Vanity Fair (novel)

Vanity Fair (1847–1848) is a novel by the English author William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial (the last containing Parts 19 and 20) from 1847 to 1848, carrying the subtitle Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society, which reflects both its satirisation of early 19th-century British society and the many illustrations drawn by Thackeray to accompany the text. It was published as a single volume in 1848 with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, reflecting Thackeray's interest in deconstructing his era's conventions regarding literary heroism.

Quotes

Numerous editions. Page numbers here are from the trade paperback edition, published in the series of Barnes and Noble Classics, ISBN 1-59308-071-9, 4th printing

Italics as in the book. Bold face added for emphasis.

The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

• “How can you—how dare you have such wicked, revengeful thoughts?”
  “Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural,” answered Miss Rebecca. “I’m no angel.” And, to say the truth, she certainly was not.
  • Chapter 2, “In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign” (p. 12)

• The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.
  • Chapter 2, “In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign” (p. 12)

• And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.
  • Chapter 4, “The Green Silk Purse” (p. 27). Compare: "I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of", Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table; "The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women", Bernard Shaw, Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman

• If mere parsimony could have made a man rich, Sir Pitt Crawley might have become very wealthy.
  • Chapter 9, “Family Portraits” (pp. 82-83)

• Vanity Fair—Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and did not care to read—who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet he had rank, and honours, and power, somehow: and was a dignitary of the land, and a pillar of the state. He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach. Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue.
  • Chapter 9, “Family Portraits” (p. 84)

• “And for what follows after death,” would Mr. Crawley observe, throwing his gooseberry-coloured eyes up to the ceiling. He was always thinking of his brother’s soul, or of the souls of those who differed with him in opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of the serious give themselves.
  • Chapter 10, “Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends” (p. 91)

• What is there in a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes forsooth? these dear moralists ask, and hint wisely that the gifts of genius, the accomplishments of the mind, the mastery of Mangnall’s Questions, and a ladylike knowledge of botany and geology, the knack of making poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner, and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a female, than those fugitive charms which a few years will inevitably tarnish. It is quite edifying to hear women speculate upon the worthlessness and the duration of beauty.
  • Chapter 12, “Quite a Sentimental Chapter” (p. 107)

• I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.
  • Chapter 12, “Quite a Sentimental Chapter” (p. 108)

• But oh, mesdames, if you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved until you all know the difference between trimeter and tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably!
  • Chapter 12, “Quite a Sentimental Chapter” (p. 114)

• Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.
  • Chapter 13, “Sentimental and Otherwise” (p. 120)

• Whenever he met a great man he grovelled before him, and my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do.
  • Chapter 13, “Sentimental and Otherwise” (p. 125)

• When men of a certain sort, ladies, are in love, though they see the hook and the string, and the whole apparatus with which they are to be taken, they gorge the bait nevertheless—they must come to it—they must swallow it—and are presently struck and landed gasping.
  • Chapter 14, “Miss Crawley at Home” (p. 133)

• Like many wealthy people, it was Miss Crawley’s habit to accept as much service as she could get from her inferiors; and good-naturedly to take leave of them when she no longer found them useful. Gratitude among certain rich folks is scarcely natural or to be thought of. They take needy people’s services as their due. Nor have you, O poor parasite and humble hanger-on, much reason to complain! Your friendship for Dives is about as sincere as the return which it usually gets. It is money you love, and not the man; and were Croesus and his footman to change places, you know, you poor rogue, who would have the benefit of your allegiance.
  • Chapter 14, “Miss Crawley at Home” (p. 135)

• If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!
  • Chapter 16, “The Letter on the Pincushion” (p. 153)

• The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don’t know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm—I don’t mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide the dullness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call this pretty treachery truth.
  • Chapter 17, “How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano” (p. 167)

• It was over these few worthless papers that she brooded and brooded. She lived in her past life—every letter seemed to recall some circumstance of it. How well she remembered them all! His looks and tones, his dress, what he said and how—these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that were left her in the world. And the business of her life, was—to watch the corpse of Love.
  • Chapter 18, “Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought?” (p. 174)

• She had been a gracious friend to Miss Briggs, the companion, also; and had secured the latter’s good-will by a number of those attentions and promises, which cost so little in the making, and are yet so valuable and agreeable to the recipient. Indeed every good economist and manager of a household must know how cheap and yet how amiable these professions are, and what a flavour they give to the most homely dish in life. Who was the blundering idiot who said that “fine words butter no parsnips”? Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce. As the immortal Alexis Soyer can make more delicious soup for a half-penny than an ignorant cook can concoct with pounds of vegetables and meat, so a skilful artist will make a few simple and pleasing phrases go farther than ever so much substantial benefit-stock in the hands of a mere bungler. Nay, we know that substantial benefits often sicken some stomachs; whereas, most will digest any amount of fine words, and be always eager for more of the same food.
  • Chapter 19, “Miss Crawley at Nurse” (p. 179)

