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    Vanity Fair
    Vanity Fair
    Vanity Fair
    Audiobook28 hours

    Vanity Fair

    Written by William Makepeace Thackeray

    Narrated by Wanda McCaddon

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A deliciously satirical attack on a money-mad society, Vanity Fair, which first appeared in 1847, is an immensely moral novel, and an immensely witty one. Vanity Fair features two heroines: the faithful, loyal Amelia Sedley, and the beautiful and scheming social climber Becky Sharp. It also engages a huge cast of wonderful supporting characters as the novel spins from Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies to affairs of love and war on the Continent to liaisons in the dazzling ballrooms of London. William Makepeace Thackeray's forte is the bon mot, and it is amply exercised in a novel filled with memorably wicked lines. Lengthy and leisurely in pace, the novel follows the adventures of Becky and Amelia as their fortunes rise and fall, creating a tale both picaresque and risque. Thackeray mercilessly skewers his society, especially the upper class, poking fun at their shallow values and pointedly jabbing at their hypocritical "morals." His weapons, however, are not fire and brimstone but an unerring eye for the absurd and a genius for observing the foibles of his age. An enduring classic, this great novel is a brilliant study in duplicity and hypocrisy-and a mirror with which to view our own times.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 10, 2008
    ISBN9781400176946
    Author

    William Makepeace Thackeray

    William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811. He was sent to England in 1817 and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Following a period of gambling, unsuccessful investments and a brief career as a lawyer, he turned to writing and drawing. In 1836 he married Isabella Shawe; following the birth of their second daughter, her mental health deteriorated and she had to be permanently supervised by a private nurse. Thackeray's first novel, Catherine, was published in 1839-40. Following the success of Vanity Fair (1847-8) he was able to devote himself to fiction, and his other notable works include Pendennis (1849), The History of Henry Esmond (1852) and The Newcomes (1855). He also edited the commercially successful Cornhill Magazine, which published writers such as Tennyson, George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Thackeray died suddenly on Christmas Eve, 1863.

