Images of Becky Sharp and Emilia Sedley and their role in the novel by W. Thackeray "Vanity Fair". Contents

Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair.

The Book of Snobs became a kind of sketch for an expanded picture, drawn in Thackeray's famous novel Vanity Fair. The work was created in a very tense historical period, due to the development of the revolutionary movement on the continent and Chartism in England.

Thackeray's novel began to be published in separate issues in 1847, the first sketches of it date back to the time when the "English Snobs" were published. Until this time, Punch readers knew Thackeray as a parody writer, evil and witty ridicule of arrogant and contemptuous snobs. The novel secured Thackeray the title of a remarkable realist, recreating the manners and customs of English society, analyzing the characters of people without bias and tendentiousness. Realistic epic about modern England "Vanity Fair" - the pinnacle of the writer's creativity. Thackeray's creative method as a realist, the skill of his satire appear here in the greatest maturity, the incriminating power of images is unmatched both in the works of the previous and in the works of the subsequent period. According to the author's intention, the novel was supposed to give a picture of the entire society of his day. Although the author limited himself to portraying the "middle" and "upper" classes, nevertheless, the artistic power of the generalizations made in the novel is enormous.

The title of the novel makes it possible to understand the attitude of the author to the person depicted. It is borrowed from the allegorical novel by the English writer of the 17th century John Bunyan "The Way of the Pilgrim", widely known in England. Benyan's fair of everyday vanity is an allegorical image of universal corruption, which the author sees in modern society. Selfish interest is the only stimulus for everyone's actions. In Thackeray's eyes, the laws governing English bourgeois society are the same as the laws of Benyan's bustle of everyday life. In the light of these laws, the writer wants to show typical representatives of contemporary bourgeois-aristocratic England. At the same time, in the novel of the 19th century writer, the meaning of the word "vanity" changes somewhat, it is freed from the.

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Mikhalskaya N. Vanity Fair by W. M. Thackeray. / Introductory article to the book by W. Thackeray "Vanity Fair". - M .: Fiction, 1983 .-- 734 p.

Christian moralizing meaning and is used to denote a certain social illness. In this sense, the novel has a closer connection with The Book of Snobs than with The Pilgrim's Way. Vanity in the world of Benyan's heroes is condemned as a human vice. In Thackeray's world of heroes, vanity is the norm for human behavior. It is necessary to look respectable.

The cult of respectability is closely related to snobbery, as it determines social status, and, consequently, human behavior. Giving the picture of modern society the symbolic name "vanity fair", the writer explains the meaning of the title in the opening chapter of the novel: hearts, as well as comic, in a light genre - and all this is furnished with suitable decorations and lavishly illuminated with candles at the expense of the author himself. " The subtitle of Vanity Fair is A Novel Without a Hero. The writer wanted to emphasize that everyone is essentially equally bad at the "fair of everyday vanity" - some are more, others are less greedy, greedy, consciously or unconsciously selfish and vain, devoid of genuine humanity. There can be no hero in the novel, since Thackeray considered the "fair" itself the only hero of this society. The semantic intonation in her depiction is “everyone is like that”. The action of the novel is somewhat - not much - pushed aside by the writer from its modernity into the past. It begins in the years when the Napoleonic wars ended and ends with a period of electoral reform. However, Vanity Fair is by no means a historical novel: the phenomena of social life depicted in the book are typical phenomena more likely for the 30s - 40s than for the 10s and 20s of the 19th century. The time shift was needed by Thackeray in order to reproduce the picture of the era as accurately and truthfully as possible.

