Comprehensive information and links about Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair This article is about the novel. For the magazine see, Vanity Fair (magazine). For the 1960s British pop group, see Page One Records. is a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray that satirizes middle-class society in early 19th-century England. Like many novels of the time, magazine in 1847 and 1848. It was the first work that Thackeray published under his own name, and was extremely well-received at the time. Some editions had illustrations by Thackeray himself, which are now lost in most present editions.

Thackeray meant the book to be not only entertaining but also instructive; this is shown both by the narrator of the book and in Thackeray's private correspondence. Although, the novel is now remembered as a classic of English literature some critics claim that it has structural problems; Thackeray sometimes lost track of the huge scope of his work, mixing up characters' names and minor plot details. The number of allusions and references it contains make it a difficult read for modern readers.

The term "vanity fair" originates from the allegorical novel , published in 1678 by John Bunyan where there is a town fair held in a village called Vanity.

The novel has inspired several film adaptations.

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The story opens at Miss Pinkerton's Academy for young ladies, where we meet the main characters, Becky Sharp, a strong-willed and cunning young woman determined to make her way in society, and Amelia Sedley, a good natured though simple-minded young girl. The book accompanies Becky and Amelia's life through happy times and sorrowful days between London, Brighton, the countryside and the Battle of Waterloo.

After Amelia's completion of studies at Miss Pinkerton's Academy, she invited her friend Becky to her home. It was there that Miss Sharp met with Amelia's lover George Osborne and her brother, Joseph Sedley, a clumsy and vainglorious official who serves in India. Because of his wealth and status, Becky purposely enticed him and hoped to marry him, though eventually failed as a result of Joseph's shyness and his foolish act in party at Vauxhall.

With the failure of this hope, Becky Sharp said farewell to Sedley's family and headed to baronet Pitt Crawley's home to serve as a governess. Her behaviour at baronet's house gained the favour of Sir Pitt, who eventually proposed to marry Miss Sharp, but was politely rejected.

Sir Pitt's sister, Miss Crawley, was a woman of affluence. Her great wealth was a source of constant conflict between members of Crawley family who fought for her inheritance. Captain Rawdon Crawley, nephew of Miss Crawley, was the inheritor and favourite of her aunt. Miss Sharp succeeded in gaining Rawdon's heart and eloped with him. Miss Crawley, enraged by the elopement because of Becky's low birth, eventually disinherited her nephew.

While Becky Sharp was trying to gain her wealth and status, Amelia's father went bankrupt. Captain George Osborne, persuaded by his friend Dobbin, married Amelia in spite of her poverty and his father's fierce objection.

When all these personal incidents were going on, Napoleon escaped Elba and reorganised his army. George Osborne and William Dobbin were sent to Brussels in order to fight the French army. In Brussels George met with Becky and the disinherited Captain Crawley. The newly wedded Osborne was by now growing tired of Amelia, and he became increasingly attracted to Becky, who was now Mrs Crawley.

Before Osborne could run away with Mrs Crawley, he was sent to Waterloo and killed in the battle, leaving behind Amelia and his posthumous son George (same name as his father) in the world. With the death of Osborne, young George's godfather Dobbin gradually expressed more love and concern to Amelia. However, his regiment was dispatched abroad before he could confess his true affection to Amelia.

After the war, Becky and Rawdon Crawley went to Paris; then they returned to London, leaving behind a large amount of debts in France. Becky's obscure relationship with Lord Steyne was discovered by Rawdon, who in a rage abandoned his wife and moved abroad. Mrs Crawley, having lost both husband and status, became a wanderer.

As Amelia's son George grew up his grandfather became fond of him and took him away from his daughter-in-law when her family lacked the money to foster him. Meanwhile both Joseph Sedley and William Dobbin returned to England. Dobbin professed his unchanged love to Amelia, but although Amelia was also affectionate to Dobbin, she could not forget the memory of her dead husband and thus refused.

While in England, Dobbin managed a reconciliation between Amelia and her father-in-law. The death of George's grandfather gave Amelia and young George a large fortune.

After the death of old Mr Osborne. Amelia, Joseph, George and Dobbin went on a trip to Germany, where they encountered the destitute Becky. Dobbin quarrelled with Amelia, and finally realized that he was wasting his love on a woman too shallow to return it.

However, Becky, in a moment of conscience, showed Amelia the note that George (Amelia's dead husband) had given her which asked her to run away with him. This broke George's idealised image in Amelia's mind, thus eventually bringing Dobbin and Amelia together.

