Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Second reading; first read in the 1960s.


There's a chapter in this classic 1848 English novel titled "A Cynical Chapter." I would venture to say that the whole novel could be classified with this subtitle; it's a most cynical and satiric look at English society at the time, in particular, and at the essential nature of human beings, in general. The actual subtitle of the novel is "A Novel Without a Hero," and that's also very accurate, as it soon becomes apparent that all the characters are guilty in varying degrees of human failings. Not one character escapes Thackeray's cynical analysis and comes out as entirely admirable. Some are foolish and self centered, some are shallow and self deluded, some are hypocritical, and some turn out to be what we now term as sociopaths.

The central character, Becky Sharp, is the most despicable, and yet she is the most interesting. She is smarter, more manipulative, more pragmatic, more self-aware. She has the attractiveness of many a subsequent literary and cinematic anti-hero; we perhaps secretly admire her even while realizing her guilt, just because she is successful in winning the game. (This human tendency -- to admire the winner -- is an additional testament to the accuracy of Thackeray's assessment of human nature.)

The plot follows Becky, the daughter of an impoverished artist and a Paris dancer, as she strives to advance her fortunes and her position in society, mainly through the seduction of various men. The secondary plot follows Becky's kind (and naive) friend Amelia, whose good qualities are obscured by her blind devotion to an ideal rather than to a reality.

This is undoubtedly one of the most well executed novels in the English language, accomplishing flawlessly its goal of a realistic examination of human motivations and failings. Thackeray was a contemporary of Charles Dickens, and the contrast is immediately apparent. Dickens specialized in idealized good characters and blacker-than-night bad characters. In Thackeray, all the characters are pictured in varying shades of gray.

This is yet another novel which I re-evaluated after many years between readings. When I read this in my twenties, I perceived it as excessively cynical. Now, I believe it to be an accurate depiction of the human condition.