Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray

  

Historical background

In Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) penned a critical review of contemporary Victorian England, focused on the new class of leisured gentry who emerged thanks to the Industrial Revolution and the Empire. The author uncovers the Victorian façade of morality which masked a society of acquisition and pretence at home and abroad.

The international backdrop to the book is succinctly summarised in the Battle of Waterloo which is experienced by most characters as an opportunity to dine and dance in Brussels. However, brief descriptions of their fear of defeat and the bloodiness of the conflict also pinpoint their superficiality.

Literary context 

Industrialisation and urbanisation precipitated social changes in the UK. Dickens criticised them from the underdogs' viewpoint; Thackeray recorded them through the particularly British upper-class system. Both authors were part of the Realist movement, a European literary trend which endeavoured to portray contemporary society candidly. Writers such as Balzac in his novel sequence La Comédie humaine, Pérez Galdós' historical Episodios Nacionales, Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Tolstoy's War and Peace were engaged in exploring social issues and presented characters drawn from real life.

Discussion

'Vanity Fair' draws on some of the established ways of narrating a novel. The author varies the narrator's voice using letters to allow several characters to speak, as Richardson and several European authors did. The protagonist of the story follows the traditional picaresque style in the main character, the social climber Becky Sharp, who certainly lives up to her surname. As with Dickens' novels, Vanity Fair was published in monthly installments, so cliffhangers abound at the end of each episode to encourage readers to read on next month.

However, Thackeray also shows a determined innovation in his presentation of the novel. He opens the story with a preface addressed to the reader, advising that his characters are puppets in the hands of a stage manager. Here he discards the pretence of many of his predecessors that his narrative is based on facts or documents. In a further difference with the traditional novel format he invites the reader not to focus on the plot, but on his critical portrayal of contemporary high society, and so the narrator often interrupts the storyline to comment on the characters he is puppeteering.

The book's subtitle underlines the fact that it is a "novel without a hero". This sets it apart from many 18th. century novels whose main character was their hero, such as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver or Tom Jones. On the contrary, the protagonists in this narrative are a whole host of characters caught up in the superficial social whirlwind of Vanity Fair. More than a tale, it is social commentary, driven by a description of relationships rather than by plot. In some chapters it is plain gossip, focusing on people, not ideas. This makes it a romp of a read.