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    Reviews for Vanity Fair

    4/5

    101 ratings85 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This story does go on and on, but I enjoyed the process. Great characters: Becky Sharpe--conniving, resourceful, a survivor; Amelia Sedley, sweet, loyal to a fault; George Osborne, not nearly as good as he ought to be, Joseph Sedley, a glutton and somewhat of a coward; many, many others with their foibles and great names--Lords Binky and Bareacres. I'm glad I finally read it.
    • 4/5
      Long and sprawling, witty and satirical, this is quite a character study. I think I recognized someone I know in real life in each and every one of the main characters. A novel without a hero, you say, Mr. Thackeray? Then please explain Dobbin! :)
    • 2/5
      I can understand the point Thackeray was trying to make by leaving out the hows and whys of plot, because all of that was improper in Becky Sharp's case. Still, it wasn't much of a story. Perhaps I am too steeped in more modern storytelling, but I was hardly satisfied when the puppet box was stored away. As was, I think, Thackeray's point.
    • 5/5
      This is a book about women.There are a couple of them in the story and I think the author was 'comparing' and 'contrasting' them.I liked both of them but figure they would most likely be 'out of my league.'
    • 5/5
      Brilliant, snarky, hilarious.
    • 5/5
      This was a book I enjoyed very much, although towards the end it begun to drag and I started wishing for it to end (reminded me of Sacajawea in that aspect). It has 672 pages and is written in 8 font which you have to read from very close up. The book reminds me Jane Austen and Charles Dickens with the way they criticize victorian society (although the story is set a bit before the victorian era, as it begins in 1805). Only Thackaray is much more sarcastic and mean towards his characters, but he does it in a very.. Polite way! There are so many weaknesses in human nature which are exposed in the novel, Thackaray likes to show every characters dark side together with the good, he seems to want to have the reader disillsioned. All this could have been mightily depressing if it wasn't for the wonderful humour which goes throughout the novel and illuminates it, making the read more easy, fun and bearable. The author succeeds to influence you, as a reader, and to have you at one time cheering a certain character, and at the next chapter booing it, and then cheering it again, as he tells you secret thoughts and reveals all the different layers in the characters, both the good and the bad. What's left, is a pretty glumy but funny picture of human kind, that surprisingly enough, has a happy end. 19.3.07
    • 5/5
      Very enjoyable romp through the Regency period, in both London, Hampshire, Belgium and Germany. The book is mainly about two characters, Becky Sharp, a rather brash young woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants, and Amelia Sedley, a young woman from a rich family, who starts life with all that she wants and needs, but falls upon unhappy times in both love and money. The writing is humorous at times, and the descriptions of the times and the people very entertaining. There is sadness too with lots of love and loss going on. All in all a long book, which you need to invest some time and devotion to, but well worth it.
    • 4/5
      Where I got the book: audiobook downloaded from Audible.Well, I finally read Vanity Fair, and it took an audiobook to do it. This was written in an era when a novelist could truly indulge himself with long backstories, explanations, scene-setting and bunny trails, and Thackeray makes full use of that power. As a story, the tale of Becky Sharpe and her moral opposite, the rather nauseatingly devoted Amelia, it's good stuff; although, of course, I ended up far preferring wicked Becky. As a portrait of an era it's great, and it has Waterloo in it which is a plus. Now that I've listened to the audiobook I might one day be able to wade through the printed novel with a bit more determination; but Thackeray writes in great solid blocks of text, which is offputting. And a shame, because there are many laughs to be had within these pages; Thackeray plants his barbs with the waspish glee of a maiden lady gossip, or, to bring the analogy up to date, a gay radio host.This would NOT be my recommended version to listen to, and indeed Audible has withdrawn it. The audio quality is very uneven, the narrator's voice grated on me, and she was completely incapable of pronouncing the many foreign words.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book. Being immersed in 19th century society in and around London was a real treat. Of course there were some tedious parts - the naming of all the people at an event, etc., but the story was wonderful and the characters rich and fulfilling. A wonderful summer read
    • 4/5
      Vanity Fair may be a little long, with Thackeray drawing out background histories longer than necessary and 'revealing' twists long after he has already given enough hints. However, his witty satirical remarks about society and his astute observations about human nature make this book definitely worth reading. The balance in the characters is another positive; the villainous characters have redeeming qualities and the 'good' characters can be quite insuffereable at times!The names of some of the minor characters are quite comic; 'Lord Tapeworm' comes to mind!
    • 5/5
      Two girls and two very different personalities and temperaments, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp, form the center of this lengthy story "without a hero". By the end I was almost convinced that all is 'vanity' in this world, or at least in this novel. This reminded me somewhat of Balzac (e. g. Cousin Bette), but with more humor.The best thing in the book was the Authorial presence as he comments on the people and their actions at regular intervals. The two most memorable aspects of the book for me were the voice of the author and the character of Becky Sharp, certainly one of the most memorable in all of my reading. Unlike Dickens, the author does not deal with the ills of society at large (e. g. education or debtors' prison), but focuses on the characters of the individuals and the consequences of their character and actions on their lives.The characters seem like puppets on a stage at times, while he uses them to reveal general truths about human nature. Becky is the best example as her greed and selfishness knows no bounds. When dealing with most of the other characters you almost don't mind since they usually deserve the treatment they receive from her; however, her unmotherly actions toward her son betray a more vile nature than one would expect, from anyone that is other than Becky.This is a novel that explores the dichotomy between love and money, those who depend on the largess of others are often disappointed and all the love in the world does not pay the bills. Thackeray manages to keep the story interesting primarily because, in spite of her character flaws, Becky is both smart and charming. He explores her nature in a way that is both profound and detailed and ultimately, with a large supporting cast, creates a world in Vanity Fair that seems not too unlike our own.
    • 4/5