• Yes, if a man’s character is to be abused, say what you will, there’s nobody like a relation to do the business.
  • Chapter 19, “Miss Crawley at Nurse” (p. 183)

• Managing women, the ornaments of their sex—women who order everything for everybody, and know so much better than any person concerned what is good for their neighbours, don’t sometimes speculate upon the possibility of a domestic revolt, or upon other extreme consequences resulting from their overstrained authority.
  • Chapter 19, “Miss Crawley at Nurse” (pp. 184-185)

• Pity the fallen gentleman: you to whom money and fair repute are the chiefest good; and so, surely, are they in Vanity Fair.
  • Chapter 20, “In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen” (p. 193)

• Them’s my sentiments.
  • Chapter 21, “A Quarrel about an Heiress” (p. 198)

• Rawdon, with roars of laughter, related a dozen amusing anecdotes of his duns, and Rebecca’s adroit treatment of them. He vowed with a great oath that there was no woman in Europe who could talk a creditor over as she could. Almost immediately after their marriage, her practice had begun, and her husband found the immense value of such a wife. They had credit in plenty, but they had bills also in abundance, and laboured under a scarcity of ready money. Did these debt-difficulties affect Rawdon’s good spirits? No. Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt: how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds. Rawdon and his wife had the very best apartments at the inn at Brighton; the landlord, as he brought in the first dish, bowed before them as to his greatest customers: and Rawdon abused the dinners and wine with an audacity which no grandee in the land could surpass. Long custom, a manly appearance, faultless boots and clothes, and a happy fierceness of manner, will often help a man as much as a great balance at the banker’s.
  • Chapter 22, “A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon” (p. 212)

• “Well, my dear Blanche,” said the mother, “I suppose, as Papa wants to go, we must go; but we needn’t know them in England, you know.” And so, determined to cut their new acquaintance in Bond Street, these great folks went to eat his dinner at Brussels, and condescending to make him pay for their pleasure, showed their dignity by making his wife uncomfortable, and carefully excluding her from the conversation. This is a species of dignity in which the high-bred British female reigns supreme. To watch the behaviour of a fine lady to other and humbler women, is a very good sport for a philosophical frequenter of Vanity Fair.
  • Chapter 28, “In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries” (p. 269)

• Dreadful doubt and anguish—prayers and fears and griefs unspeakable—followed the regiment. It was the women’s tribute to the war. It taxes both alike, and takes the blood of the men, and the tears of the women.
  • Chapter 31, “In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister” (p. 301)

• It seemed a humiliation to old Osborne to think that his son, an English gentleman, a captain in the famous British army, should not be found worthy to lie in ground where mere foreigners were buried. Which of us is there can tell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for others, and how selfish our love is? Old Osborne did not speculate much upon the mingled nature of his feelings, and how his instinct and selfishness were combating together. He firmly believed that everything he did was right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way—and like the sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous against anything like opposition. He was proud of his hatred as of everything else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?
  • Chapter 35, “Widow and Mother” (pp. 346-347)

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

• Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children; and here was one who was worshipping a stone!
  • Chapter 37, “The Subject Continued” (p. 372)

• I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.
  • Chapter 41, “In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors” (p. 414)

• It is very likely that this lady, in her high station, had to submit to many a private indignity and to hide many secret griefs under a calm face. And let us, my brethren who have not our names in the Red Book, console ourselves by thinking comfortably how miserable our betters may be, and that Damocles, who sits on satin cushions and is served on gold plate, has an awful sword hanging over his head in the shape of a bailiff, or an hereditary disease, or a family secret, which peeps out every now and then from the embroidered arras in a ghastly manner, and will be sure to drop one day or the other in the right place.
  • Chapter 47, “Gaunt House” (p. 459)

• If you were heir to a dukedom and a thousand pounds a day, do you mean to say you would not wish for possession? Pooh! And it stands to reason that every great man, having experienced this feeling towards his father, must be aware that his son entertains it towards himself; and so they can’t but be suspicious and hostile.
  • Chapter 47, “Gaunt House” (p. 459)

• Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, “To-morrow, success or failure won’t matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.”
  • Chapter 61, “In Which Two Lights are Put Out” (pp. 597-598)

• I like to dwell upon this period of her life and to think that she was cheerful and happy. You see, she has not had too much of that sort of existence as yet, and has not fallen in the way of means to educate her tastes or her intelligence. She has been domineered over hitherto by vulgar intellects. It is the lot of many a woman. And as every one of the dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgments; and gentleness for dullness; and silence—which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit protestantism—above all, finds no mercy at the hands of the female Inquisition.
  • Chapter 62, “Am Rhein” (p. 613)

• When a traveller talks to you perpetually about the splendour of his luggage, which he does not happen to have with him, my son, beware of that traveller! He is, ten to one, an impostor.
  • Chapter 67, “Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths” (p. 667)

• Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?—come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
  • Chapter 67, “Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths” (p. 680; closing words)

External links

• Full text online at Gutenberg.org