Vanity Fair

Luron

Léa

LS1                                       English Homework                                     For the 27th february[pic 1]

         In the Victorian period London is caracterised by a melting-pot of people coming fom different social environnenements.Vanity Fair, a William Makepeace Thakeray's novel which came out in 1848, offers a picture of this melting pot as well as a criticism of the Victorian society.

The extract is taken from the chapter 6 entitled Vauxhall. In this extract the external narator exposes the main situation of this chapter and etablished the social link between the differents characters. But how this narrative voice through irony brings a criticism of society?

Firstly we shall see to what extent the narrator appears as a demiurge. Then we will dwell on the analysis of the superficial social links that the author depicts. Finally, we will study his construction of a sarcasme at three scales.

                In this extract, we only have a diegetic narration. Indeed, we just have access to the narrator's voice. He appears as a demiurge who creates his own imaginative world in complicity with the reader. First of all, he is affirming his choices for the story. He summarizes the plot in a very classical way. The only suspens is the rhetorical question : “Will he marry her?”. The narrators knows it because he is insiting on it just after with the sentence “That is the great subject now in hand”. But we can guess with the irony that the narrator is actually being ironical with the hyperbole “great subject”. The simplicity of the summary is wanted to create an interrogation in the reader's mind. Indeed this hyperbole belies the arguments about the very simplicity of the plot gave by the narrator just before : “only discoursing” , “without a single and pationante accident”, “in common life” …  The narrator is a malicious game master and the reader has to caution about the veracity of what he is saying. This dichotomy between banal and suspens convey curiosity. Then with the utilisation of “might” in  the sentence “we might have treated”, and the very low possibility that it conveys, the implied reader understands that the narrator is not to place his story in this other context.  So here is a rupture between the evocation of the three other possibilities for the story and the “But my readers” which affirms the choice of the narrator and the absence of decision of the reader which is underlined by the possessive determinant. A game is also created as if  the narrator was actually the author and that fact insists again on his importance.

Then , the narrator has a power on the reader. He speaks for him as well by the use of the first person plural : “we might”, “we had taken” … Furthermore, he gives order : The anaphora of “supposes”:  the reader has no other choice that to obey to the narrator. We can also underline “Let'us then step”  which brings about the impression of a guided tour. The narrator in the story is the guide of the reader and it is underlined in the text. It is almost like there were a physical presence of the reader in the text, as if the reader became a paper being too and was an entire member of the story.

But we can also pick up some elements of familiarity and complicity between the narrator and the reader. Indeed, he deals with Grosvenor square who happens to be a well-known place. By using this kind of space marker, he anchors the narrative in the reader's routine, thus making it more familiar. He puts an emphasis of this belonging to the same world. We can also see this aside “between ourself” which creates a private and particular link between the story teller and the reader.

        By creating this link with the reader, the narrator shows the reader that he belongs to the world he is depicting. The reader will then be even more able to perceive, understand and take at face value the superficiality of society which the author here puts into question.

                Indeed , the society looks like focused on marriage, money, and status. There is a lot of references to the marriage and family life in the text. At the beginning  the word love appears : “fell in love”, “is in love” but then , the marriage appears as an instance to become  more powerful in the society. In fact it is qualified as a “proposal” ,“match” , an “arrangement”, this being a gradation of nouns referring less and less to feelings . It looks like marriage becomes a part of business. This can be illustrated by the fact that when he talks about marriage Mr. Sedley associates it automatically with materiality.  He uses the modal “shall” which underlines that it is a rule , a convention. Therefore it cannot be another way.  Nevertheless he seems not to care at all about his son's happiness. This conception of marriage may explain the picture of family. In this extract there is not strong family links. The father despites his son and makes fun of him with the enumeration “vain, selfish, lazy and effeminate”. Then he refers to him with the perjorative term : “fellow”. Then there is no communication between the brother and the sister , they fail at communicating: this is conveyed by a lot of hyperboles “great secret”, “very much to his sister's disppaointment”, “large sigh”. Furthermore we may see in the fourth paragraph “ to make Rebecca Sharp Mrs Sedley”: to “make” conveys the idea of a transformation and more precisely a social one.

Indeed , we could actually talk about a transformation because of the importance of money such as the social status which are extremely well defined . We can see in the second paragraph the use of noble titles such as : “Lady, Lord, Marquis, Duke”. We understand that this society is very ordered and that titles are very important. In this way the adjective “noble” which qualified “father” may convey the idea that the nobility of the father could change his state of mind and his position towards his son's wedding. What is more the father practises a job directly link with money : stockbrocker's and the family is directly presented with this aspect : “ a stockbrocker's family” but after that there is a rupture with their past : “clerk”, “grocers”, “we hadn't five hundreds pounds “ and the negation reinforces the little money.

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