      It was a LOOOOONG book... Thackeray's writing is witty, vibrant, and entertaining. He seems to love painting satirical pictures of society and so there's a lot that doesn't have to do directly with the main characters (of which there are many), and it got too long-winded for my taste and I longed for the end.For such a long satirical tale, there didn't seem to be any particular moral to it, just that we are all rather ridiculous creatures--although better to be sincere and honest and ridiculous rather than otherwise.Because Thackeray states from the start that the tale does not have a hero or heroine, it also kept me from sympathizing or strongly identifying with any particular character (which was Thackeray's intention, perhaps), but that also made it difficult to keep reading.Perhaps this was exactly what Thackeray aimed to produce and it's a masterful book, but I'm glad I'm done with it :p
    • 3/5
      While an enjoyable read on it’s own, only in comparison to other Victorian novels does Vanity Fair really shine. Along with an agreeable sense of shock and indignation, what relief the public must have felt at Becky Sharp’s entrance onto the world stage. In place of Dickens’s cozy sentimentality, the Bronte sisters’ tortured psyches, and Elliot’s scholarly ethics, we have in Becky, at long last, a whip smart protagonist whose sole and blissfully unequivocal desire is to vault into a life of luxury. Such worldliness is an emetic against the hulking morality of Victorian fiction. Of course, it’s still the 19th century, and Becky is duly castigated for her wayward ways, but her punishment is merely an unconvincing plot device; a soggy deus ex machine necessary to avoid damning censure. We all know what she is all about, and we love her for it. Besides providing this critical breakthrough, Vanity Fair provides little else but a decent story with a respectable gallery of funny episodes. There is plenty of satire, but the English had not yet regained the sharp wit they lost in the 18th century, and most of the humor here is still of the meaty-elbow-in-the-ribs-guffaw variety. All of the characters except Becky, and perhaps the inspired figure of Jos "Waterloo" Sedly, are cut-rate Dickens knockoffs, and the narrative itself is a clunky vehicle following an entirely predictable road. Still, Thackery gave us Becky, and thereby saved the English novel from drowning in a turgid sea of good intentions.
    • 4/5
      This review will read a bit strangely as it was a group read and I commented on each "part" as I finished reading it.Spoilers ahead!~!I enjoyed this read tremendously and I found much to admire in our little Becky Sharp. She had a lot on the ball and was very quick to know what she needed do in order to attain her wants and needs. Those who pity her need think again.I found Jos to be a big old baby puss and thought that he needed to "man up". But his character truly suited the narration of the story. I did think that his sister, Miss Amelia's character changed too much in the story line. I quite liked her in the beginning, but throughout the middle part...................The class levels in Vanity Fair are very much "out there" but strangely I see a lot of the same small ostracizings going on today.Surprising things happening midway through the book.What a wonderful hero our Captain Dobbin is turning out to be. I rooted for him the entire way through and for things to turn out nicely for him.I must say that I found the encouragement of the courting of Miss Swartz by Mr. Crawley, the younger, quite odd for this time period and at the same time found it quite brave of the "younger" to refrain from obedience and follow his heart.Not only soldiers go to war during this era. Apparently people found battles to be of great entertainment as they followed them and could not get there quickly enough. Amazing more civilians did not die at the front than did.Miss Amelia is quickly turning to milk toast. Funny, I thought she had more spunk than that and perchance by book's end it will show it's face again.Well, well, well, our Miss Becky is beginning to show her true colors and her adeptness at using people very much to her advantage. Not that she has not all the way through the book done this, but she does it now with a different attitude and heart.Jos is off somewhere, most likely in India again doing whatever he does there. Miss Amelia has begun to grow a backbone which I am so glad to see.Thackeray writes this entire work with his tongue in his cheek and I quite enjoy the result of his efforts. This third part is a bit slow going up until the last chapter. Then things begin to pick up.My, my, my. Such happenings and carryings on as we should ever see. Things coming together to the benefit of "some". Becky getting her comeuppance and then getting her life back to the order in which she enjoys. Miss Amelia waking up to see the real order of the world, getting rid of her rose colored glasses, coming to her senses and doing what she most likely has wanted to do all along. Poor Jos; such an unknowingly sad life and such a sad demise. Do we dare to think he was poisoned? And William; William finally growing some big kahunas at last and standing up for himself.Thackeray has written a very enjoyable tete-a tete here and I find I quite liked it. I think it could have been compiled into perhaps 480 pages instead of 680. I loved all the little sketches throughout the book.I am very happy to have been a part of this group read as I was not familiar with Thackeray in the least. I still don't know that I am but I am interested enough to try something else of his. I do know that without the group read, I would never have picked up this particular book, so thank you all for having chosen it as one of this years reads.
    • 3/5
      I love the 19th century... but the movie was better. The book was a bit tedious, disappointing, really.
    • 4/5
      Ok, I'm not going to lie, by and large I have little idea what this was about (it was kinda like shoving four seasons of a television sitcom into one weekend...). That being said, I found it hilarious. The author's writing voice was phenomenal, and the character depth and building was wonderful.
    • 3/5
      This long and complicated story did not live up to the movie for one main reason- the movie strove to make the main character, Becky Sharp, likeable. It really brings a book down when you're supposed to hate the main character. In fact, I'm not entirely certain how I got through 800+ pages feeling conflicted (I wanted to like and root for the main character, but the author thought she was awful). I think we should all feel bad for Becky- she's incredibly talented and intelligent, but, because she's born without money, she's can't shine without resorting to baser methods. It is readable (obviously), though not particularly enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      The subtitle for Vanity Fair is 'A Novel Without a Hero'. Intrigued by this, as I read this book, I kept on searching for the 'hero' of this story. Although there are many characters, all of the morally 'good' characters are so self-sacrificing and spineless that they are hard to like. The dashing and colorful characters are, of course, deceitful and selfish, but very likeable. By the end of the book, I wasn't sure who I wanted to have that perfect ending. Overall, the descriptions and plot are strong, altough Thackeray makes a point of interjecting his sarcastic commentary about life in Victorian England. I found this funny at first, but it got a little tiresome. Definitely a strong Victorian novel, but I still prefer Dickens or Hardy.

