Vanity Fair

(1848)

Vanity Fair is a story of two heroines--one humble, the other scheming and social climbing--who meet in boarding school and embark on markedly different lives. Amid the swirl of London's posh ballrooms and affairs of love and war, their fortunes rise and fall. Through it all, Thackeray lampoons the shallow values of his society, reserving the most pointed barbs for the upper crust. What results is a prescient look at the dogged pursuit of wealth and status--and the need for humility.

This is a delightful novel which lays bare the hypocrisy of the 19th century European civilization in general and British society in particular. The trait that defines almost all characters of the novel (except Dobbin and Amelia) is their vanity or pompousness. Vanity was also the hallmark of the 19th Century European nation states. This vanity drove them to the wrongly assume that just because they had got a head start in industrial revolution they were superior to people living in India, China, Arabia and America and provided them the moral ground for colonizing and exploiting these lands. The Battle of Waterloo is the perfect backdrop for the plot in the novel because it was a clash of national vanities. William Thackeray was a visionary who could see the self-destructiveness inherent in the societal and national values of greed and vanity of the 19th Century Europe. The values which drove Europe to colonize a major part of the world and steam roll old civilizations ultimately led to the destruction of the European Empires and civilization through two world wars. The Atlantic Charter which led to the creation of the UNO was the most emphatic rejection of the phony civilization which Thackeray satirized in the Vanity Fair. --Submitted by Satish K. Sharma

This is not your typical Romantic novel with its great sensibility, but lacking glorious and fulfilling end. Indeed, the novel's unique multitude of well-sketched characters do not do anything about their foibles, at least not to improve their lot. The novel takes the reader through Bunyan's Vanity Fair and shows him all the vices and vanities the people of this world indulge in. The story starts with two girls at each side of the spectrum getting out from Miss Pinkerton's academy: Amelia Sedley, the daughter of wealthy city man John Sedley of Russell Square, Bloomsbury, since long betrothed to fellow city man Mr Osborne's son Captain George Osborne; and Rebecca (Becky) Sharp, the daughter of a French opera dancer and a painter. She is well educated, but poor as a church mouse and therefore despised by the girls' school mistress. This disillusion will determine her life. When Amelia's father sadly goes bankrupt, oblivious Amelia sees her betrothal end and her father insulted by old Osborne himself. However, young George Osborne's friend, the clumsy and somewhat shy Captain William Dobbin, manages to convince George to marry Amelia nonetheless, to his own eternal detriment. Becky Sharp in the meantime turns governess to the two young girls of stingy and poor Sir Pitt Crawley and manages to seduce her master and his younger son Rawdon. Our two girls both come together at Waterloo where the famous battle seems to bring out the worst in everyone. In the end, things will turn out well, but not until Rawdon realises what his wife really is and Amelia that her brother is a worthless protector. Dobbin's ship of life will dock in its rightful harbour, but possibly too late. Vanity Fair has everything: a cosmopolitan feel, great descriptions of Brussels and Germany in the early 19th century, and great characters. A unique read.--Submitted by kiki1982.