Vanity Fair

Rating:
Summary: A truly marvelous example of superb writing in English
Review: After reading over 150 classics as part of my study of books for students of English as a Second Language, I rate this book in my top 8! It will sit along with Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, Dickens' David Copperfield, Cervantes' Don Quijote, Spyri's Heidi, Wyse's Swiss Family Robinson, Old Yeller and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings on my BEST BOOKS of all time shelf. Thackeray's command of English is awesome. I LOVE the way he talks to us as readers throughout the book. It makes you feel like he's talking to you. Fantastic style. At times the book slows a little with details of British life in 1815-1825 and side character issues, but from Chapter 35 on it truly becomes a superb work in English Literature. Chapter 35 stands as a devasting view of the effect of war on the people back home. Truly brilliant! His emotional descriptions and characterizations(expecially the names of people!) are superb. His subtle wit is among the best I have read. Just put aside 2-3 weeks to read and enjoy this superb example of writing as English can be. Thackeray calls it the "vanity of human affairs" (Vanity Fair). It truly is. I had left this as the last book to read among my classics collection. This was a stroke of luck, because it made me reflect on all the other books and realize Thackeray is a much underrated writer and unfortunately died before he could write more... Be patient and enjoy a good read...

Rating:
Summary: A Classic!!
Review: As Thackeray's Vanity Fair was my first serious foray into 19th century british literature, I found it a bit daunting at first. After I acquired a rhythm for his style of writing, I quickly lost myself in the story. Never before had I read a book where so much attention was paid to detail. Everything is described eloquently. The story itself is hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. After finishing the book, I have forced many of my friends and family to sit down and read it. They too love it, and are recommending it to their friends.

Rating:
Summary: All's fair in love and "Vanity"
Review: Greed, gold-digging and deception sit at the heart of "Vanity Fair." It's no joke that it's subtitled "a novel without a hero" -- William Makepeace Thackeray mercilessly skewered the pretentions and flaws of the upper class all throughout it. The result is a gloriously witty social satire.

It opens with two young women departing from a ladies' academy: dull, sweet Amelia (rich) and fiery sharp-witted Rebecca (poor). Becky Sharp is a relentless social climber, and her first effort to rise "above her station" is by trying to get Amelia's brother to marry her -- an effort thwarted by Amelia's fiancee. So instead she gets married to another family's second son, Rawdon Crawley.

Unfortunately, both young couples quickly get disinherited and George is killed. But Becky is determined to live the good life she has worked and married for -- she obtains jewels and money from admiring gentlemen, disrupting her marriage. But a little thing like a tarnished reputation isn't enough to keep Becky down...

"Vanity Fair" is actually a lot more complex than that, with dozens of little subplots and complicated character relationships. Reading it a few times is necessary to really absorb all of it, since it is not just a look at the two women in the middle of the book, but at the upper (and sometimes lower) social strata of the nineteenth century.

The main flaw of the book is perhaps that it sprawls too much -- there's always a lot of stuff going on, not to mention a huge cast of characters, and Thackeray sometimes drops the ball when it comes to the supporting characters and their little plots. It takes a lot of patience to absorb all of this. However... it's worth it.

Like most nineteenth-century writers, Thackeray had a very dense, formal writing style -- but once you get used to it, his writing becomes insanely funny. Witticisms and quips litter the pages, even if you don't pick them all up at once. At first Thackeray seems incredibly cynical (Becky's little schemes almost always pay off), but taken as a social satire, it's easier to understand why he was so cynical about the society of the time.

Becky Sharp is the quintessential anti-heroine -- she's very greedy and cold, yet she's also so smart and determined that it's hard not to have a grudging liking for her. Certainly life hasn't been fair for her. Next to Becky, a goody-goody character like Amelia is pretty boring, and even the unsubtle George can't measure up to Becky.

To sum up "Vanity Fair": think a period soap opera with a heavy dose of social commentary. In other words, it doesn't get much better than this, Thackeray's masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: greed and more...
Review: I first read this novel twenty-five years ago, and while I found it funny and excellent entertainment at that time, I didn't realize that it is also a very great book. Now I do.

Readers who've found the novel too long are, I suspect, not regular readers of Victorian novels, which were traditionally published in newspapers, bit by bit. They're always long--that's their distinction from modern novels. More than most however, Vanity Fair opens with a bang, and from the first page on through more than 800, I found it hard to put down.

