Date: 27 January 2013
Location: Joyce
Joyce’s warm home, where she invited us to enjoy her new kitchen as part of the evening’s entertainment, provided a lovely setting for the discussion that was wonderfully led by Jennifer Garlen. I found the publication history, and Thackeray’s rise to fame interesting, but enjoyed discussion of the book itself more.
The title taken from Pilgrim’s Progress, (a couple of us remembered Louisa May Alcott’s reference to it in Little Women) refers to a stop along the pilgrim’s progress: a never-ending fair held in a town called Vanity, which is meant to represent man’s sinful attachment to worldly things. The title would have told a contemporary reader to expect an immensely moral novel, but probably not an immensely witty one. Thackeray’s droll remarks in his role as commentator on the faithful, loyal Amelia Sedley and the beautiful and scheming social climber Becky Sharp had me laughing out loud and I underlined loads of passages on my Kindle.
It seemed that Becky was able to not only charm every man who passed by, but most of the women also. There were a few exceptions. Probably the most surprising was Lady Jane who ended up giving her husband, Pitt Crawley an ultimatum to choose between herself and Becky. The ultimatum was all the more notable because of her role in the book as “the angel at home,” the always sweet, demure, obedient wife – i.e., the Victoria ideal. Of course Becky was snubbed by those women who considered themselves nobler than she because she had married above her station. Miss Crawley, Rawdon Crawley’s rich aunt expressed her extreme displeasure at Becky’s upinness by disinheriting Becky’s husband. But then sweet Amelia was also snubbed by her betters. Snubbing was very much in fashion particularly practiced against those who had fallen from grace by becoming publically poor.
There are no heroes, as noted in its subtitle “A Novel Without a Hero.” Instead it has the two named “sort of” heroines. We even engaged in a brief moment’s comparison of Amelia and Becky to Melanie and Scarlet, and wondered/assumed that Margaret Mitchell would have been very familiar with Amelia and Becky, using them as possible slender models for her girls. (I think that Melanie and Scarlet have a lot more meat on their literary bones.)
Little sympathy was expressed for either Amelia or Becky by Thackeray. We concluded that the author treated all the women quite poorly. I was inclined to not totally believe that Becky was necessarily responsible for Jos Sedley’s death. But I had to rethink my supposition when confronted with the final illustration drawn by the author himself as part of the original publication showing the puppet of Becky being embraced by the Devil’s puppet – illustrations are not included in the Kindle version.
Bob noted that the descriptions of preparation for battle and the battle itself against Napoleon had him wondering if he was reading War and Peace again. The two books have been compared noting that Tolstoy used his novel to show war’s effect on the heroes while Thackeray only uses it as a background setting.
It was Thackeray’s purpose to present his view of English society as characterized by hypocrisy and opportunism. While satirical in nature, there is no suggestion in the story of hope for improvement of society as a whole. Even sweet Amelia ends up being so obnoxiously wrapped up in her hero worship for her unworthy dead husband that she destroys the love offered to her by Dobbin.
The practice of living beyond one’s means seemed to have been as prevalent then as we are led to believe it is in the current economy. Could we compare the failure of the small tradesmen who were dependent on extending credit that was never repaid with the money lost on Wall Street by small investors during the housing market meltdown?
Thinking of the serialized story as having caused the same type of excited following as that enjoyed today by PBS’s “Downton’s Abbey” does make it feel more contemporary and therefore more accessible. Does the downward spiral of the darkness of the novel just show an author trying to keep his readership hyped, waiting on pins and needles to get their hands on the next installment? He could rewrite the next installment depending upon how the last one was received. However, I feel fairly certain that Vanity Fair’s ever present commentator would perhaps note that this is not a book for the faint of heart, since a majority of those present had not finished reading the text, but had relied on more easily accessible information concerning the text. Maybe we should have read it in its original format –twenty monthly installments.
— Gina