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Canonball
Discussing "Vanity Fair" By William Makepeace Thackeray
In this episode of Canonball we discuss "Vanity Fair," which was written by William Makepeace Thackeray and first published in serialized form in 1847-1848.
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William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in British India in 1811. He studied for a little while at Trinity College in Cambridge and then left to travel around Europe. He went to Paris and to Weimar where he met Goethe and when he turned 21 he inherited a bunch of money from his father but unfortunately he lost a lot of it gambling and in trying to set up two unsuccessful newspapers. So then thereafter he started to do journalism. He wrote for a number of magazines including one called Punch and when he was writing for Punch he wrote a series that were called the Snob Papers which was later compiled as the Book of Snobs and this popularized the modern meaning of this term snob as we use it today. He traveled to the United States to give lecture tours a couple of times and Benjamin Purley Poore who was a Washington journalist from that area described Thackeray at one point. He wrote quote the citizens of Washington enjoyed a rare treat when Thackeray came to deliver his lectures on the English essayist wits and humorists of the 18th century. Accustomed to the spread eagle style of oratory too prevalent at the capital they were delighted with the pleasing voice and easy manner of the burly gray-haired rosy-cheeked Briton who made no gestures but stood most of the time with his hands in his pockets as if he were talking with friends at a cozy fireside end quote. In July of 1857 Thackeray ran as a liberal to represent Oxford in parliament and he was beaten by only 65 votes. He earned 1,005 votes and Edward Cardwell his opponent got 1,070 and that's a 48 52 split so it was quite close and Cardwell would go on to become secretary of state for war for six years from 1868 to 1874 so Thackeray lost but he at least lost to somebody who turned out to be a capable politician. He was also a member of the ancient order of druids which is still around today and is the oldest neo-druid order in the world. As he got older unfortunately Thackeray's health declined because he ate too much drank too much and didn't exercise enough and in 1863 in London at the age of 52 Thackeray died of a stroke. His death was unexpected since he wasn't very old and about 7,000 people attended his funeral at Kensington Gardens. Among other things Charlotte Bronte dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre to Thackeray and he's best known for Vanity Fair but he wrote a number of other things as well that are not so well known. Apparently they were more read in the 19th century they're not read quite as much anymore. I'd be curious to check those out because I enjoyed Thackeray's style in Vanity Fair. We'll get into that. He might have started working on some of the outlines of Vanity Fair as early as 1841 but people think he mostly started writing in 1844 and it was published as a 19 volume monthly serial during 1847 and 1848 when he would have been about 36 or 37 years old and he was famous before the run of the serialization of the novel had ended. It was very popular. While it was serialized it had the subtitle Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society but when it was published as a single volume in 1848 the subtitle was A Novel Without a Hero and it was also the first piece of writing that Thackeray published under his own name and this is purely speculation but on the one hand it's the first thing he published under his own name and on the other it's by far his most famous novel and even literary scholars tend to think it's his best. Sometimes those two don't necessarily line up. People sometimes think that his later stuff got a little bit looser because he was a little bit more comfortable and wasn't as sharp in his satire and criticism but his decision to finally put his name on something and something relatively big and well done like this might show that he at the time also felt that this really represented his best work in his life up to that point and he'd been doing journalism and other writing for at least a decade by that time so he would have developed some sense some metric for his own work for knowing what he liked and didn't like and what he thought was good and wasn't good from his own pen. Early complete versions of the novel also included illustrations that were done by Thackeray himself and are pretty symbolically loaded. If you've read the book you can find them online relatively easily and they're very interesting but apparently they're not often reprinted in modern editions. That might be because when publishers publish stuff like this that's meant for adults.It's not something that children would read. It usually does not have Illustrations in it. But in this case, it might be a bit of an oversight because the author himself Made the illustrations and you don't often have that where you have a book written by an author and also the same guy made Illustrations for the book that's artistically kind of interesting Especially when it's illustrations like these ones that connect different aspects of the book in an unusual way They're not just scenes from the book they're symbolic but Vanity Fair is a title that for some reason has a special kind of a ring to it and maybe because there's a magazine with that name and Some people might think that the magazine was named after the book and it might have been or probably was but the book got its name from a section of Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan and we can save Bunyan himself for another day But Pilgrim's Progress is a Christian allegory that was first published in 1678 it's sometimes cited as the first novel in English and it has never been out of print in the 350 years since it was published. It's been translated into 200 languages and sold an estimated 250 million copies and it's an allegorical story Basically about the various trials that a Christian goes through in their faith