      I both listened and read this book (Wanda McCaddon as narrator). McCaddon does an excellent job of accents, but I find her voice just a bit grating and would have loved the smooth British accents of Simon Vance or John Lee.
    • 5/5
      Quite fabulous! Story and the narration superb - thank you
    • 5/5
      I found this book to be truly wonderful, perhaps my new favorite. Thackeray makes his characters come alive, and the story is just so well told with its twists and turns. It's also interesting to have a central character--especially a leading woman in a 19th Century novel--who is so rotten. Becky is a sociopath but, as a friend also reading the book pointed out, she is the product of a sociopathic culture. Amelia and Dobbin I cared about deeply, although, again, Amelia isn't an Elizabeth Bennet who the reader can get behind wholeheartedly--she's too weak-willed for that. These fascinating, flawed, characters will stay with me for a long time. Despite Thackeray's 900 pages, I still long to know more!I will add, however, that there was at least one passage where I just wanted to get past the description and back to the characters I was so fascinated by. I suspect, however, that Thackeray's long description of Germany in the last 10% of the book is meant to build the reader's anticipation for the denouement of the book.
    • 4/5
      This one took me a long time to read. It's a good book--I'd say about 60% of it is a great book--but it wanders and lags a bit too much for me. The characters are either interesting but inconsistent (like Becky Sharp) or consistent but uninteresting (like Dobbin). None of the characters are ultimately very likable, but that isn't a weakness, in my opinion. More of an issue is that the book is really two novels that intertwine a little bit at some key moments. One novel is the satiric look at the rise and fall of Becky Sharp and the other is the "romance" of Amelia and Dobbin. The former is by far the stronger part, and the scenes of Becky's triumphs in London are written without any allusion to Amelia and Dobbin. The romance isn't of much interest, and given the other narrative, the very idea of romance is treated with ambivalence. The problem, though, is that one plot or the other will take over for a hundred or more pages, and by the time Thackeray returns to the other plot, I had forgotten many of the important but undifferentiated characters. I'm glad I read it, but I would not say it is a "must read" novel from the 19th century.
    • 5/5
      Funny and full of twists and turns. Couldn’t have had a better narrator.
    • 4/5
      As characteristic for novels written in that period of time, or at least ABOUT that era (19th century England), Vanity Fair is an extremely wordy book. It pushes the boundaries of rambling, in my opinion, but still, the story is always a good one. What I love about it is, the theme is one that is timeless, true for every generation probably since the history of man, and most likely in every country. If every country in the world made it mandatory for their schools to direct a play based on this novel, edited according the cultural norms of their society (e.g. in the Arab world Rebecca - Becky - Sharp would be Reem Shalabya, perhaps, in Argentina she might be Renata Salvas, etc), it would make total sense, and I'm pretty sure everyone would be able to relate to it. It's social climbing at it's ugliest, hidden behind the beautiful setting of England in the 1800s. The main character, Becky Sharp, is extremely unlikeable because of her selfishness and utter cruelty to people around her, beloved or not. I take some issue with the rather misogynistic view that if a woman knows what she wants then the author has to portray her as cruel and conniving, whereas the kind and good-hearted Amanda Sedley is always vulnerable and weak, as if that's the way woman should always be. But, if Becky Sharp was a charitable and warm-hearted person, I doubt this classic would be as interesting as it is to so many people.
    • 3/5
      Quite witty, with barbed humor.
    • 3/5
      The story opens with two graduating students leaving Miss Pickerton's academy for young ladies. One graduate, Amelia Sedley, is well loved and receives an enormous send off while her companion, Rebecca Sharp, barely garners a glance. Becky is an orphaned governess, traveling with Amelia as her guest. Once at the Sedley home Rebecca sets out to become betrothed to Amelia's brother, Joseph. Jos serves as Collector of Boggley Wollah in the East India Company's Civil Service. Once that attempt fails Rebecca becomes even more amoral and shameless. In today's terms she would be classified as a psychopath because of her lack of conscience and her inability to feel anything for her fellow man. Amelia is disgustingly sweet and Rebecca is shamelessly indifferent. Neither one makes a satisfying hero in Thackeray's eyes. I found the story to be plotless and pointless. What made the reading more difficult was Thackeray getting confused and mixing up the characters.
    • 5/5
      A biting and witty satire on English social life and customs during the first part of the nineteenth century, its subtitle is “a novel without a hero,” and it could also be added without heroines. Yet the book’s two central characters, the virtuous but dim and naive Amelia Sedley and the amoral, clever, congenial Becky Sharp both display admirable and distressing qualities as they rise, fall, and rise again in society. One of the great virtues of Vanity Fair is that while it is told in hilarious prose, with short burst of genuine pathos, it was praised by its contemporaries as a thoroughly realistic account of the society that it portrays.
    • 3/5
      This is a good book but it is very long and I actually gave up for awhile on reading it. But it is a classic so I made it through the rest of the book. It does get dry at times but the plot is amazing and it's worth the read, as long as you can get through the 912 pages.It's definitely a classic and should be read.
    • 5/5
      The sad thing about earning a BA in English Literature is that most of the books you have to read and think about won't actually be enjoyable. This is an exception. It's funny.
    • 4/5
      Vanity Fair is sometimes called the best British novel ever written, but it's totally not. Middlemarch is way better. Honestly, VF's not even in the top ten. So why do people love it so much? Because of Becky Sharp. Which is funny, because she's not what it was supposed to be about.