And "Vanity Fair" can rightfully be called a chronicle of bourgeois-aristocratic England. The novel alternates between two intertwining storylines: the Sedley-Osborne line (events unfold around the life story of Emilia Sedley) and the Crowley-Stein line (in the center of this part of the story is Becky Sharp). At the beginning, the lives of Emilia and Becky intersect, then they part to get back together. In one "chronicle" the main characters are bankers, merchants, stock traders and other dealers of the City and their families, in another - local and small-scale nobles and metropolitan aristocrats, their families and hangers-on. Contrasting the two worlds (of which one - aristocratic - seems desirable and exemplary to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois snobs), Thackeray at the same time shows their deepest inner connection with great convincingness. In the course of the story of Emilia Saddle's marriage to Lieutenant Osborne, the son of a major London merchant, and her later life, about the penetration into the family of the Baronet Crowley, and then into the "high society" of the adventurer Becky Sharp - the daughter of a beggar artist and French dancer - Thackeray brings dozens of different characters onto the stage of his "comedy of dolls" and, pushing them together, depicts the absorption of small, capital large, the ruin of one part of the local nobility and the adaptation of the other to new bourgeois conditions, the penetration of large capitalists into the circles of the "world" and the desire of the old nobility at all costs to preserve their privileges and traditions on which the entire state system rests.

Thackeray's satirical skill as a painter and writer manifested itself in creating group portraits and crowd scenes. There are many characters in the book that are only mentioned. At the same time, in the novel, all the characters are tightly connected with each other and subordinate to one plan. Not a single character and episode falls out of the picture, does not turn out to be superfluous. Thackeray depicts different families, different social environments - the Pitt Crowley family, the aristocratic mansions that Becky finds himself in, the military-bureaucratic environment in Brussels and London, the bourgeoisie from the City, private boarding houses and educational institutions, the Osborne and Sedley living rooms, the Rhine gardens, the German opera ... Various representatives of the "middle classes" and "high society" pass before the reader: the rude and rustic businessman Sedley and the prim businessman Osborne; rude, uncouth landowner Sir Pitt Crowley, "unable to write correctly and never aspiring to read anything" and Member of Parliament Lord Stein, younger brother of Baronet Bute Crowley - a reluctant priest, and officers of the N-regiment; educators of youth such as the Pinkerton girls and the Veale couple, and the hangers-on of the aristocratic Burker and Southdone, ready to serve the crooks associated with the "finest houses of the kingdom."

The images created by a realist artist of great talent show how vanity and pecuniary interests penetrate not only public, but also family and personal relationships, how they disfigure people, push them to hidden, and sometimes completely open crimes. Businessmen and bankers, as well as gentlemen who trace their lineage to William the Conqueror, are portrayed as characters of the same unsightly comedy: the forms, their lives, and behaviors are different, but the essence is the same. Just as the happiness of the mentally fragile Emilia Sedley depends on the state of affairs of her father on the stock exchange, so the hopes of all members of the Crowley family, without exception, are based on the inheritance of an old relative of Miss Crowley. Pete Crowley Jr. is essentially guided by the same principles as Osborne the Elder - here, as elsewhere, the difference is only in form, because at the heart of everything is wealth.

The cynical despotism of Lord Stein in the family rests on the same grounds as the despotism of old Osborne: he and the other are kept in dependence on loved ones, possessing the power of the owner, master and manager of material wealth over them. Money is as omnipotent in the bourgeois quarters of London as it is in its aristocratic mansions. Thackeray was close to the 18th century. Telling about the fates of two heroines, he has before him a sample of a moralistic novel. The characters of Becky and Emilia are closely related to the environment, to the conditions in which they live. Thackeray makes sure that the characters of his heroes, with all their relative conventions, do not give the impression of contrived, implausible, but are written against a masterfully recreated background of the socio-historical reality of the first third of the 19th century.

The fate of each person turns out to be inseparable from history, from the fate of a nation. This basic structural element of Vanity Fair doesn't just run through two storylines, it subjugates different layers of narrative. The nature of these narrative lines is different, it is colored either in lyrical, even sentimental tones, then in ironic and even sharply satirical ones. At the same time, the author preserves the principle of the two-plane action, not forgetting to mention the fate of Becky and Emilia. In addition, the writer constantly connects what happens to his heroines with significant social events: “... Is it not cruel that the collision of great empires cannot happen without reflecting in the most disastrous way on the fate of a harmless little eighteen-year-old girl, cooing or embroidering muslin collars in Russell Square? Oh gentle, unpretentious flower! Will the terrible roar of a military storm overtake you here, even though you have sheltered under Holborn's protection? Yes, Napoleon is making his last bet, and poor little Amy Sedley's happiness is somehow involved in the game. " The triumph of Napoleon in the novel leads to the ruin and collapse of the Sedley family, the Battle of Waterloo takes the life of George Osborne. At the same time, for Rebecca, a major financial success (horse speculation) is associated with the general panic in Brussels during the Battle of Waterloo.