and the main character's name is Christian and he of course represents any Christian and some of the other characters are evangelist and Legality and civility. These are the names of characters in the book. So they all obviously represent different motivations or memes in life, but they're personified as people and Christian also visits various locations that have similar kind of symbolic names He goes through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He encounters the Hill of Difficulty There's the Doubting Castle, the Celestial City and all these different places present different challenges for Christian. Grammatically, it sounds weird to say that but again The main character's name is Christian and one of the places that he encounters is called Vanity Fair So this is actually the origin of that phrase and Vanity Fair is a place built by the devil that has everything that humans could want in it. To read a few lines now from Pilgrim's Progress, not from Vanity Fair, but here Bunyan is talking about the setting of Vanity Fair and I forgot to mention Pilgrim's Progress is all told as if it's a dream that Christian is having. Bunyan writes, quote, Then I saw in my dream that when they were gone out of the wilderness They presently saw a town before them and the name of that town is Vanity and at the town There is a fair kept called Vanity Fair It is kept all the year long it beareth the name of Vanity Fair because the town where it is kept is lighter than Vanity and Also because all that is there sold or that cometh thither is Vanity as is the saying of the wise All that cometh is Vanity end quote and Thackeray chose this phrase which would have been very familiar to his readers for the title of his story about Contemporary English society. So the title itself is a pretty strong satirical jab and when Robert Bell an Irish writer with whom Thackeray would later become such good friends that the two would end up buried near one another in Kensal Green Cemetery Bell said that Vanity Fair could have benefited from Quote more light and air and quote so it would have been quote more agreeable and healthy end quote Thackeray answered this by quoting Evangelist who is a character in pilgrims progress? He quotes what evangelist says when they enter Vanity Fair quote The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it end quote and this framing makes Vanity Fair an effective meta novel on the one hand you have it set up with the title within this context of Christianity and the world and worldly life being transient and it being Vanity to be too much caught up in it to be too attached to the world and then he takes that a step further by Actually framing the story as a puppet show at Vanity Fair The very beginning of the story opens that way with a preface the very end Closes with a reminder that that's how it was set up and the characters in the story are not described as puppets You read them like you would characters in any novel Except that in a way they are puppets that Thackeray is making to talk and you are watching them While you are sitting in Vanity Fair his readers at the time would have been reading this story in a newspaper and talking about it and we're reading it in a Slightly but not qualitatively different context We are sitting on the benches in Vanity Fair watching this puppet show when we read this book and plenty of people liketo read about 19th century England but the group of people who will work their way through 900 pages of 19th century England is much smaller and the people who might see Vanity Fair on the shelf at the bookstore and pick it up because they recognize the name might then be discouraged by the size of it and they might say well this is just a drama about what was going on in 19th century England that time has come and gone I'm too busy with the hustle and bustle of my own life to read such a big book on such a topic and yet that is the point of the book I don't know that Thackeray thought that people would still be reading this book 170 years later but your disinclination to read Vanity Fair reflects that you are in it you are caught up in your own life you think that other things you're doing are very important and you're rushing around doing them you think that the dramas of your life are much more important than the dramas of the early and middle 19th century why because you're still alive someday you won't be and I wouldn't say that everybody should set aside time and read this large book nor that absolutely everything is vanity one of the main characters of this book is a particular kind of social climber and one of the main messages of the book is arguably to avoid that kind of vanity but it's definitely worthwhile to take every opportunity that you can to try to purge your life of vanities and to focus on what matters when you look at your own life and say what are the vanities in my life you can readily find things to which you give all kinds of time and attention and emotional energy that never mind that they won't matter when you're dead they're not even going to matter in a month so never mind that someone else might disagree with you once you've organized your life in some much more sensible way you wouldn't even agree with your own life right now strengthening your family building your community contributing developing a skill that helps you to do those things more effectively building towards something greater that will outlive you might be one way to look at that and that might even be how you define what matters how you decide what's valuable and somebody else might not think that that matters but if you figure out for yourself what you think matters and try to arrange your time and attention accordingly you will at least be consistent with yourself because the troubling thing is when you ask this question when you look at your own life and try to figure out what vanities are in there that you could eject and get rid of without any loss you find all kinds of things that you wouldn't even insist on there might be certain things that you would say no this is important and somebody else would say no that doesn't matter but there are other things that