Vanity Fair :: Essays Papers

vacuum FairVanity Fair, though it does not include the whole extent of Thackerays genius, is the close to lively exhibition of its leading characteristics. In freshness of feeling, elasticity of movement, and unity of aim, it is favourably distinguished from its successors, which too often give the impression of being represent of successive accumulations of incidents and soulfulnesss, that drift into the story on no principle of aesthetic selection and combination. The style, while it has the raciness of individual peculiarity and the c areless good example of familiar gossip, is as clear, pure, and flexible as if its sentences had been subjected to repeated revision, and every pebble which preclude its lucid and limpid flow had been laboriously removed. The characterization is almost correct of its kind. Becky Sharp, the Marquis of Steyne, Sir Pitt Crawley and the whole Crawley family, Amelia, the Osbornes, Major Dobbin, not to mention others, are as well known to most cu ltivated people as their most intimate acquaintances in the Vanity Fair of the actual world. It has always seemed to us that Mr. Osborne, the father of George, a representation of the most hateful phase of side character, is one of the most vividly true and life-like of all the delineations in the book, and more of a typical personage than even Becky or the Marquis of Steyne.Thackerays possibleness of characterization proceeds generally on the assumption that the acts of men and women are directed not by principle, but by instincts, selfish or amiable--that toleration of human weakness is possible only by sound the standard of human capacity and obligation--and that the preliminary condition of an accurate noesis of human character is distrust of ideals and repudiation of patterns. This view is narrow, and by no means covers all the facts of history and human life, but what relative accuracy it has is splendidly illustrated in Vanity Fair. There is not a person in the book who excites the readers respect, and not one who fails to excite his interest. The morbid installation of the authors perceptions of the selfish element, even in his few amiable characters, is a everlasting source of surprise. The novel not only has no hero, but implies the non-existence of heroism. until now the fascination of the book is indisputable, and it is due to a variety of causes besides its guileless exhibition of the worldly side of life.