In terms of genre, Vanity Fair is a social novel, a chronicle novel. The writer depicts the "history of morals" in motion, shows the moral degradation of English Ii bourgeois society as a process. He vividly paints portraits of typical representatives of the ruling classes and their various strata and the struggle within these classes.

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Sumina E. Two heroines. - Newspaper "Literatura" No. 31, 2001. - p.14.

7.Thackeray W.M. Creation. Memories. Bibliographic research. - M .: Book Chamber, 1989 488 p.
Vanity Fair has more or less carefully painted portraits, more and less deeply revealed characters, for example, images of Emilia Sedley or Becky Sharp, Dobbin or George Osborne, Osborne Sr. or Sir Pitt Crowley. One of the central images in the novel is the image of Rebecca Sharp. The interpretation of this image is devoid of any didacticism. Becky has been cynical in her attitude towards people almost from childhood, she is a shameless adventurer from the first steps in life. The author insistently emphasizes throughout the novel that Becky is no worse or better than others, and that adverse circumstances made her as she is. In the interpretation of her image, Balzac's motive persists - "there is no virtue - there are only circumstances." Perhaps I would be a good woman, Rebecca muses, if I had five thousand pounds a year. At the same time, Becky does not have to lose her illusions, as Balzac's heroes such as Eugene de Rastignac or Lucienne Chardon lose them: she has not harbored any illusions since childhood.

Becky is distinguished by her predatory tenacious grip, ambition, dexterous and resourceful mind. She is charming and welcoming, her eyes and charming smile can deceive an inexperienced person. Thackeray gives a brilliant description of his heroine, because the main driver of the plot is precisely Becky, not Emilia. After the death of her father, she cries not from grief, but from the consciousness that she remained a beggar. "If before she could not be called a hypocrite, now loneliness has taught her to pretend." Becky constantly feels her loneliness, because she alone has to fight for her happiness. That is why she puts on a mask of hypocrisy and wears it for the rest of her days, even when she becomes a respected and respectable lady and does charity work. Becky is insidious, deceitful, hypocritical, but all her qualities are due to her position in society, which is hostile and unfriendly to her. She cynically speaks out about the Osborne bankruptcy and smiles to inform her husband that Emilia "will get over it." Becky's extraordinary mental abilities are aimed at achieving not only selfish, but also dubious goals. Persistently paving her way to happiness, in the understanding that the environment brought up in her, Becky comes at the end of her life path to a vice bordering on crime (suspicious circumstances of the death of Jose Sedley), and it is clear to the reader that this is the logic of the consistent development of selfishness and self-interest.

Becky is portrayed by Thackeray in the manner of his early satirical story - the manner of a cartoon. Her image is devoid of those softening human features that are in the portraits of other characters in the novel. She does not love anyone but herself, she is indifferent even to her own child. She cries unfeigned tears only once, when she finds out how she miscalculated by marrying Sir Pitt Crowley's youngest son, while she could have married her father and become Lady Crowley and the mistress of his entire fortune. Drawing at the end of the novel Becky's “rise”, Thackeray convinces the reader that her moral character these days is not much different from her moral character in the days of her “fall”. The image of Becky Sharp is a deliberate typical condensation of one social character, a subtle generalization of tendencies typical for the entire bourgeois society, a kind of realistic commentary on everything depicted in the novel. Other portraits of the characters of the "everyday comedy" were written by the author in that new manner of "depicting mixed motives and revealing in people their inclinations for both good and evil," which Thackeray developed by the end of the 40s. All the characters of the Vanity Fair, with the exception of episodic ones, are complex in their contradictoriness and versatility.

