A) use of a historical background,

(b) rapid action and adventure,

(d) beauty in distress, and

(e) display of moral as well as physical courage.

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

1. What values are presented in William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair?

2. Why did Thackeray subtitle Vanity Fair "A book without a hero"?

3. What are the social situations in Vanity Fair?

4. Explain how Vanity Fair and the characters' names Obstinate, Pliable, Help, and Faithful demonstrate the traits for which they are named. Also how do they affect Christians Journey?

5. Why did William Makepeace Thackeray write "Vanity Fair" Was there something in his life that urged him to write this novel?

What values are presented in William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair?

The term values can be defined as any "accepted standards of right or wrong" (University of Cincinnati, UC Magazine, "What are Values?"). Values constantly change as societies and cultures change, and that which is valued is not always aligned with that which is moral, which would be appropriate conduct. The title of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair depicts the one thing the 19th century English society in the novel values most--vanity...

The title of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair depicts the one thing the 19th century English society in the novel values most--vanity. According to the novel, 19th century English society judged self-worth based on social status, financial status, beauty, etc., making attaining all of those things "right" and not having them "wrong." Thackeray further shows that people of this society did anything to attain these measures of self-worth, including manipulate others.

Becky Sharp is one of the most important examples of a member of society who values vanity. Though she marries Rawdon Crawley, who winds up being penniless once cut from his aunt's will, Becky lives a very extravagant life that is well beyond the worth of what little "income" Rawdon brings in through his gambling. Becky is able to create a lifestyle for them that is beyond their means because she has turned flirtation into an art and easily acquires money from her many admirers among the British aristocracy. Through her acquaintance with Lord Steyne, she is even presented at court. In addition, because Rawdon's titled brother also falls in love with her, she wins money for her family through him as well. Her flirtation with men to gain money, even as a married woman, is a clear example of manipulation.

Why did Thackeray subtitle Vanity Fair "A book without a hero"?
The main part of the title, Vanity Fair, refers to a town encountered in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress which is devoted to self-indulgence and sensual pleasure. The sense of vanity echoes the words of the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes:

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,vanity of vanities! All is vanity. (Eccl. 1.2)

The word "vanity" in this context means futility. Accumulation of worldly goods is seen from this perspective as ultimately meaningless. Thackeray's title suggests that in a world in which people are devoted to "vanities" rather than some form of ideals, heroism is impossible, as a hero is someone who makes great sacrifices and displays great bravery in pursuit of some ideal or noble goal.

The protagonist of the novel, Becky Sharp, is not heroic. She is a clever young woman who will do anything she can to acquire material goods. Having no other values or desires than material comfort and security, she has no real moral grounding. Thackeray uses his "puppets" (as his narrator refers to the characters) to show that the world of vanity fair is hollow and without deeper purpose, a sort of "house built on sand," subject to the vagaries of fortune. In such an environment, heroism is not possible, and the characters' only true goal is survival.

What are the social situations in Vanity Fair?

In the book Vanity Fair lovely young Becky Sharp has little hope for a good marriage in 19th century England. She completes classes at a girl's school and travels to serve as a governess. On the journey she visits with her best friend whose parents have money and lives a life of luxury. Her friend’s brother is single and becomes quite smitten with Becky. However, his sister's boyfriend destroys the chance of a relationship because of Becky's lower class level.

Becky moves on as governess to a man and his children. While there she meets his sister who is elderly and they hit it off. She goes to live with her as she sees a chance for a better life. While there she falls in love and marries her nephew. The family cats them out.

Becky's friend’s family loses all their money. Her husband marries her but is unhappy because his father disowns him for marrying a pauper. They have a son and he dies. The mother has to live poorly and struggles. Finally, to help her son she lets his grandfather, her husband's father raise him.

Becky is a social climber and her husband is a gambler. She becomes involved with a man of wealth because she sees a chance to have nice things and when he calls for his due payment in the form of her body, she loses her husband.

However, despite everything Becky triumphs in the end when her friend's brother looks for her and rekindles their romance. She has been raised to the level which she desired through marriage, which is the only way a woman could gain a higher position in life.

Explain how Vanity Fair and the characters' names Obstinate, Pliable, Help, and Faithful demonstrate the traits for which they are named. Also how do they affect Christians Journey?

Obstinate, and other characters like him such as Pliable and Vanity Fair, demonstrate the negative meaning of the words that are their names by the way they think and behave. Other characters, such as Help, Hopeful, and Faithful, demonstrate the positive meanings of the words that are their names also by the way they think and behave. To illustrate the point through Obstinate, When Christian is running from the City of Destruction where he was born and had a wife and children ("the man ... ran on, crying, Life! life! eternal life!"), his neighbors come out to watch him run ("The neighbours also came out to see him run"). One among them is his neighbor Obstinate, who chases after Christian to try to stop him and force him to come back (Pliable goes in pursuit with him).