      Becky Sharp is to Thackeray as Satan is to Milton. The argument has been made in both cases that the author secretly intended us to love their most memorable characters, but that's not true - or at least it's not that easy. While both dominate their stories, both authors are clearly uncomfortable with the fact that that's happened.

      Vanity Fair didn't really take shape until Thackeray turned it into an autobiography: the Amelia / Dobbins story, which he thought of after he'd submitted the first few chapters and which caused an eight-month delay while he reconfigured the story, mirrors his own one-sided love affair with his friend's wife. Dobbins is based on himself. And certainly their story turns out to be an important counterweight to Becky's; without it, the novel would be a slighter work about a femme fatale, arguably more fun but less important. With them it turns into a sprawling landmark in realist literature, one that unarguably influenced War & Peace.

      But Amelia and Dobbins are such milquetoasts that Becky insists on running away with the book. They're nice people, and you root for them, but during their chapters...you wish it would get back to Amelia's frenemy.

      And Thackeray attacks Becky, again and again, viciously. His most telling attack is in her constantly reiterated failure to love her son, which is a mortal sin in Victorian novels as it is in the rest of them. A father can occasionally be forgiven for not loving his children; never a mother. But there's also this deadly passage toward the end of the novel, in which he defensively compares her to the old-school, evil mermaid:"Has [the author] once forgotten the rules of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling around corpses, but above the waterline, I ask, has not everything been proper?"It frankly feels like Thackeray is punishing Becky for taking over the book that he'd tried to take over himself. He sounds confused: like he wishes the whole novel was a moral one, and realizes only now that it's failed to be that. (Remember, this book couldn't be retooled; it was released in installments, and everyone had already read the rest of them.)

      Consider also the ending. Becky has a moment of magnanimity and reconciles Dobbins and Amelia. Then she turns around and murders Jos. (Don't try to argue that she didn't murder him. Thackeray may not say it, but he leaves little doubt.) Which feels more honest to you? Which feels like something Becky would do? She's a calculating, immoral woman who may have been (but probably wasn't) involved in countless affairs by this time, but did you get the sense that she's a murderess? Thackeray's book has gotten away from him, and he's betraying her in an attempt to snatch it back.

      Compare this with Middlemarch, also a landmark realist novel, and also one released in installments, but one in which it's perfectly clear that Eliot had the entire plot, thread by thread, perfectly planned from the beginning. Eliot never lets her book get away from her. And when I say that, and when you consider the fact that Middlemarch includes no character as compelling as Becky Sharp - she would have despised Dorothea - it sounds like Vanity Fair might be more fun than Middlemarch, but it's not. Thackeray's sense of human nature isn't as strong as Eliot's (or as Tolstoy's), and the novel isn't as satisfying.

      It's good, because Becky Sharp escaped from somewhere in Thackeray's brain and took it from him. What doesn't belong to her is just okay.
    • 3/5
      Thackeray has a meandering style I find quite entertaining. His characters are convincingly developed and the story is well constructed. It's worth reading. However, I prefer the film version starring Reese Witherspoon and directed by Mira Nair. It captures the essence of the story very concisely, and the slightly altered ending is a great improvement in my opinion.Libby