you wouldn't even say that they're important but you do them a lot you give a lot of time and energy and attention to them so before getting to a big philosophical argument about what constitutes vanity a book like vanity fair is at least a reminder to look through your own life for things that everyone would agree are vanity or almost everyone and this also is not a case for living as a hermit in the woods and meditating all day i wouldn't necessarily be opposed to someone doing that but i don't think that that's the pinnacle of what people can do for example while our own individual death is completely certain it's the only thing that's certain that one day you will die our collective death is not certain or at least the time scale of it is not certain it might be that that situation that hg wells describes in the time machine where he goes way forward in time and there's nothing left on earth and the earth isn't even rotating anymore the sun just sits fixed because the earth has stopped moving or the heat death of the universe or whatever might guarantee that there will be an end of the human species but we don't know when it's going to be and it could be in a thousand years or it could be in a billion years maybe it could be in 20 billion years obviously 20 billion years from now we will be something radically different from what we are now if we're still around but for all of our medicine the maximum human lifespan has not changed very much there's a pretty clear cap on that but the lifespan of the species is not like that at all so while getting too excited about your own beauty or knowledge or strength or money or status might well be vanity it's much more difficult to argue that working collectively for your people for your community for future generations even for the strength and well-being and clarity of mind of the people around you is vanity and in this way the question of individualism and collectivism takes on a spiritual dimension on the one hand in 21st century western culture at least in american culture individualism is seen as a good word and collectivism is a word that's so bad that it's not spoken very often and i'm not at all talking about a soviet style collectivismThe fact is that as individuals we die, but collectively we might go on in some way. This is not a way to try to get around death. I think that you can get a lot of spiritual energy from contemplating death and acknowledging it and looking at it right in the face. So this is not a way to try to avoid death or pretend it doesn't exist. But on the one hand, we have in the 21st century a lot of nihilism because of basically the loss of religion. People say, if I'm going to die, who cares about X, Y, or Z? And on the other hand, we have a heavy cultural focus on individualism. And this balance between collectivism and individualism matters a lot, and we want to get it right. And if somebody's having fun as an individualist nihilist or a nihilist individualist, then I guess let them do it. But if you're not having fun, and it seems like lots of people these days are not having fun and they're expressing their not having fun in a lot of different ways, one answer to that might be this notion of planting a tree in the shade of which you will never sit. And this also doesn't only have to be work that goes into the future, but it can be genuine work that goes, the word I'm thinking of is horizontally rather than vertically. It can be for the people around you, for the community. And now we can get into some passages from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. One of the things that's enjoyable about this book is the deadpan humor that runs throughout it. And also how Thackeray is often criticizing or satirizing not only the characters in the story, but the reader. He'll turn around and say something to you, or he'll break the fourth wall and acknowledge that he's writing a book and you're reading it. At one point, relatively early on, he writes, quote, all which details I have no doubt Jones, who reads this book at his club will pronounce to be excessively foolish, trivial, twaddling, and ultra sentimental. Yes, I can see Jones at this minute, rather flushed with his joint of mutton and half pint of wine, taking out his pencil and scoring under the words foolish, twaddling, et cetera. And adding to them his own remark of quite true, well, he is a lofty man of genius and admires the great and heroic in life and novels. And so had better take warning and go elsewhere, end quote. There are a number of funny reflections on women, and I think he's exaggerating a little bit here, but he puts it in a funny way. He writes, quote, what a mercy it is that these women do not exercise their powers oftener. We can't resist them if they do. Let them show ever so little inclination and men go down on their knees at once. Old or ugly, it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities and without an absolute hump may marry whom she likes. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did, end quote. Here in a couple lines, he's encouraging people to leave children alone, to stop badgering them and telling them to think in a certain way. And the reason he gives is that the thoughts of children, he says they are far more beautiful and sacred than the thoughts of somebody who is dull and world corrupted, meaning an adult. And I don't think he's only talking about a little kid encountering whatever snow for the first time, being special because it's the first time they've experienced snow, though I guess he might be talking about that as well. I think he's also talking about this thing where little kids will suddenly say something very weird or interesting, or they'll make some unstained observation and then compare those thoughts of a little kid with whatever sludge is moving around in the head of a dull and world corrupted person, of somebody who's an adult and can only think about the world in a very narrow way that mostly has to do with their own benefit. Thackeray writes, quote, if people would but leave children to themselves, if teachers would cease to bully them, if parents would not insist upon directing their