With exquisite skill, revealing the social essence of each character and using various techniques to achieve the maximum typical character of the characters, the writer at the same time, with the subtlest shades of his drawing, conveyed the originality of the individual features inherent in each of them, characteristic of each character. So, Emilia at first gives the impression of a positive heroine. She is friendly, kind, takes care of her friend, wanting to compensate for the lack of home warmth and comfort, which she is deprived of, being left an orphan. At the same time, showing Emilia Sedley as fragile and tender, sensitive and selfless, selflessly devoted to the memory of her husband, who was killed in the Battle of Waterloo, George Osborne, who was not worth her love, Thackeray also draws another side of the character of the same Emilia. She is characterized by selfishness in relation to relatives, limitedness hidden behind the imaginary stamina and integrity of character. She does not notice the noble deeds of Dobbin, who devoted her whole life. All this completely deprives Emilia of her reputation as a "blue heroine". Thackeray's skill in revealing the dialectic of characters of such characters as Osborne Sr., Captain Rawdon is especially vividly manifested. Crowley and his aunt, Major Dobbin.

The author paints a portrait of Osborne the Elder, unforgettable in its realistic power. This is a London businessman, a man infinitely despotic in the exercise of his power based on wealth. He used to regard everything as money only and define everything in money. Osborne disinherits his son and curses him for marrying the daughter of a bankrupt Sedley, his former benefactor. At the same time, Thackeray shows the intolerable mental anguish that George's father endures when, after the loss of his only and beloved son, he follows the principles of ownership that society has brought up in him and which he considers inviolable. Captain Rawdon Crowley, a dim-witted scion of a noble family, a gambler and a duelist, a hunter and a womanizer, spoiled by aristocratic connections and the prospects of a wealthy aunt's inheritance, is convincingly portrayed at the same time changing under the influence of genuine and deep love for his wife, and later for his son.

Rodon's portrait becomes not only deeply moving, but also almost majestic when he, convinced of his wife's betrayal and the vile role that she, together with her titled lover, makes him play, rises and, having beaten the Marquis Stein, leaves the house, disgraced by lies, venality, cynicism and hypocrisy. No less realistic is the portrait of old aunt Crowley, given in contradictory shades, combining imaginary republicanism and love for freedom, admiration for Saint-Just and Voltaire with the tyranny of a mistress spoiled by wealth and aristocratic privileges.In a soulless and cruel world of owners and selfish people, only one hero is given by the writer with undoubted sympathy and warmth - this is Dobbin - a true gentleman, as the author calls him. Dobbin stands out among the people around him and does not fit into the system of relationships that triumphs around him. This is a kind of Don Quixote in modern bourgeois England. At the same time, drawing Dobbin with the greatest sympathy, the author does not exempt him from unattractive features. The hero's attachment to the empty and limited Emilia, unable to appreciate his feelings, looks sublime and at the same time ridiculous. "The novelist knows her," Thackeray argued in Vanity Fair.

The writer tells in sufficient detail about the life of the main and secondary characters, the reader is devoted to all their family secrets. The amazing naturalness and compactness of the composition, the successful switching from one scene to another, from one character to another, amazes. Following the tradition of the enlightenment novel, Thackeray chooses a puppeteer as the director of a gigantic play at the fair. The puppeteer is an all-knowing 18th century author who creates the script and directs the action of his artists. Its exit opens and closes the action of the novel, frames the events contained in it. But at the same time as the puppeteer, there is an author of another century, traveling with his heroes through the streets of noisy London, following the heroines to Brussels, an author-narrator and storyteller - intelligent, observant, insightful and objective, who does not forget a single detail that helps restore the truth. The essayistic manner of early Thackeray gives way to the wise, contemplative, accomplished novelist who shares his observations of modern society with the reader. Thackeray spoke at Vanity Fair by no means an indifferent observer and a cold recorder. He was well aware of his goals and objectives as a satirical writer.

The author's remark, referring to Sir Pitt Crowley, can be attributed to everything that is depicted on the canvas of the novel: “Such people ... live and prosper in this world, knowing neither faith, nor hope, nor love. Let us, dear friends, take up arms against them with all our might and power! Others, also enjoying great success, are simply charlatans and fools, and laughter was undoubtedly created to fight such and such people and to denounce them. " In the midst of work on Vanity Fair, commenting on the last pages of his essays on snobs, Thackeray wrote to one of his Punch companions, Lemon: “Several years ago I would have scoffed at one thought about teaching in art ... But now I I began to believe in this business, as well as in many other things. " The writer finally defined for himself the social mission of a true artist. Like the moralists of the 18th century, the writer devoted much space in the novel to commenting on the text of the author's reasoning.

