William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair

• ISBN-13: 9781593080716
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 12/1/2003
• Pages: 736

"I think I could be a good woman, if I had five thousand a year," observes beautiful and clever Becky Sharp, one of the wickedest - and most appealing - women in all of literature.
Scorned for her lack of money and breeding, Becky must use all her wit, charm, and considerable sex appeal to escape her drab destiny as a governess. From London's ballrooms to the battlefields of Waterloo, the bewitching Becky works her wiles on a gallery of memorable characters, including her lecherous employer, Sir Pitt; his rich sister, Miss Crawley; and Pitt's dashing son, Rawdon, the first of Becky's misguided sexual entanglements.
Filled with hilarious dialogue and superb characterization, Vanity Fair is a richly entertaining satire of upper-middle-class London life that asks the reader, "Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?"

 Having watched Vanity Fair starring Reese Witherspoon, I was anxious about reading the book, considering how much I liked the movie - which was not at all. Now, with the book finished, I can say - don't let the movie prejudice you toward the book.
 The movie did a terrible job of bringing the book's satirical feel to the silver screen. Thackeray is not just telling a story, he's pointing at and mocking society's failings, and while the characters are often hypocritical, and even morally reprehensible, he succeeds in making you laugh at them, even if you don't love them. Becky, especially, can be taken as a diverting creature, who is merely bent on achieving a place in society out of a lower-class childhood, or totally lacking human feeling. Rawdon starts off as an idiot and becomes the one redeemable character in the book, aside from the ever-present, gentle Dobbin. Dobbin is the only truly wise and good person in the novel, although he foolishly throws his love away on the equally foolish Amelia. Interestingly, the next generation is much the same as their fathers. Rawdon Crawley has a good heart, just like his father, and George Osborne is an arrogant ass, just like his father. At least they didn't take after their respective grandfather's - that would really have been a tragedy. One was a blithering idiot with bad business sense and one was a hateful, spiteful, belligerent coot.
  Thackeray often meanders through his subject matter, and by the end of the book, I was desperate for the last page. There just seemed to be so much extra stuff at the end. Rebecca's story could have come to a close a lot faster. Aside from those complaints, I thought the novel was a humorous representation of 19th century English society and had a lot of merit in the examination of the fickle human character.