thoughts and dominating their feelings, those feelings and thoughts which are a mystery to all. For how much do you and I know of each other, of our children, of our fathers, of our neighbor, and how far more beautiful and sacred are the thoughts of the poor lad or girl whom you govern likely to be than those of the dull and world corrupted person who rules them, end quote. In this next passage he's again talking about the story that he's writing and saying he knows that it's very ordinary. Some friends are going to dinner in Vauxhall, which is a district in London, that came up I think when we were looking at John Keats, but here it is again, and he says, I could have made this story more genteel, more upper class and have it be set here and do it this way, or I could have made it more madcap and had some jokes about a chambermaid, or I could have had there be burglars breaking into the house and it would be very exciting. But I wrote the story this way, and he winds up with a very nice observation. But also I think here he's saying that heDeliberately chose to write this book and this story in general the way that he did so that it would be realistic so that it Would be ordinary in a certain way He's saying I know I could have written a different story that had these different traits and you guys would be eating it up But I consciously did it this way. He writes quote I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one Although there are some terrific chapters coming presently and must beg the good-natured reader to remember that we are only Discoursing at present about a stockbroker's family in Russell Square who are taking walks or luncheon or dinner Or talking and making love as people do in common life and without a single Passionate and wonderful incident to mark the progress of their loves the argument stands thus Osborne in love with Amelia has asked an old friend to dinner at Vauxhall Joss Sedley is in love with Rebecca. Will he marry her? This is the great subject now in hand We might have treated this subject in the genteel or in the romantic or in the facetious manner Suppose we had laid the scene in Grosvenor Square with the very same adventures would not some people have listened? Suppose we had shown how Lord Joseph Sedley fell in love and the Marquis of Osborne became attached to Lady Amelia with the full consent Of the Duke her noble father or instead of the supremely genteel suppose We had retorted to the entirely low and described what was going on in mr. Sedley's kitchen how black Sambo was in love with the cook as indeed he was and how he fought a battle with the coachman in Her behalf how the knife boy was caught stealing a cold shoulder of mutton and miss Sedley's new chambermaid refused to go to bed without a wax candle such incidents might be made to provoke much delightful laughter and be supposed to represent scenes of life or if on the contrary we had taken a fancy for the terrible and Made the lover of the new chambermaid a professional burglar who bursts into the house with his band Slaughters black Sambo at the feet of his master and carries off Amelia in her nightgown not to be let loose again till the third Volume we should easily have constructed a tale of thrilling interest through the fiery chapters of which the reader should hurry Panting but my readers must hope for no such romance Only a homely story and must be content with a chapter about Vauxhall Which is so short that it's scarce deserves to be called a chapter at all and yet it is a chapter and a very important One to are not there little chapters in everybody's life That seemed to be nothing and yet affect all the rest of the history and this next one continues along that same line talking about how Something apparently small can affect the course of your whole life and this passage mentions the fair Rosamond which is a reference to Rosamond Clifford a 12th century English noblewoman who was mistress to King Henry the second and was reportedly one of the most beautiful women around at the time and the folklore is that Henry the second's wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine who is significant in her own right forced Rosamond to kill herself either with a dagger or by drinking poison and Rosamond chose the poison That's what Thackeray references here And he also mentions John Lemperey who was a scholar and lexicographer from that time Thackeray writes quote the two couples were perfectly happy then in their box where the most delightful and intimate conversation took place Jost was in his glory ordering about the waiters with great majesty He made the salad and uncorked the champagne and carved the chickens and ate and drank the greater part of the refreshments on the tables Finally, he insisted upon having a bowl of rack punch Everybody had rack punch at Vauxhall waiter rack punch that bowl of rack punch was the cause of all this history And why not a bowl of rack punch as well as any other cause? Was not a bowl of prussic acid the cause of fair Rosamond's retiring from the world? Was not a bowl of wine the cause of the demise of Alexander the Great or at least does not dr Lemperey say so? So did this bowl of rack punch influence the fates of all the principal characters in this novel without a hero which we are now Relating it influenced their life Although most of them did not taste a drop of it The young ladies did not drink it Osborne did not like it and the consequence was that Joe's that fat gourmand Drank up the whole contents of the bowl and the consequence of his drinking up the whole contents of the bowl was a liveliness Which at first was astonishing and then became almost painful For he talked and laughed so loud as to bring scores of listeners around the box much to the confusion of the innocent party within it and Volunteering to sing a song which he did in that maudlin high-key peculiar to gentlemen in an inebriated state He almost drew away the audience who were gathered round the musicians in the gilt scallop shell and received from his hearers a great deal Of applause and quote and here's a nice short passage about speaking the truth Thackery writes quote my kind reader