VANITY FAIR

BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

A PRESENTATION BY: ANDRA ENĂŞOIU AND DAIANA BALAZS

THE NOVEL AND THE FAIR: PUPPETS AND THE SHOW-MASTER;

THE CONCEPT OF CARNIVAL AND THE “GROTESQUE BODY”;
THE NOVEL “WITHTOUT A HERO”
 THE NOVEL AND THE FAIR: PUPPETS AND THE SHOW-MASTER

• In the biographical criticism ‘Thackeray's Haunts and

Homes’, by Eyre Crowe the origins of the author’s idea is
traced: “It occurred in June 1848, one day when
Thackeray came at lunch-time to my father's Hampstead
House. Torrens McCullough, happening to be one of the
party, said across the table to Thackeray, ‘Well, I see you
are going to shut up your puppets in their box!’ His
immediate reply was, ‘Yes; and with your permission,
I'll work up that simile.’ How skillfully that chance
phrase was worked up in the prefatorial ‘Before the
Curtain’ all his readers well know. (55–6)” (Lindner,
Cristoph, Thackeray's Gourmand: Carnivals of Consumption in "Vanity
Fair“, p. 568)
• The narrator is presented
in the first pages as the
showman of the puppet-
theatre
• A particular universe,
where the purpose of the
show-master is to expose
the hypocrisy and the
issue with society
• The entire society is seen as a
stage, where the best performer
rises the highest on the social
scale
• The characters often put up a
show not only in society, but also
in private, losing their own self
• What the puppet-master really
tries to do is to expose the
artificial, void and false world
in which our characters and the
narrator himself lived, a world
driven by the greed of money
and high position in society
• The idea of a puppet-show is emphasized once again at
the end of the book:

‘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.’
 THE CONCEPT OF CARNIVAL

• The narrator states that he is

Manager of Performance
• the carnivalesque atmosphere
is set up through the use of
some elements: physical
(eating, drinking, smoking)
(seen especially in the scenes
with Joseph Sedley) ,
communal (fighting, dancing),
jocular (laughing, fiddling),
licentious (jilting, making
love), burlesque and corrupt
(cheats, pickpockets, quacks)
• The title itself is taken from John Bunyan’s work,
“Pilgrim’s Progress”, in which Vanity Fair is the
name of an endless carnival in a town called
Vanity (reference to the prevaling sins and vices
of the characters)
• The concept of “carnivalesque” was theorized
by the philosopher and critic Mikhail Bakhtin
• It refers to a general atmosphere in a world
dominated by humor and chaos
• The main characteristic of the carnival: surpassing
the limit between audience and performers, art and
real life, through a play-like form
• Exactly like a carnival, our novel is filled with
displays of excess

• Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559)
 THE GROTESQUE BODY

• It is another concept debated by

Mikhail Bakhtin, with its roots
in the theorization of Hugo,
Ruskin and Baudelaire
• The principle of the concept is
showing the degradation of
human qualities, spiritual
features and noblesse in
general, reducing them to the
material world
• The most important elements of
the grotesque are exaggeration,
hyperbole and expressiveness
• "The themes of cursing and of laughter are almost
exclusively a subject of the grotesqueness of the
body” (Koepping, Klaus-Peter (Feb 1985). "History of
Religions”, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Feb., 1985), pp. 191-214)
• the concept is also introduced through the use of the
conflict between essence and appearance
• “The essence of the grotesque is precisely to
present a contradictory and double faced
fullness of life”(Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Rabelais and His World’,
Trans. by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press
(1984), p.62 )
• Ambivalent concept negation, death
affirmation, birth
 THE NOVEL “WITHOUT A HERO”

• Hero= a character of great qualities, the main character of the

plot, towards which the readers feels the most sympathetic
• Vanity Fair breaks this pattern of the “necessary” hero
• the novel doesn’t have a hero because every character in the
book has different flaws which don’t allow a human being to
be a role-model
• Every single character in the novel is touched with fault,
despite his or her innocent appearance
• Even Dobbin and Amelia, which are the least scrupulous
characters in the book have their own reasons to be blamed
• They are ridiculed for their almost constant passiveness
• Dobbin could be a potential hero, but he is mocked for his
dog-like loyalty
• Amelia is seen as plain and insipid, her outstanding love for
George is also put in a mocking light and she is always
obedient and humble