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by Marilyn Green Faulkner

  “He was a clever lad and afraid of the Major. George could not help admiring his friend’s simplicity, his good-humour, his various learning quietly imparted, his general love of truth and justice. He had met no such man as yet in the course of his experience, and he had an instinctive liking for a gentleman.” (713)

  Becky Sharp, a young person whose moral principles waver when she is thrown on her own resources, is much like the young Thackeray. (Her firm statement that she would have been a moral, upright woman if she had possessed five thousand pounds a year comes right out of a letter Thackeray once wrote to his mother about his own circumstances.) At war with this subtle shrugging off of moral responsibility was a deep idealism about human nature; Thackeray believed that people could be better than they were. William Lilly said that he found irony, but no cynicism in Thackeray: rather an appeal to the higher ideals within us. “To those sympathies, beliefs, instincts, I say, Thackeray ever appealed, to recall us from the worship of Mammon, the worship of rank, the worship of notoriety, to the worship of goodness, and truth and love.”(Wm. Samuel Lilly, Criticism and Interpretations, Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction.)

  In Vanity Fair we have Becky’s intelligence and energy juxtaposed upon Amelia’s virtue and passivity, yet we are never forced to choose between them. We are allowed to see how each suffers as a result of her failings and enjoys happiness as a result of good choices. These characters feel envy, grief, lust, pride, sorrow and repentance, just as we do. Thackeray brings us along as a part of the crowd, inserting himself jovially into the narrative now and then to comment on their trials and triumphs, and then retreating to allow us to form our own conclusions.

  Though he knew he wanted to write a long tale about the world of fashion and society, Thackeray could not think of an appropriate title for his first novel. One night it came to him, and he wrote to a friend that he jumped out of bed in excitement and ran around the room shouting, “Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair!” It was a title worth celebrating, for it cleverly refers not only to the vain nature of worldly things, but the entertaining, attractive nature of them. Yes, the world is vain, but it is fair, and it is also a fair, a roiling, exciting, fun place to be. G.K Chesterton said of the book that its principle character was the world. “It produces on the mind,” he said, “the same impression of mixed voices and almost maddening competition as a crowded square on market day” (G.K. Chesterton, Criticism and Interpretations, Harvard Shelf of Classics.)

  This is a wonderful book; funny, enlightening and ultimately uplifting. If you prefer sentimental stories, romance novels, and larger than life heroes, you might not like Vanity Fair. But if, like me, you love to experience fully-realized fictional characters that stay with you forever, and prefer to see the human heart mapped honestly and compassionately, you will find a masterpiece in Vanity Fair. As Carlyle said of Thackeray, “a beautiful vein of genius lay struggling about in him.” That genius is evident here.

  Quotations taken from Vanity Fair. Penguin Classics Edition, London. 2003.

  Talk About It

  Vanity Fair gives us a series of flawed characters, none of which really live ‘happily ever after.’ Did you find the book depressing or uplifting, or both? Did you enjoy spending time with these characters?

  About the Author:

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  William Makepeace Thackeray was born in India in 1811, and after losing his father at an early age, was sent to school in England, where he was miserable and lonely. After his mother remarried and returned to England, mother and son were reunited, though he spent most of his formative years in the often brutal English school system. In 1829, he entered Trinity College at Cambridge University. Not keen on academics, Thackeray left after a year and a half to travel abroad. He had trouble finding a career and dabbled in law and art.

  Though possessed of an inheritance at age 21, he squandered his means and was forced to earn a living as a writer. Thus, he was able to observe both sides of the social scene—the privileged life of a gentleman and the scramble for existence faced by an average fellow. Thackeray loved entertainments—gambling, the theater, good food, and drink—and struggled to become a serious, responsible adult. His own life held many sorrows; chief among them the incurable insanity of his wife, Isabella, who grew more unstable with the birth of each of three daughters and was finally placed in a mental institution in 1844.

  Thackeray is famous for his satirical works. The author knew that men and women are complex and he avoided oversimplifying them. He also knew “virtuous people can be dull and rascals can be lively.” Thackeray believed most people are a mixture of the heroic and the ridiculous. His work skillfully ridicules hypocrites. In fact, his The Snob Papers, later collected as The Book of Snobs, popularized the modern meaning of the word “snob.” A gifted caricaturist, he did his own illustrations for Vanity Fair, probably his best novel. He died in London in 1863.

  Sources:

  Ferris, Ina. William Makepeace Thackeray. Boston: Twayne, 1983.

