Short note on William Makepeace Thackeray as Victorian Novelist

-: A brief history of  Thackeray life and his writing style :-

William Makepeace Thackeray

British novelist and journalist, William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1811 in an Anglo-Indian family and moved to England in 1816 at a very tender age. Dickens’ contemporary and chief/ arch-rival for fame, Thackeray had a great gift for writing dialogue, a strong sense of irony and a style – “easy and sympathetic, carved in slow soft curves”. Like all early Victorian novelists, Thackeray is a very uncertain craftsman. His hold on structure is very slack. He does not care to weave the different strands of his story together. Loose ends dangle in the air to the end. As David Cecil says, “Dickens can be cheap, Trollope can be flat, Thackeray can be worse, Thackeray can be a bore”. He is a realist as he says, “I have no brains above my eyes; I describe what I see”. He knows nothing Dickens’ humanitarianism and zeal for reform. However, he persistently attacks snobbery, affectation and humbug. His satire is never personal and humour. His significant works are (i) The Book of Snobs, (ii) The Newcomes, (iii) The Virginians, (iv) The History of Henry Esmond, (v) Christmas Books, (vi) The History of Pendennis and most importantly (vii) Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair is his masterpiece. Here I am giving a special reference to Vanity Fair and describing its storyline in brief:

Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair: a Novel without a Hero was published in Punch in 20 monthly parts under his own name and with his own illustration between 1847- 48. The story is set at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and gives a satirical picture of a worldly society which he applied to his own times. It follows the fortune of two sharply contrasted heroines, one is Becky Sharp, orphaned daughter of a penniless artist and a gifted, calculating minx whose wit and sexuality is her means of getting a rich husband and entry into society, dissipation and vice; and the other is her school friend the wealthy, genteel and loving Amelia Sedley who wastes her affection on George Osborne. Osborne deviates into an affair with Becky and is killed at Waterloo. There is devoted, would-be husband for Amelia in the wings throughout, secretly helping her; but it is ten years before Becky disenchants Amelia about her lost husband and the faithful Dobbin comes into his own. Thackeray is not a cynic in reality and the permanent impression left by his book is not a pessimist. The interconnected plot of Vanity Fair and its vast satirical panorama of a materialistic society becomes a landmark in the history of realistic fiction.