In which way does Thackeray describe his characters in the given passage? Explain.
THACKERAY “THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND”
Lesson 10: ANALYTICAL READING.
The aim of the lesson is to teach you to determine the author's tone and the way in which he builds up the characters.
Read the given piece of information (Chapter IX in your files), compare it with the introduction given by Arnold, and COMPOSE AN INTRODUCTION OF YOUR OWN, either trying to intrigue the readers or to remove certain difficulties of understanding. You may also want to look at the Preface in your files.
Thackeray's books present uncompromising realism, subtle characterization, and deep detestation of hypocrisy invariably exposed. He captivates his readers by his keen sense of follies, meanness and vanities of mankind and by the bold and decided features which he confers upon his characters. If Dickens' characters are often grotesquely unreal, Thackeray's characters appear to be studies from real life. To both these men belongs the glory of enlisting wit and fancy on the side of purity and virtue.
- "The History of Henry Esmond" narrates events which had occurred in the reign of Queen Anne from the standpoint of one who had taken part in them but was writing a few decades later. Thackeray modulates his own prose to that of the early 18th century, and yet it is recognizably his own. It is an impressive achievement, but for all that, "Esmond" never suggests an 18th century work. It is thoroughly mid-19th century in feeling.
Many writers turn to the genre of a historical novel seeking an ideal which they fail to find in the present (see Walter Scott, for instance). Romanticists succeed in finding their ideal in the past; while others have often found in it the clue to contemporary troubles and follies.
Prove (with the help of the text) that Thackeray was no romanticist. (See if the following passage can also be of use:)
"The actors in the old tragedies piped their iambics to a tune, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts... The Tragic Muse was not to move except to a measure and cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music... The Muse of History hath encumbered herself with ceremony as well as her Sister of the Theatre. She too wears the mask and the cothurnus and speaks to measure. She, too, in our age, busies herself with the affairs only of kings; waiting on them... as if she were but a mistress of court ceremonies, and had nothing to do with the affairs of the common people. Why shall History go on kneeling...? I am for having her rise off her knees and take a natural posture..."
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- Thackeray, like all great humorists, from Cervantes to Fielding, saw that most people were an inscrutable mixture of the heroic and the ridiculous, the noble and the ignoble, that human nature was an infinitely complex thing, and its complexity had to be underlined and accented rather than simplified for the sentimental reader.
Can the above piece of criticism be applied to the extract from "Henry Esmond"? Explain in detail.
- Like all other great humanists, Thackeray saw that human nature was an infinitely complex thing. Thackeray was a satirist, but one of the most genial and compassionate ones, with a heart full of sympathy for its weakness.
Can the above statement be applied to the following passages from "Henry Esmond"? How is the characters' essence revealed by the author's selection and arrangement of factual details and certain stylistic devices?
a) Those who remember this brilliant and accomplished gentleman may recollect his character, upon which he prided himself, think, not a little, of being the handsomest man in the army. It would have been difficult to find an officer in the whole army who was a more accomplished soldier and a gentleman and either braver or better-looking. And if Mr. Webb believed of himself what the world said of him, and was deeply convinced of his own genius, beauty, and valour, who has a right to quarrel with him very much? This self-content of him kept him in general good humour, of which his friends and dependents took the benefit.
He came from a very ancient Wiltshire family, which he respected above all the families in the world. "We were gentlemen", he used to say, "when the Churchills were horse-boys". He was a very tall man, standing in his boots six feet three inches. "I am taller than Churchill", he would say, and always asking his friends to measure them. And talking in this frank way, as he would do, over his cups, wags would laugh and encourage him, schemers and flatterers would egg him on, and tale-bearers carry his stories to headquarters and widen the difference that already existed between the great captain and one of the bravest and ablest lieutenants he ever had.
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b) So long, then, as the world moved according to Lord Castlewood's wishes, he was good-humoured enough; of a temper naturally sprightly and easy, liking to joke, especially with his inferiors, and charmed to receive the tribute of their laughter. All exercises of the body he could perform to perfection - shooting a mark, breaking horses, playing at all games with great skill. And not only did he do these things well, but he thought he did them to perfection; hence he was often tricked about horses, which he pretended to know better than any jockey; was made to play at ball and billiards by sharpers, who took his money, and came back from London woefully poorer each time he went... He was fond of the parade dress, and passed as many hours daily at his toilette as an elderly coquette. A tenth part of his day was spent in the brushing of his teeth and the oiling of his hair, which was curling and brown and which he did not like to conceal under a periwig, such as almost everybody of that time wore...
4. Thackeray. In description, the aim of the writer is to reproduce in the mind of another a picture as like as possible to one existing in his own mind. This can be done in two ways, - 1) by giving details one by one, in an orderly fashion, until the total picture is built; or by 2) choosing details that will suggest others, and thus build up the images desired.
In which way does Thackeray describe his characters in the given passage? Explain.
5The style of the novel is to a great extent determined by the fact that the assumed author is Colonel Esmond, a man of the most polished century in the history of English letters, a distinguished officer and scholar. Thackeray does not neglect the unwritten laws of the 18th century prose. His very plainness is stately and dignified.
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