Vanity Fair

Title: Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

Publication date: 1848

Book's setting: Around 1815

Random facts: It's pretty darn long.

Plot summary: Vanity Fair follows the lives of two very different girls, Emmy and Becky. They start off best friends, but their drastically different stations in life and ideas for the future slowly tear them apart. Becky, who lacks money and breeding, uses all her wit and charm and sex appeal to escape her drab destiny as a governess. She succeeds in marrying up... until her husband's family, disgusted with his choice, cuts them off. Emmy on the other hand is rich, sweet, and too innocence for her own good. She marries her childhood sweetheart who cheats on her and dies in Waterloo, leaving her destitute and pregnant. Then a couple million other things happen and everyone dies and remarries and has babies and love affairs and it's a good ol' Regency mess!

Favorite aspects: Vanity Fair is perhaps the only book written before 1900 that has made me laugh. I must have giggled once every other page. I was not expecting something so ridiculously funny when I started it. I read it because I wanted something old and extravagant with lengthy descriptions of dining halls and Lady Whoever's dress. Vanity Fair pulled through on that account. The characters were all so awful you had to love them, they were so ridiculous that you had to care. It was the longest, messiest, most sarcastic book I've ever read.

Least favorite aspects: Maybe 800 pages is a little too long. Maybe Thackeray could have paced himself. Also I liked Emmy's bits better than the Becky parts, even though everyone only seems to remember Becky. A lot of the political and social commentary went over my head considering I'm not a Regency historian.

Other works it reminded me of: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emma Orczy; The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

Sadie's merciless break-down: When I'm in an emotional slump there is nothing I like more than a really long book to hide inside of for a couple of days. I read Vanity Fair in five days and I'm not really sure what happened in between my bouts of reading.
Babies have forever been problematic in the world of literature and cinema. Children can be put into one of two boxes which I call the "MY BABY!" and the "WHAT BABY?" The first sort of child probably has his life threatened multiple times, or at least his inheritance. His mother dotes on him, and probably half the world as well. He is coddled and respected and sometimes even worshiped. His welfare is of most importance. The second sort of child isn't really there at all. His mother is pregnant and then gives birth and the baby sort of sleeps and eats off to the side of the action. Casual mentions of him every now and then remind you just enough not to forget there ever really was a baby in the first place. Most babies can fall easily into one of those two categories. Emmy's Georgy was the first and Becky's Rawdy was the second. Georgy was practically the main character of Emmy's half of the book while every time Rawdy popped up I had to remember him all over again. I find this all very interesting and amusing. I'm not sure what my point is... there really isn't one. I just find literary babies really funny.
I shall end this review of Vanity Fair with a quote that I just love. "Little boys who cry when they are going to school- cry because they are going to a very uncomfortable place. It is only a few who weep from sheer affection. When you think that the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a piece of gingerbread, and that a plum-cake was a compensation for the agony of parting with your mama and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you need not be too confident of your own fine feelings."

Recommendation rate: If you actually enjoy over-blown 19th century nonsense then you'll love it. Otherwise there are probably more educational ways to waste 800 pages.