Vanity Fair

“Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?-Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.”

"Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, and foolishly place, full of a sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions... Everyone is striving for what is not worth having!"

Thackery's "novel without a hero" is one of the most epic tales full of romance and intrigue I've ever read.

Miss Rebecca Sharp was forcefully thrust into adulthood impoverished child of a painter and an Parisian opera singer. She held her head high and did anything to make a better life for herself and get into Regency-era Society, exactly everything the ton loathed.

But who isn't putting on airs in Vanity Fair? Everyone is flawed, as we all are included the innocent Miss Amelia Sedley and Major William Dobbin--that's a love story for the ages right there. Becky had me cheering and gasping, sometimes on the same page. Talented, determined and unapologetic, that's Becky Sharp.

This book took me a while to read, but I always looked forward to picking it back up and learning what other mischief Becky had gotten herself into.

The story dragged a little during all the intricate details of the Napoleonic Wars, wordy explanations of peerage, Greek, French, Italian and Shakespearian references but I'm glad that was all included to set the stage and raise the stakes of Vanity Fair.

I love this book for it's upstart anti-hero, immersiveness and detailed character histories that span decades.

Thackeray really does go on at times. And while it serves to set the tone of what was, in its time a groundbreaking novel, the needless verbosity becomes very, very tiresome.

I should have read this years ago – I would be enjoying it much more. Fun and enjoyable, but disappointing, because I was planning to love it.

—

‰ЫПThe best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don‰ЫЄt know how much they hide from us; how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential; how often those frank smiles, which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm ‰ЫУ I don‰ЫЄt mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide the dullness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it; we call this pretty treachery truth.‰Ыќ

—

“There was a picture of the family over the mantelpiece, removed thither from the front room after Mrs. Osborne‰ЫЄs death ‰ЫУ George was on a pony, the elder sister holding him up a bunch of flowers; the younger led by her mother‰ЫЄs hand; all with red cheeks and large red mouths, simpering on each other in the approved family-portrait manner. The mother lay underground now, long since forgotten ‰ЫУ the sisters and brother had a hundred different interests of their own, and, familiar still, were utterly estranged from each other. Some few score of years afterwards, when all the parties represented are grown old, what bitter satire there is in those flaunting childish family portraits, with their farce of sentiment and smiling lies, and innocence so self-conscious and self-satisfied.”

I do love bitter, sarcastic Victorian literature that everyone has heard of and no one has read. This book is long. Probably longer than it needed to be from a narrative standpoint, but fun if you want a fictional companion for the better part of a month.