  Succoring Us in Our Infirmities:

  Celestial Navigation, by Anne Tyler

  There is a line in scripture that speaks of the Lord, “succoring his people in their infirmities.” What an interesting word; infirmity. Webster defines it as “shaky, unstable, or frail,” and the Oxford English Dictionary gives it as “weakness, want of strength, or the lack of power to do something.” So many of our struggles in life have more to do with weakness than wickedness. Most of us try to do what it right and good, but we fear, we falter, we fail, and we suffer the consequences. It is important, therefore, to understand not only right and wrong, but also something about weakness and infirmity.

  It is here that a great novelist like Anne Tyler can help us. She is less interested in the wickedness of the world than in the weaknesses of people like us. Consider, for example, her careful and compassionate description of a man paralyzed by fear. Jeremy, the protagonist of Celestial Navigation, is a talented artist and a gentle, kind man, yet his fears completely undermine his ability to live a normal life. Tyler offers a matter-of-fact, almost doctor-like diagnosis of her protagonist:

  “These are some of the things that Jeremy Pauling dreaded: using the telephone, answering the doorbell, opening mail, leaving his house, making purchases. Also wearing new clothes, standing in open spaces, meeting the eyes of a stranger, eating in the presence of others, turning on electrical appliances.” (Celestial Navigation, 86)

  There is something incredibly moving about this list for me. Jeremy is a study in fear, and the rippling, damaging effect it can have. In fact, he appears to be the very definition of infirmity. The long paragraph describing his difficulty with nearly every aspect of life concludes with Jeremy’s conviction that:

  “ . . . other people seemed to possess an inner core of hardness that they took for granted. They hardly seemed to notice it was there; they had come by it naturally. Jeremy had been born without it.” (87)

  Synopsis

  Jeremy Pauling, an artist, owns a home and rents out rooms, and in one of them lives Mary, a single mother. She is a study in strength, bearing child after child from various partners and handling everything with aplomb. Jeremy is attracted to her strength, and they eventually marry. Her fatal flaw is a kind of selfish pride that leaves her unwilling to share her parenting relationship with a man, though she relies upon one after another for support. She must own the children; she protects them from their respective fathers and trusts no one—even Jeremy—to enter the circle she creates for herself and her brood.

  Jeremy and Mary make a life together, and have children. They interact with the odd collection of people that rent the other rooms in the house. The story is narrated by these characters, and we piece together a picture through their various perspectives. In the end, Jeremy and Mary live separate lives, even in the same house, but Jeremy’s art is deeply affected by their relationship.

  What Makes it Great?

  Ann Tyler has a subtle great
ness. Her careful descriptions and insightful snatches of dialogue bring us gradually into the hearts and souls of—in Gail Godwin’s words—the “oddballs, visionaries, lonely souls” who invariably populate her fiction. The climactic moment in this novel is the birth of the fourth child (or fifth, we lose count) when Mary goes to the hospital without Jeremy. He has finally been completely excluded from everything but the conception of the child. Every mother understands the sweet circle of two that is formed when a new baby arrives, which then opens to admit the father and complete the family unit. Mary cannot take that step, turning her mothering into a kind of emasculation of the males in her life. Jeremy sees what needs to be done but lacks the power to step up and act. Conversely, Mary sees that she needs help yet lacks the humility to admit her weakness and let her husband be strong. They need each other, yet cannot reach across the divide and create a true married relationship. In the end they are only pretending to be married; they are two separate people in one house.

  Did You Know?

  Agoraphobia (according to Wikipedia) is a term that comes from the Greek word for marketplace. “Sufferers of agoraphobia avoid public and/or unfamiliar places, especially large, open, spaces such as shopping malls or airports where there are few places to hide. In severe cases, the sufferer may become confined to his or her home, experiencing difficulty traveling from this safe place. Approximately 3.2 million adults in the US between the ages of 18 and 54, or about 2.2%, suffer from agoraphobia.” This story of an artist with agoraphobia was loosely based on Anne Tyler herself. She suffers from “a touch of agoraphobia” and said in an interview, ““[I am] very, very fond of ‘Celestial Navigation,’ although it was hardest to write.”

  All of this is brought to life via the interesting narrative structure of this novel: through the voices of the inmates of Jeremy’s home, which is let out to renters. The boarding house, with its odd combination of individual lives that bump into each other now and then in communal spaces, feels like one of those dollhouses we played with as children, with the front wall missing from all the rooms. We peer into first one room, then another, observe the inhabitants, and see how they interact. Miss Vinton (who serves a connecting link for the various characters) describes their situation and illuminates Tyler’s underlying theme:

  “If you want my opinion, our whole society would be better off living in boarding houses. I mean even families, even married couples. Everyone should have his single room with a door that locks, and then a larger room downstairs where people can mingle or not as they please.” (141)

  By using the boarding house as a metaphor for the larger world, Tyler shows us that we do, in fact, co-exist in much the same way as the inmates of the Pauling home. Our triumphs and failures are more interconnected than we realize. Jeremy and Mary live out their lives in a separate spaces, yet many are affected by their actions. Their story does not end happily, yet somehow there is a hopeful element in their domestic woes. For though in the long run Jeremy and Mary are unable to create a stable, happy life together, they do create a family. They have children, they go forward, and they eventually overcome at least some of their fears and infirmities.