Becky resumed her seduction of Joseph Sedley and gained control over him. He eventually died of a suspicious ailment after signing a portion of his money to Becky as life insurance. It is hinted that she may have murdered him to make her fortune. In the original illustrations, which were done by Thackeray, Becky is shown behind a curtain with a phial (presumably of poison) in her hand.

The reader is informed at the end that although Dobbin married Amelia, and always treated her with great kindness, he never fully regained the love that he had once had for her.

Contemporary critics

Even before the last serial was published, critics hailed the work as a literary treasure. Although the critics were superlative in their praise, they expressed disappointment at the unremittingly dark portrayal of human nature, fearing he had taken his dismal metaphor too far. Thackeray responding to critics explained that he saw people for the most part "abominably foolish and selfish".span , is apt because the characters are all flawed to a greater or lesser degree; even the most sympathetic have weaknesses, for example Captain Dobbin who is prone to vanity and melancholy. The human weaknesses Thackeray illustrates are mostly to do with greed, idleness, and snobbery, and the scheming, deceit and hypocrisy which mask them. None of the characters are wholly evil, though. Even Becky, who is amoral and cunning, is thrown on her own resources by poverty and its stigma (she is the daughter of an artist who is in debt). This tendency of Thackeray's to highlight faults in all of his characters displays his desire for a greater level of realism in his fiction compared to the rather unlikely or idealised people in many contemporary novels.

The novel is a satire of society as a whole, characterised by hypocrisy and opportunism, but it is not a reforming novel; there is no suggestion that social or political changes, or greater piety and moral reformism could improve the nature of society. It thus paints a fairly bleak view of the human condition. This bleak portrait is continued with Thackarey's own role as an omniscient narrator, one of the writers best known for using the technique. He continually offers asides about his characters and compares them to actors and puppets, but his scorn goes even as far as his readers; accusing all who may be interested in such "Vanity Fairs" as being either "of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood".

The work is often compared to the other great historical novel which covered the Napoleonic wars: Tolstoy's . While Tolstoy's work has a greater emphasis on the historical detail and the effect the war has upon his protagonists, Thackeray instead uses the conflict as more of a backdrop to the lives of his characters. The momentous events on the continent do not always have an equally important influence on the behaviours of Thackeray's characters, rather their faults tend to compound over time. This is in contrast to the redemptive power conflict has on the characters in . For Thackeray, the Napoleonic wars as a whole can be thought of as one more of the vanities expressed in the title.

The suggestion, near the end of the work, that Becky may have killed Jos is argued against by John Sutherland in his book . Although Becky is portrayed has having highly a dubious moral sense, the idea that she would commit premeditated murder is quite a step forward for the character. Thackeray was a fierce critic of the crime fiction popular at the time, particularly that of Edward Bulwer-Lytton. These lurid and sensationalist accounts—known as "Newgate novels"—took their inspiration, and sometimes entire stories, from the pages of . What Thackeray objected to was the glorification of criminal's deeds, it therefore seems strange that he would have depicted Becky as such a villainess. His intent may have been to entrap the Victorian reader with their own prejudices and make them think the worst of Becky Crawley née Sharp even when they have no proof of her actions. This interpretation is not helped by the trio of lawyers she gets to defend her from the claims, Burke, Thurtell, and Hayes, named after prominent murders of the time.

The character of Becky Sharp is based in part on Thackeray's maternal grandmother Harriet Becher. She abandoned her husband and children when she eloped with Captain Charles Christie. In 1806 shortly after the death of Christie and her husband she married Edward Butler another army officer. Thackeray lived with his grandmother in Paris in the 1830s and again in the 1840s.

The book has inspired a number of film adaptations, the first being a silent movie in 1911. Notable movie versions include:

starring Miriam Hopkins and Frances Dee. Hopkins was nominated for best actress. First film completely in color.A 1971 BBC adaptation starring Susan Hampshire as Becky Sharp, for which she received an Emmy Award in 1973.A 1987 classic series produced by the BBC titled 'Vanity Fair', starring Eve Matheson as Becky Sharp and James Saxon as Jos Sedley.A 2004 film directed by Mira Nair. The film received only mixed reviews and director Nair was criticized for softening the character of Becky Sharp, played by Reese Witherspoon, with the intent to modernize the story and characters; see: : ISBN 0192834436 (Oxford World Classics edition, that has explanatory notes and original illustrations)