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Title: Vanity Fair : A Novel without a Hero by Joanna Trollope, Leonard J. Kent, Nina Berberova, William Makepeace Thackeray ISBN: 0-375-75726-0 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 08 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.51 (43 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the most hilarious and sarcastic novels ever written
Comment: I once read that "Vanity Fair" had been classified as one of the "most boring classics" by a group of English professors, who hopefully have all been fired, as they can NOT have had any appreciation for the incisive use of the English language, the witty skewering of Victorian society, the rollicking plot, or the unforgettable characters. Becky Sharpe isn't likeable -- but in the end, you have to admire her insatiability and efficiency. Amelia and Dobbin live out the stereotypical storybook romance -- but Thackeray dares to show how the story usually ends. This is one of the few books that had me consistently laughing aloud; virtually every page has a stinging comment or revealing moment that catches the attention. Although it's a "classic" (think leather-bound dusty volumes with edifying quotes from the latin), this is as vital, insightful, and "modern" a novel as you could hope to read. (And for the record, I think comparing Thackeray and Austen is like comparing Stephen King and Alice Walker -- they're writing at the same time, but the similarities end there!)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Masterpiece in Every Sense of the Word
Comment: William Makepeace Thackeray subtitled "Vanity Fair", his masterful comic novel, "A Novel Without a Hero". But while this big, baggy eight-hundred page monstrosity of comic characters and situations may lack a hero, it has two of the most memorable characters in English literature: Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. The contrapuntal, shifting fortunes of these two women drive the narrative of this big book, painting, along the way, a brilliant satirical portrait of English and European society at the time of the Napoleonic wars.
We first meet Amelia and Becky in the opening pages of the novel, leaving Miss Pinkerton's School for the wider world of fortune, love and marriage. Amelia Sedley, the naive, sheltered daughter of a rich London merchant whose fortunes will dramatically change over the course of her life, "was a dear little creature; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort, that we are to have for a constant companion so guileless and good-natured a person." In contrast, Becky Sharp, the impoverished orphan of an artist and a French opera singer of dubious repute, was a calculating, amoral social climber. "Miss Rebecca was not, then, in the least kind or placable . . . but she had the dismal precocity of poverty."
From the opening pages, Thackeray captures the reader's interest in these two characters and carries the reader through marriages, births, deaths, poverty, misfortune, social climbing . . . even the Battle of Waterloo! While Amelia and Becky wind like a long, contrasting thread from the beginning to the end of this story, there are also plots and subplots, intrigues and authorial asides, and one character after another, all of this literary invention keeping the reader incessantly preoccupied and enthralled. Reading "Vanity Fair" is the furthest thing from "killing time" (as the dusty, misguided literary critic F. R. Leavis once said); it is, rather, the epitome of the nineteenth century English comic novel, a masterpiece in every sense of the word.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the great 19th Century novels
Comment: If you like the big, sprawling novels of the 19th Century, full of dozens of characters with a supporting cast numbering in the hundreds, novels like Dickens's Bleak House or David Copperfield, George Eliot's Middlemarch or either of the Tolstoy novels, then Vanity Fair may be for you. I won't duplicate what other reviewers have already described below. Instead I'll mention a couple of points that haven't received enough attention.
First, what sets this novel apart from others of its kind is the active role of the narrator, presumably the author himself, or perhaps an unnamed character. Analogizing to sportscasts, this narrator is not content with doing the play-by-play; instead he(she?) constantly butts in with color commentary on the characters, exhortations to the reader, and rhetorical moralizing on such issues as men's treatment of women (bad), women's treatment of women (possibly worse), the harm that comes from living beyond one's means (which extends well beyond the spendthrift), and the question of what makes a gentleman and what makes a lady (honor and honesty). This is all done with such a sense of irony, satire or sarcasm that it's hard to tell when the narrator is being serious. It is this narrative distance from the characters that sets this novel apart from the sentimentality of Dickens, the earnestness of Eliot, the moral seriousness of Tolstoy. I don't think this is cynicism on Thackeray's part but rather an unwavering commitment to seeing the world as it really is, unblinkered by any ideology, philosophy or religion.
The second point derives from the first. There are no heroes or heroines, and no villains. All of the characters, regardless of gender, age, class are possessed of both good and bad qualities. Those on the good end of the spectrum are capable of bad acts: Amelia exploits Dobbin's love, and Dobbin foolishly lets her. Those on the bad end of the spectrum do good things: Lord Steyne obtains a government post for Rawdon Crawley; Becky Sharp Crawley brings about the reconciliation of Dobbin and Amelia. Not only that, but after 800 pages and fifteen years the baddies end up about as well off as the goodies. So what is the moral of this tale? Well, it's the old saw that you should be careful of what you wish for, because you just might get it. That caution applies even to such lofty goals as love and fidelity, and it goes double for fame and fortune.
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Title: Middlemarch by George Eliot, Rosemary Ashton ISBN: 0141439548 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 25 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Tom Jones (Oxford World's Classics) by Henry Fielding, John Bender, Simon Stern ISBN: 0192834975 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen ISBN: 0553213105 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 December, 1983 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Rosemary Edmonds ISBN: 0140444173 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 1982 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Emma by JANE AUSTEN ISBN: 0553212737 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 January, 1984 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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