The thoughts expressed in these digressions, invariably saturated with great bitterness, help to understand Thackeray's approach to what he depicts, the manner in which he is portrayed. The writer could not fail to realize, observing the bourgeois England of his day, that proprietary egoism is the norm of bourgeois society. But it was from this understanding that the most acute contradictions of his consciousness were born. Refusing to recognize the necessity of struggle, he looked for moral values ​​that could be opposed to the ugly amoralism of the world of property owners, but he looked for them in the same world that he condemned.
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Deeply correct conclusions binding They were in his mind with illusions, which were pushed by representations brought up by the environment in which he grew up, with which he was inextricably linked, despite the fact that he stood immeasurably higher than it. Hence the aching melancholy in the subtext of all Thackeray's reasoning, the obsessive notions of life as a comedy (or even a farce), which is played on the stage of life's booth, without exception, until the hour of death comes. “Ah, vanitas vanitatum! - exclaims the writer in the words of Ecclesiastes, ending the novel, - which of us is happy in this world? Who among us will receive what his heart longs for, and, having received, does not yearn for more? Let's put the dolls down, children, and close the drawer, for our show is over. " Thackeray with disgust recorded in his images the inhumanity that was generated by the system of bourgeois relations, which turned ordinary people, sometimes not even devoid of some positive moral qualities, into soulless egoists, capable of disgusting, vulgar and vile deeds.

But he could not help but recognize himself as a part of the society that he condemned. "Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair!" - he exclaims, drawing a portrait of Sir Pitt Crowley - a man who never knew "any desires, worries or joys, except dirty and vulgar", who at the same time enjoys honors and power and occupies a higher position at the fair of worldly bustle than the most brilliant minds or unsullied virtues. With bitter irony, the writer asserts the injustice of the social order, in which some "meekly suffer under the blows of fate, meeting no sympathy in anyone and only despised for their poverty", while others, "savoring wine at dinner," argue that "classes must exist , there must be rich and poor. " And right there the author reduces the problem he raised to a game of chance: "How mysterious and often incomprehensible is the life lottery that gives purple and fine linen to one, and sends rags to the other instead of clothes and dogs instead of comforters." The writer now judges, now justifies, now is indignant, now he remembers that he too is “part of the performance”, one of those who takes part in the “fair”, identifies himself with those whom he draws and denounces. A skeptical attitude towards everything depicted and at the same time towards oneself determined not only the general tone of the novel, but also the method of depiction.

If the satire in Vanity Fair was defined by Thackeray the moralist's sharply negative attitude to what he observed and encountered in modern society, then the nature of this satire was determined by the depth of the contradictions that had matured in the writer's mind by the end of the 40s. The awareness of one's own duality, the incompatibility of the role of a moralist and a satirist with the role of a participant in a despicable "fair" powerless to correct anything, formed the basis of the irony that permeates the entire novel, all its images. Laughter never sounds cheerful and good-natured here, does not reconcile the reader with the people and phenomena portrayed. The defining intonation in the novel is the intonation of bitterness, sometimes frank, sometimes (and more often) sounding muffled and, as it were, hidden by the author from the reader, who is left to draw the desired conclusion himself. Thackeray's main focus in the novel is on revealing typical characters. The writer moves on to new (in comparison with previous works) forms of satirical typification.

