Moral Dilemma And Literary Innovation

William Makepeace Thackeray's literary reputation is largely established upon one book. And that one book is Vanity Fair. Since its appearance in monthly installment in 1847, the ambiguous relationship between the novel and another prominent literary work, namely John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, has aroused controversies among literary critics of different generations. Many people believe that Thackeray's appropriation of Bunyan's conception of Vanity Fair in his own story demonstrates the novelist's identity as a gospel of the allegorist. By depicting a bunch of people living without God in a world pervaded with dark morals, Thackeray seems to visualize Bunyan's Vanity Fair in mid-Victorian society where he lived. However, evidences pointing to another direction also demands equal attention. Thackeray, instead of condemning the vanity of this world in his novel, shows his delight in worldly pleasures such as well-cooked roast beef. He even sheds sympathy and furthermore, grants verbal approval with Becky Sharp, the supposed Evil, the Siren, and the Fallen Woman in Vanity Fair, which leaves quite a number of critics in confusion. The controversy remains whether or not Thackeray is a moralist. And if he is, like what he claims to be in Vanity Fair, whether or not he is able to carry out a coherent moral vision in his book. By a close analysis of the similarities and differences between Vanity Fair and The Pilgrim's Progress, as well as a re-reading of the novel in its contemporary literary context, this paper attempts to give an explanation of the cause of such controversy. As a novelist with a moral concern, Thackeray's commitment to literary realism is as strong as his commitment to moral preaching. While the use of allegory help to establish a moral vision of Vanity Fair and with it a series of character types, the use of realism and satire keeps breaking down such types and, as a result, shatters the moral vision. Instead of becoming a modern allegory, Vanity Fair is more likely a novelistic experiment in literary realism bordering on modernist fiction.My thesis is developed in four steps. Chapter I is a thorough comparison between Vanity Fair and The Pilgrim's Progress. The novel's allusion to the allegory in its title, content, literary strategy, form and structure, and materials from Thackeray's private papers as well, all demonstrate the writer's consciousness to carry out a modern allegory of mid Victorian society. Like the residents of the town called Vanity in Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Thackeray's characters are supposed to be lost in a world of Vanity for the lack of God's guidance. Chapter II contains a detailed analysis of Thackeray's literary depiction of major characters, especially Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. The realistic characterization of the two heroines, the shifting perspectives of the narrator, as well as Thackeray's critical silence upon Becky's alleged adultery and murder, all contribute to the breaking-down rather than the establishing of"a novel without a hero". If Vanity Fair is a novel without a hero, it is also a novel without a villain. In Vanity Fair, the major characters no more function as a personification of certain ideas, but can be seen as presentations of the complexity of human conditions in the real world. Chapter III introduces another critical element that violates with the moral vision of the novel, satire. As a tool of moral criticism, Thackeray's satire in Vanity Fair is not focused on the exposition of all vanities in the biblical sense, but rather on the specific vanity of human wishes. In this sense, it undermines the central theme of the novel"Vanitas Vanitatum", all is vanity. Chapter IV further explores the double role of satire in the novel. It is a tool not only for moral criticism, but also directed at literary innovation. Through an analysis of the plot and settings of Vanity Fair, this chapter reveals how Thackeray uses thorough parody to mock the sentimental and melodramatic formulas of his contemporary novels, and to promote his conception of realism—a faithful depiction of the real world as he sees it. In short, Thackeray attempts to accomplish both moral criticism and literary criticism in his composition of Vanity Fair. While his use of realism and satire drives him away from the idealistic moral vision he shares with Bunyan, his commitment to realism leads him to a literary innovation that influences the high realism in later Victorian novels.