What is William Makepeace Thackeray talking about, in Vanity Fair, when he asserts:
While Thackeray is frequently an uncomfortably insightful critic on matters of human greed and gluttony, on this issue - the supposed freedom women have to select their own husbands - Thackeray appears to me to be a lunatic.
Never mind the fact that his assertion is utterly contrary to my own experience: times have changed. Vanity Fair predates feminism and, if feminism has proved one proposition, it is that women (with fair opportunities and without absolute humps) awakened to their own power - freed from their beasts-in-the-field likeness, in Thackeray's parlance - are far from assured of marrying whom they like.
No, my sense of Thackeray's lunacy derives from his own depictions of women attempting to marry whom they like. The marital trajectories of Thackeray's own characters contradict his overarching statement. Becky Sharp, for example, begins the novel wanting to marry Jos Sedley. Despite an exercise of her prodigious power, inopportune drunkenness on Sedley's part, followed by an unkind intervention on the part of George Osborne, drown Becky's hopes.
Nor does Amelia Sedley's marital history support Thackeray. Amelia, too, exercised her personal powers to show (more than) a "little inclination" to marry George Osborne, but her own efforts would have resulted in spinsterhood. Nothing short of the extraordinary social pressure exerted by Osborne's long-time friend, mentor and source-of-extra-funds-in-a-pinch, William Dobbin, convinced Osborne to take the plunge with Amelia.
So I return to my original question: what is Thackeray talking about?
One possibility is that Thackeray is just being provocative. At playing provocateur, he excels.
Another possibility is that Thackeray just had one of those human lapses that lead to the fervent espousal of contradictory positions. It happens to all of us, even in print, even when editors are supposed to catch that sort of thing before it goes public.
Yet a third option is that Thackeray is urging us women on to greater heights. Although Thackeray is too much of a realist and a story-teller to be a severe moralist, he does take a firm stand against one sort of immorality: the refusal to grow.
Thackeray can do nothing but frown on Amelia Sedley's steadfast devotion to the unworthy George Osborne; Thackeray has nothing but contempt for Becky Sharp's persistence in her manipulative and degenerative social tactics. However much Thackeray hectors and berates his characters, and punishes their stubborn inertia, they don't change. But perhaps we, the audience, might.
Hence, just as Thackeray shows us what not to do, he tells us what we should do: ladies, he admonishes us, stop being cows and start getting what you want from the men you want. In a word: change.
I appreciate the sentiment. But I also appreciate that Thackeray didn't show us an example of his idealized woman for a reason: she doesn't exist in Vanity Fair - or, since Vanity Fair is a representation of our own materialistic world, she doesn't exist.
Which raises a fourth possible answer to my question of what, exactly, Thackeray is talking about: like most novelists, he too frequently makes things up.
(Image of Romola Garai as Amelia Sedley in Mira Nair's film version of Vanity Fair from Garai's website; image of Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp in the same film from The New York Times)
If a person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma to settle matters with the young man, she must do it for herself. And oh, what a mercy it is that these women do not exercise their powers oftener! We can't resist them, if they do. Let them show ever so little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once: old or ugly, it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts in the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.(p. 25 (emphasis in original).)
While Thackeray is frequently an uncomfortably insightful critic on matters of human greed and gluttony, on this issue - the supposed freedom women have to select their own husbands - Thackeray appears to me to be a lunatic.
Never mind the fact that his assertion is utterly contrary to my own experience: times have changed. Vanity Fair predates feminism and, if feminism has proved one proposition, it is that women (with fair opportunities and without absolute humps) awakened to their own power - freed from their beasts-in-the-field likeness, in Thackeray's parlance - are far from assured of marrying whom they like.
No, my sense of Thackeray's lunacy derives from his own depictions of women attempting to marry whom they like. The marital trajectories of Thackeray's own characters contradict his overarching statement. Becky Sharp, for example, begins the novel wanting to marry Jos Sedley. Despite an exercise of her prodigious power, inopportune drunkenness on Sedley's part, followed by an unkind intervention on the part of George Osborne, drown Becky's hopes.
Nor does Amelia Sedley's marital history support Thackeray. Amelia, too, exercised her personal powers to show (more than) a "little inclination" to marry George Osborne, but her own efforts would have resulted in spinsterhood. Nothing short of the extraordinary social pressure exerted by Osborne's long-time friend, mentor and source-of-extra-funds-in-a-pinch, William Dobbin, convinced Osborne to take the plunge with Amelia.
So I return to my original question: what is Thackeray talking about?
One possibility is that Thackeray is just being provocative. At playing provocateur, he excels.
Another possibility is that Thackeray just had one of those human lapses that lead to the fervent espousal of contradictory positions. It happens to all of us, even in print, even when editors are supposed to catch that sort of thing before it goes public.
Yet a third option is that Thackeray is urging us women on to greater heights. Although Thackeray is too much of a realist and a story-teller to be a severe moralist, he does take a firm stand against one sort of immorality: the refusal to grow.
Thackeray can do nothing but frown on Amelia Sedley's steadfast devotion to the unworthy George Osborne; Thackeray has nothing but contempt for Becky Sharp's persistence in her manipulative and degenerative social tactics. However much Thackeray hectors and berates his characters, and punishes their stubborn inertia, they don't change. But perhaps we, the audience, might.
Hence, just as Thackeray shows us what not to do, he tells us what we should do: ladies, he admonishes us, stop being cows and start getting what you want from the men you want. In a word: change.
I appreciate the sentiment. But I also appreciate that Thackeray didn't show us an example of his idealized woman for a reason: she doesn't exist in Vanity Fair - or, since Vanity Fair is a representation of our own materialistic world, she doesn't exist.
Which raises a fourth possible answer to my question of what, exactly, Thackeray is talking about: like most novelists, he too frequently makes things up.
(Image of Romola Garai as Amelia Sedley in Mira Nair's film version of Vanity Fair from Garai's website; image of Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp in the same film from The New York Times)
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