Through the cast of characters we see for ourselves the pervasive greed and hypocrisy of the 19th century British Empire. Jos Sedley, the Ex-collecter of Bogley Walla, the unfortunate Rawdon Crawley, George Osborne and the immoral, resourceful Becky Sharpe are some of the most vivid characters in English writing. The narrator's voice is perfect--though hardly appealing. It's not sentimental. The "objectivity" of a journalist's timidly expressed irony feeds into the reader's need to feel smug -- so that when shocking moments come (and they sure do) we are stunned. The narrator's voice here is much more inventive than one realizes immediately. In this and many other ways Thackeray's story-telling isn't typical of Victorian novelists--Eliot or Dickens for example. In the works of those authors we always know just what moral position the narrator has. (I should mention that I also finished re-reading Middlemarch before re-reading Vanity Fair.) Comparing the grand stateliness of George Eliot with Thackeray's voice made me see just what a tricky work of art Vanity Fair is. But Thackeray, too, makes his story come to life. The description of the Battle of Waterloo is one of the most brilliant things I've ever read. It's hard to believe that he wasn't there.

In the edition I read I found that C.L.R. James, the left-wing Trinidadian author and historian--an author I admire and enjoy reading, began reading Vanity Fair at the age of eight, and re-read it regularly throughout his long life. He claims to have learned more about the minds of white colonial empire-builders from this original and epic work than any history he read. Interesting...

Rating:
Summary: As relevant today as ever
Review: I picked up Vanity Fair because it was in the bookcase and I had never read it. I quickly became obsessed with this book and was unable to put it down! I am ranking this as one of my all-time favorite books. The subtlety and brilliance Thackeray displays is beyond description. His depiction of 19th century Europe is both shockingly brutal and absolutely hilarious. But the thing that really impresses me is how this society, whose morals are based entirely on money, whose members spare no effort attempting to gain and display status, and where the less fortunate are shown no mercy is such a mirror to our society today. I guess some things never do change! I just saw the preview for the film which they have made and it is obviously not going to follow the story (how could it in a 2-hour movie?). So don't plan to skip the book and just "see the film" - you will miss the point entirely.

Rating:
Summary: Too long - meandering storyline - boring ending
Review: I really wanted to like this novel. I am a huge book lover, and especially this sort of older novel. I am sorry to say I was disappointed. The novel is much longer than it needs to be. I do not have a problem with long novels in general (in fact, I've read The Mists of Avalon an embarassing number of times), but I do have a problem with novels that are long for no good reason. I also understand this novel was released in short bits over the course of many months, but that does not excuse the meandering storyline. Thackeray jumps back and forth both in time and in place. He wastes many a paragraph describing things that have no importance in the novel, or people who have no bearing on the story. Then, to make matters worse, he simply jumps over, or glosses over the seemingly most important parts of the story.

Another problem I have with the novel is the way he writes the characters. None of them come across as all that endearing, except perhaps for Dobbins, who is so devoted and constant as to be unbelievable.

I didn't hate the novel (hence the 2 stars), but I doubt I will ever bother to re-read it.

Rating:
Summary: One of the supreme masterpieces of the English novel genre
Review: It is impossible to compare this to any other 19th century English novel, or to compare Thackery with Dickens, or anyone else. That being said, it's almost as if there was a Mendelian cross between the astute (and gentle) social observations of Jane Austen, and the savage and bitter analysis of human nature of Jonathan Swift.
Regarding the novel's pace, the author presents a complex, rounded view of the numerous characters, major and minor, and this couldn't have been done at a best-seller type pace. Every character is a mixture of good and evil, of weakness and strength.
This is a work to be savored for its' wisdom - and I believe there is a great deal of wisdom in the novel. Above all, I don't see how it's not possible to not be fascinated by the two female "heroines," nor to want to know what theie eventual fates are. A GREAT, PROFOUND WORK OF IMAGINATION.

Rating:
Summary: One of the supreme masterpieces of the English novel genre
Review: It is impossible to compare this to any other 19th century English novel, or to compare Thackery with Dickens, or anyone else. That being said, it's almost as if there was a Mendelian cross between the astute (and gentle) social observations of Jane Austen, and the savage and bitter analysis of human nature of Jonathan Swift.
Regarding the novel's pace, the author presents a complex, rounded view of the numerous characters, major and minor, and this couldn't have been done at a best-seller type pace. Every character is a mixture of good and evil, of weakness and strength.
This is a work to be savored for its' wisdom - and I believe there is a great deal of wisdom in the novel. Above all, I don't see how it's not possible to not be fascinated by the two female "heroines," nor to want to know what theie eventual fates are. A GREAT, PROFOUND WORK OF IMAGINATION.

