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Vanity Fair: Difference between revisions
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{{work|wppage=Vanity Fair (novel)}}
{{Infobox book
| title = Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero
William Makepeace Thackeray's ''Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero'' (1847-48) is a multiplot novel tracing the varied fortunes of the charming (but vicious) Becky Sharp and her sometime friend, the beautiful (but blank) Amelia Sedley. During the Napoleonic era, the novel's many characters travel throughout Europe--fighting battles, scheming, and looking for cash. As the title suggests, the novel satirizes the social and sexual pretensions of a thoroughly dissolute High Society. The reader meets adulterers, gamblers, and con(wo)men of every description, only some of whom get their rightful comeuppance. Although readers, both in the [[Victorian Britain|Victorian Era]] and since, have sometimes found Thackeray's treatment of Amelia to be [[Glurge|gushingly sentimental]], ''Vanity Fair'' can be exceptionally hardheaded in its attacks on moral hypocrisy and romantic cliches. The subtitle may be ironic, but it's also serious: even the honest soldier William Dobbin, who is the closest thing the novel has to a moral center, [[Knight in Sour Armor|doesn't end the novel unscathed.]]▼
| original title = Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society
| image = VanityFair.jpg
| caption = Mr. Joseph Entangled
| author = William Makepeace Thackeray
| central theme = The hipocrisy of High Society
| elevator pitch = The numerous misadventures of a beautiful social climber, her pretty but naive freenemy, the man who loves the latter, and a colorful ensemble of Brittish High Society types they encounter, during the early 1800s
| genre =
| publication date = 1848
| source page exists =
| wiki URL =
| wiki name =
}}
▲William Makepeace Thackeray's '''''Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero''''' (1847-48) is a multiplot novel tracing the varied fortunes of the charming (but vicious) Becky Sharp and her sometime friend, the beautiful (but blank) Amelia Sedley. During the Napoleonic era, the novel's many characters travel throughout Europe--fighting battles, scheming, and looking for cash. As the title suggests, the novel satirizes the social and sexual pretensions of a thoroughly dissolute High Society. The reader meets adulterers, gamblers, and con(wo)men of every description, only some of whom get their rightful comeuppance. Although readers, both in the [[Victorian Britain|Victorian Era]] and since, have sometimes found Thackeray's treatment of Amelia to be [[Glurge|gushingly sentimental]], ''Vanity Fair'' can be exceptionally hardheaded in its attacks on moral hypocrisy and romantic cliches. The subtitle may be ironic, but it's also serious: even the honest soldier William Dobbin, who is the closest thing the novel has to a moral center, [[Knight in Sour Armor|doesn't end the novel unscathed.]]
Notably, the novel was first published with Thackeray's own illustrations, some of them crucial to the plot.
''Vanity Fair'' has been filmed and televised several times, beginning with a silent film released in 1911. The most famous of these adaptations is ''[[Becky Sharp]]'' (1935), which inaugurated the Technicolor era. Mira Nair's 2004 film version, starring Reese Witherspoon, turned Becky into the real heroine.
Not to be confused with the magazine of the same name.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Affably Evil]]: Becky, for the most part.
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* [[All There in the Manual]]: Or, rather, in the illustrations. Most famously, while it is hinted in the text that {{spoiler|Becky may have murdered Jos}}, it is much more strongly suggested in an illustration.
* [[Aristocrats Are Evil]]: The appalling Marquess of Steyne. Also, Sir Pitt Crawley, who is a classic "bad baronet."
* [[Babies Make Everything Better]]: Massively averted. Becky ignores her child, Amelia spoils her son because of his rotten father, and ultimately
* [[Beauty Equals Goodness]]: Subverted with Becky but played straight(ish) with Amelia. Dobbin looks horsey, but is the most noble character in the novel -- in fact, the subtitle can be taken to mean both that the novel has heroines and that Dobbin doesn't look the way a hero "should."
* [[Being Good Sucks]]: Dobbin spends the entire novel doing good things, virtually all of them going unrecognized and unrewarded; in fact, Amelia ascribes some of them to her [[Jerkass]] beloved, George. To make matters worse, Dobbin gets his "reward," {{spoiler|marrying Amelia}}, only after he has ceased to value it.
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* [[Dirty Coward]]: Jos initially grows a [[Badass Moustache]] to try to attract women, but shaves it off and hides when he hears that Napoleon is slaughtering the British troops. It's because of this detail that, as with other characters, his pitiable features are balanced by some really unsympathetic traits/actions.
* [[Dirty Old Man]]: Sir Pitt Crawley
* [[Downer Ending]]: Amelia has
{{quote|"Ah! ''Vanitas Vanitatum''! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?--Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out."}}
** Mira Nair's film subverts the [[Downer Ending]] by having Becky
** Also, there is some debate on whether the ending is completely unhappy
* [[Evil Redhead]]: Becky; Lord Steyne
* [[Fat Bastard]]: Jos
* [[Freudian Excuse]]: Becky's father beat her and her mother and basically encouraged her to act as a [[Fille Fatale]] as a way of getting his debtors to hold off their demands for repayment.
* [[Generation Xerox]]: To the extent that the novel has anything of a happy ending, it's because the younger generation shows signs of being better than their parents' generation -- George the younger is set on the right path by Dobbin, so doesn't end up a jerkass like his father, and Rawdon the younger is willing to take care of his mother (but not see her), showing himself to be less reprehensible than either of the two previous baronets, the Messrs. Pitt.
* [[Girl of My Dreams]]: Amelia for Dobbin,
* [[Gold Digger]]: Becky.
* [[Grande Dame]]: Thackeray displays a number of haughty, humorless old ladies in the novel -- for instance, Miss Pinkerton, Lady Bareacres, and Lady Southdown.
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* [[Jerkass]]: George Osborne, Amelia's husband. He caps his jerkishness by {{spoiler|asking Becky to elope with him weeks after marrying Amelia.}}
** George's son George isn't what you'd call a nice young chap, either.
* [[Literary Allusion Title]]: The title "Vanity Fair" is taken from ''[[The Pilgrim's
* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]
* [[Meaningful Name]]:
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* [[Parental Abandonment]]: Becky and her son, Rawdon.
* [[Parental Marriage Veto]]: Both Becky and Amelia run into this problem; in Amelia's case, George Osborne's father makes up for it in his will.
* [[The Pilgrim's
* [[Professional Gambler]]: Becky's husband Rawdon Crawley makes what little money he has this way.
* [[Secret Relationship]]: Becky and Rawdon Crawley.
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{{reflist}}
{{The Big Read}}
[[Category:Literature of the 19th century]]▼
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[[Category:Serial Novel]]
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▲[[Category:Literature of the 19th century]]
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