His obstinacy is shown when he not only rejects what Christian is saying--because after all, Christian doesn't really offer much of an explanation--he goes further and calls Christian a "coxcomb" (a proud and vain man) who considers himself "wiser in his own eyes than ... seven men" put together. In effect, Obstinate is accusing Christian of being obstinate and proud and unreasonable. Ironic, isn't it? The affect Obstinate has upon Christian's journey is not to speak of: Christian continues onward, going toward where the Evangelist directed him--but he has a new companion to the city gate because Pliable--true to his name--has been convinced (a bit too readily without much benefit from applying rational thought) to believe Christian and go with him on his run for the gate.

Faithful was meant to have gone with Christian from the start but Christian got it into his head to start out without him, nonetheless, true to his name, Faithful went on his pilgrimage steadfastly. When Christian and Faithful finally come abreast of each other after the Valley of Humiliation--who though starting second, got ahead of Christian because he was not waylaid and side tracked--Faithful affects Christian's journey by giving him good companionship and a fresh view of the journey as they share the stories of their adventures together. In addition, Faithful's discourse provides Christian with sound theological and doctrinal instruction as he tells what he said to tempters like Shame and Discontent:

Faithful: Yes, I met with one Discontent, who would willingly have persuaded me to go back again with him; ... I told him, ... he had quite misrepresented the thing; for before honour is humility, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Why did William Makepeace Thackeray write "Vanity Fair" Was there something in his life that urged him to write this novel?

While certainly Thackeray had moral and aesthetic reasons for writing the novel, he also had financial ones. He wrote it as a serial (installments in magazines) to make money. Although born into the class of a gentleman, he had lost money through investments. He saw himself as competing against Charles Dickens, who also wrote for serial publications. However, Thackeray never reached the popularity gained by Dickens, but he certainly was sufficiently successful to be called a genius by his contemporaries and thereby winning back his status as a “gentleman.”

26. William Langland’s allegorical poem The Vision of Piers the Plowman. (Genre, allegorical vision, personification).

The English poet, William Langland (c.1332-c.1400), was probably born at Ledbury in Herefordshire. His famous Vision Concerning Piers Plowman exhibits a moral earnestness and energy which is brightened by his vivid glimpses of the lives of the poorest classes of 14th century England.

Piers Plowman is an allegorical moral and social satire, written as a "vision" of the common medieval type. The poet falls asleep in the Malvern Hills and dreams that in a wilderness he comes upon the tower of Truth (God) set on a hill, with the dungeon of Wrong (the Devil) in the deep valley below, and a "fair field full of folk" (the world of living men) between them. He describes satirically all the different classes of people he sees there; then a lady named Holy Church rebukes him for sleeping and explains the meaning of all he sees. Further characters (Conscience, Liar, Reason and so on) enter the action; Conscience finally persuades many of the people to turn away from the Seven Deadly Sins and go in search of St. Truth, but they need a guide. Piers (Peter), a simple Plowman, appears and says that because of his common sense and clean conscience he knows the way and will show them if they help him plow his half acre. Some of the company help, but some shirk; and Piers becomes identified with Christ, trying to get men to work toward their own material relief from the current abuses of worldly power. In the last section of the poem, much less coherent than the rest, the dreamer goes on a rambling but unsuccessful summer-long quest, aided by Thought, Wit, and Study, in search of the men who are Do-Well, Do-Bet and Do-Best.

Piers Plowman marks a modification of that tradition in other directions. In the physical proximity or presence of personification figures, Langland's Will the dreamer is far from silent or mute, and he freely “mixes” with them. Piers Plowman follows the “newer” style of personification popularized by de Lorris and de Meun, and Raoul de Houdenc and Huon de Mery. (It is plausible that the intensified confusion we and Will experience trying to distinguish local personifications from authentic personified characters is a shifted manifestation of psychic distortion or reduction; the epistemological problem, noted by Griffiths as central to the poem [4], did have a precedent the matization in the troubadour lyrics of the twelfth century; see Zumthor 185.) Nevertheless, the poem does reveal a phenomenological correlation between the primary narratorial consciousness and the invention of personification figures. I will begin with a critique of this correlation as it operates in Piers. Afterwards, I will show that this condition is connected to a narratological description of the poem's structure, which divides, not unlike Chaucer's or Prudentius' texts, into ontologically and epistemologically distinct levels and sectors of diegesis.

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