Rating:
Summary: A True Must-Read for any Fan of 19th Century / Victorian Lit
Review: One of the greatest triumphs of the 19th Century / Victorian novel is the way in which it masters the English language, utilizing it with such eloquence that, nearly bordering on indulgent by today's standards, is nothing less than breathtaking. This combines with the ability to create characters so thoroughly developed that the reader cannot help but be invested in their fate (be it with or without sympathy). Thackeray's Vanity Fair is, in my opinion, a near perfect example of the greatness of the Victorian novel. The sheer length of his epic allows him to spare no expense giving the reader every detail of his characters, in addition to a very pointed and often-amusing critique of 19th Century military society. His novel is as much a satire of social ascendency as it is a love story. One can be gripped by the trials of Becky and Amelia and amused by his criticisms with equal fervor. He weaves the stories of the characters in such a way that the reader's opinion of them may (and perhaps, should) change several times. The end (not to reveal one detail) underscores Thackeray's committment to Vanity Fair as a novel of satire. He provides excellent characterization of every possible sentimental disposition, from the absolutely wicked to the unquestionably benevolent. While pages of the book may seem tangential to the plot, his 'digressions' are not without merit as examples of satire or his eloquent style.

I can say that I am disappointed at the apparent ignorance of this novel by many curricula. While authors like Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Dickens and even Trollope are well-known, Thackeray seems to be somewhat unheard-of in general society. While I am no less a fan of the former writers (I can claim the 19th Century British novel as my favorite genre), I think that Thackeray (and Vanity Fair in particular) is worth at least comparable attention and acclaim. I recommend Vanity Fair for any fan of 19th Century British literature, pointed social satire, or classic world literature in general. This epic will appeal to the romantic and cynic with equal depth.

Note: I recommend especially the re-issue of the Penguin Classics edition. While admitting myself as a fan of the series in general, this edition's exclusion of Thackeray's hand-drawings is, as noted by editor John Carey, a likely advantage for the novel's reader.

Rating:
Summary: Has not aged gracefully
Review: The reputation of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" perseveres to this day, but I'm not sure it demands to be read in preference to many of its contemporaneous peers. In the twenty-first century it simply fails to entertain on the level it was intended when it was written in the 1840s, and even its literary value is dubious. The novel asks rhetorically why we are never satisfied with the things we achieve in life, and the question reverberates in a canyon of echoes as Thackeray repetitively beats the theme to death with a story that is too long and too dull. Of course it satirizes the hypocrisy, materialism, and frivolity in the higher strata of English society, but it hardly excels in this regard when compared to so many other novels, particularly Dickens's, of the same era that do likewise with more subtlety and intelligence. If "Vanity Fair" can be considered a socially valuable novel merely because it satirizes society, then nearly any novel can be considered socially valuable.

Set in the 1810s and 1820s, "Vanity Fair" is basically the tale of two young women, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp, making their respective ways through English society after leaving school. Amelia, a virtuous girl from an affluent family, marries George Osborne, the son of a man with whom her father has a financial quarrel. Becky, a beautiful, vivacious girl from an artistic but broken family, takes a job as a governess for a repulsive old man named Sir Pitt Crawley and eventually marries his son Rawdon. Both husbands are British military officers who fight under the Duke of Wellington against Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo; only one comes home alive. The novel then becomes a study in reversal, followed by a sort of restoration, of fortune -- Becky uses her charm to climb the ladder of high society while Amelia struggles to support herself and her young son.

My biggest problem with "Vanity Fair" is Thackeray's general style. His prose is serviceable but unrefined; he has a poor sense for the arrangement of detail, constructing lopsided paragraphs and dispensing useless information like complimentary mints at the door of a restaurant. His serious characters fail to invoke sympathy and his few comical characters fail to amuse. Perhaps it was his intention to avoid caricatures, but he can't fairly be called a realist either. Additionally he chooses to write with the voice of a narrator whose tone is gossipy bordering on the obnoxious. Occasionally he does offer a psychological or social insight that is interesting if not profound, but these moments seem more like digressive interjections than integral parts of the story.

I know I'm being picky with this novel, but I expected better considering its permanent status in the English literary canon. As a Victorian novelist, Thackeray cannot compete with Eliot, Hardy, Dickens, the Brontes, or even Wilkie Collins or Samuel Butler; rather, he unfortunately seems to be on the same level as Anthony Trollope, whose voluminous chronicles of the straight-laced middle class are written well but leave a bland aftertaste. Despite its purport to be something more, "Vanity Fair" is merely a genteel, fluffy, uneventful soap opera penned by an author who attempts to be wry but instead compels his reader to wade through a Slough of Despond.