  A World of Their Own

  There is a dreamy, contemplative quality about her books that sets Tyler apart from the plot-driven, sensational literature that crowds the bestseller lists today. Most of her books center on a woman character, but that woman is of most interest because of her role in a family unit. Tyler admitted she is “scared of the very idea of a ‘message’ in a novel. All I ever want to do is to tell a story.” One rarely has a sense in Tyler’s novels of a particular place and time; in fact, most of her books could take place anywhere, and they seem suspended in a time zone of their own. Yet in each of her novels, Tyler has something to teach us about our infirmities, our weaknesses and our fears.

  She also invariably has something hopeful to say about the human spirit. Though Jeremy fails at relationships, his art expresses something he is unable to say in language. Though Mary is unable to sustain a marriage, she is a strong, nurturing mother, and together Jeremy and Mary create children that may enrich the world through the combination of their parents’ weaknesses and strengths. Even childless spinsters like Miss Vinton have a vital role to play as they lend support to this struggling family. The boarding house is a little village, and it takes a village to raise the children, and support the parents.

  In Tyler’s world, few people are really evil, and everyone is good for something. Small victories, like the day when Jeremy walks seven blocks to see his daughter’s play, are celebrated with quiet grace. As Miss Vinton says, “There are other kinds of heroes than the ones who swim through burning oil.” Her characters may be rife with infirmities, but Tyler believes in them. As we come to understand their struggles we may take a small step toward conquering our own fears, and receive a kind of succor that lifts us and draws us closer to those we love and seek to understand.

  Quotations taken from Celestial Navigation. Ballantine Books, New York. 1974.

  Talk About It

  Everybody seems to have a phobia these days. Conditions that used to just be considered part of life are now treated with medication and therapy. It seems that everything from restless leg syndrome to coulrophobia (fear of clowns) has a name and a pill to cure it. Do you think we actually create infirmities by labeling and paying so much attention to them?

  About the Author: Anne Tyler

  Born in 1941 and raised in a succession of Quaker communes in the mountains of North Carolina, Anne Tyler brings the perspective of an outsider to her observations. Home schooled by brilliant parents, Tyler commented that when she entered public school for the first time at the age of eleven, she had “never used a telephone and could strike a match on the sole of her bare foot.” She was also acquainted with home farming, Appalachian crafts, and already deeply immersed in the classics.

  Her early years in the commune gave Tyler what she calls “my sense of distance,” and one notices in her writing the workings of the inner lives of the contemporary family. This sense of distance, the disciplined quiet of the Quaker upbringing, and the pull of the land are evident in all of her settings, her characters, and her plots. “Daydreaming,” she declares, “is the most useful activity I know of, but until now it’s been almost universally frowned upon.” She graduated at age 19 from Duke University, and completed graduate work at Columbia University in Russian studies.

  Tyler’s ninth novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, which she considers her best work, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1983. Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. A mother to two daughters, she lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

  Source: Anne Tyler as Novelist, Salwak, Dale, ed. University of Iowa Press, 1994.

  Nobody’s Perfect:

  Take it Personally

  One of the great things a great book can do is cause us to take action in our own lives. Some of the characters in these novels are so dysfunctional that we find ourselves itching to reach into the pages of the novel and fix things for them. After suffering along with Mary and Jeremy in Celestial Navigation, one frustrated reader wrote:

  “There were times in the book when I wanted to grab Jeremy by the scruff of his neck and kick his rear end from here to eternity. Mary’s solution to her problems was to stop the world and get off for awhile, and she managed to do this successfully at least three times, until at last she succeeded in unwittingly destroying those that loved her, Jeremy, Brian and the rest. I am not sure whether I enjoyed the book or not. However, it teaches a powerful lesson; that you cannot quit on yourself, and if you do, you damage many other lives and your own as well.”

  It is much easier to see what others, especially fictional characters, should do to solve their own problems, than to find solutions for our own. However, a great book can both suggest solutions and enervate us to try again.

  Chapter Nine

  Chick-Li
t for Grown-ups

  “When one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet . . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”

  Virginia Woolf

  “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship.”

  Louisa May Alcott

  The term “chick-lit” has come to denote romantic, light books by women, about women; books that men would never find interesting, and so lightweight that they are forgotten almost as soon as we set them down. That’s too bad, because there are some great works of literature written by women, about women, that both entertain and enlighten.