German Duchy of Pumpernickel - an affectionate tribute to Weimar, where Thackeray himself lived for several months. While he of course presents a comic portrait of English expatriates, it is also an interesting picture of life in Germany, before the tensions that later arose between the two countries.
From the little I have read about Thackeray, there seems to be a consensus that Vanity Fair is by far the best of his novels (Trollope may be alone in his appreciation of Henry Esmond). If that's so, I can't be sorry that I started with the best, and I am looking forward to reading more of his work.
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