He comprehends the dialectic of an individual character, the disclosure of which has not yet been revealed in his previous works. The author is alien not only to the division of characters into "good" and "evil" (which is so characteristic of Dickens), but also into "positive" and "negative". In accordance with his view of the world, the writer considers good and evil to be relative, the boundaries between one and the other are unstable and changeable. Each person in the understanding and image of Thackeray becomes better and cleaner as soon as general human feelings awaken in him. At the same time, the writer wants to emphasize that even the most natural and seemingly inherent human feelings are stifled by a society built on selfishness and selfishness. The humanism of Thackeray was noted by NG Chernyshevsky: “... What love warmed Thackeray's stories. He doesn't have a single cold page, he doesn't have a single dead word. " The same was emphasized by N.A. Nekrasov, pointing out that Thackeray is a writer who "sees in the ideal side of a person not an aid to his material welfare, but a condition necessary for his human existence." The typing methods for creating realistic portraits in Vanity Fair are extremely varied (from a short sketch that maximally exaggerates the features of the typical in the depiction of episodic characters, to those portraits whose realistic completeness can be felt to the end only by reading the last page of the novel).

Thackeray no longer (or rarely does) refer to that satirical hyperbolism that formed the basis of his manner in previous years. The sharpest satirical effect is achieved in the novel through a subtle and purposeful selection of the essential features of the typical. Craftsmanship reaches particular perfection portrait. Methods of satirical depiction of a portrait in Vanity Fair are different, and the author diversifies them based, on the one hand, on what face is to be depicted, and on the other, what role it is supposed to play in the overall concept of the novel. Thackeray makes the main actors of his comedy speak and act, tells about them himself, as if by the way, recalling detail by detail, line by line, sometimes caustically and evil, sometimes with sad, but invariably satirical irony, comments on their words and deeds. The characters are revealed by the writer not only in what they say, but also in how. they say it, not only in what they do, but in how they do it. Thackeray usually first shows the actions of the participants in the "puppet comedy" or conveys their feelings expressed in dialogue, then tears off the mask put on by the characters and reveals the true meaning of their actions, the true content of their feelings and, finally, expresses his judgment about what is shown in short maxim or more or less extensive author's digression. Sometimes the second part of this "three-term" is overlooked: in this case, the writer leaves the mask to the reader himself, speaking only on the essence of what is depicted.

The organic part of the Vanity Fair's image disclosure method is the commentary. The writer constantly directs the reader's attention in one direction or another. The meaning of this continuous communication with the reader was determined by the same contradictory desire of the satirist to teach and denounce, ironically convincing the reader at the same time of his tolerant attitude towards the accused. In the manner of Thackeray the realist in Vanity Fair, a huge role is played by the realistic detail, sometimes almost imperceptibly helping to emphasize and reveal the essence of the phenomenon, to give the typical character more convincing and lively. The detail helps the realistic disclosure of the image, concretizing and clarifying it, giving it convexity and clarity, sometimes commenting on the meaning of the events taking place. So, wishing to once again emphasize the selfishness of George Osborne, Thackeray notes, drawing the preparation of the young Osborne couple for the departure from Brighton: his wife has no maid to help her.

" The "freedom-loving" Miss Crawley, who convinced her beloved Miss Sharp that all people are equal and that she, Sharpe, is not only equal to Miss Crowley's noble relatives, but much better than them, cannot at the same time understand “what Lady Southdown was thinking leaving Briggs's calling card to just the housekeeper, albeit Miss Crawley's served 20 years! " The writer is completely alien to the melodramaticism so typical of most English realist artists of the 19th century. The intention to portray reality "as it is" - to reveal the contradictions of individual characters, without departing from the satirical exposure of its social essence, determined the entire style of the novel. Sharp mockery coexists in him with subtle lyricism, great thoroughness of realistic drawing with extraordinary restraint and frugality in the selection of artistic means, intonations, even words.

Thackeray's language acquires special power in speech characteristics. She appears in the novel as an extremely essential means of revealing realistic portraits. The speech of various characters is extremely individualized, subtly conveys various shades of social characteristics. Everything in the novel, therefore, is aimed at, as convincingly and subtly as possible, the feeling of living life to understand its shades and contradictions. This is the most important difference between "Vanity Fair" from everything previously written by Thackeray. + The skill of Thackeray the novelist brought him well-deserved fame among his contemporaries. Speaking about the literary environment of the 50s, the famous English critic Matthew Arnold wrote: "Thackeray is the leading cultural force in our country." Young people in these years, as another contemporary of the writer, J. McCarthy joked, "spoke in the language of Dickens", "thought in the language of Thackeray."