will please to remember that this history has Vanity fair for a title and that vanity fair is a very vain Wicked foolish place full of all sorts of humbleand falsenesses and pretensions. And while the moralist, who is holding forth on the cover, an accurate portrait of your humble servant, professes to wear neither gown nor bands, but only the very same long-eared livery in which his congregation is arrayed, yet, look you, one is bound to speak the truth as far as one knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel hat, and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such an undertaking." The book doesn't directly talk about politics a lot, but in one spot, he's making fun of politicians, or at least one politician, whom he depicts as both corrupt and stupid. Thackeray writes, quote, What's the good of being in Parliament, he said, if you must pay your debts? Hence, indeed, his position as a senator was not a little useful to him. Vanity fair, vanity fair, here was a man who could not spell and did not care to read, who had the habits and the cunning of a boar, whose aim in life was petty-fogging, who never had a taste or emotion or enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul, and yet he had rank and honors and power somehow, and was a dignitary of the land and a pillar of the state. He was a high sheriff and rode in a golden coach. Great ministers and statesmen courted him, and in vanity fair, he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue, end quote. In this next passage, he's talking about how people treat older women with money differently, and this could be expanded to how some people are likely to treat anybody with money differently, but for some reason the kind of treatment that he's talking about seems to apply most readily to rich older women, and this passage is nice not only because he draws attention to and makes fun of the way that people do this, but also because he touches on some very subtle things. He gives very particular examples, and those examples might be a little bit different today, but some of them would be the same and nearly all of them would be similar, and there's a couple terms here that are a little unusual. One of them is lozenge, and a lozenge is a diamond shape in this context that refers to the coat of arms that would appear on a coach, that the coat of arms I think would be within the diamond shape on the shield or the escutcheon. I don't know. There's details of heraldry here, that I'm not sure about, but for our purposes it's enough to say that it's related to a coat of arms, and it might be specifically related to the coat of arms of a dowager, of a woman who has inherited a lot of money from her husband who has died, and he also uses the word rubber, which in this context means a round of a game. It might be bridge or wist, but it can also be cribbage or backgammon. So he's talking about a round of a game. Thackeray writes, Thackeray, and with perfect truth, I wish I had Miss McWhirter's signature to a check for 5,000 pounds. She wouldn't miss it, says your wife. She is my aunt, say you, in an easy, careless way when your friend asks if Miss McWhirter is any relative. Your wife is perpetually sending her little testimonies of affection. Your little girls work endless worsted baskets, cushions, and footstools for her. What a good fire there is in her room when she comes to pay you a visit, although your wife laces her stays without one. The house, during her stay, assumes a festive, neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other seasons. You yourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner and find yourself all of a sudden, though you invariably lose, very fond of a rubber. What good dinners you have. Game every day, Malmsy Madeira, and no end of fish from London. Even the servants in the kitchen share in the general prosperity, and somehow, during the stay of Miss McWhirter's fat coachman, the beer is grown much stronger, and the consumption of tea and sugar in the nursery, where her maid takes her meals, is not regarded in the least. Is it so, or is it not so? I appeal to the middle classes. Ah, gracious powers, I wish you would send me an old aunt, a maiden aunt, an aunt with a lozenge on her carriage, and a front of light coffee-colored hair. How my children should work work bags for her, and my Julia and I would make her comfortable." And again, passages like that, where he's talking about a character in the story, but then he's also talking about himself, and he's also talking about you, it reminds you that we are in Vanity Fair, that that's a general or the general message of the book. You are in this environment that he's describing. And in that passage, he's talking about the pull of money, the attraction of money, and its power to make you actin a certain way toward somebody, toward a rich old woman, for example. And in this next passage, he's talking about the opposite effect, though this appears much later, the power of money to divide people, even brothers. And he uses the word reversionary, which is a legal term referring to basically the inheritance of property after someone has died. Thackeray writes, quote, these money transactions, these speculations in life and death, these silent battles for reversionary spoil, make brothers very loving towards each other in Vanity Fair. I, for my part, have known a five-pound note to interpose and knock up a half-century's attachment between two brethren, and can't but admire, as I think what a fine and durable thing love is among worldly people. End quote. In this next passage, he's talking about a character who really loves to talk about aristocrats. And he uses the word peerage, which is a book that lists these people of hereditary noble status and their family history, their lineage. And such a thing seems very foreign in the US. I imagine in the UK, it's still around, but it's not nearly as big a deal as it would have been in the 19th century. That is, there are still people who, if they meet somebody from the House of Lords, then they drop their name in conversation and try to propitiate them. But what we definitely have in place of that in the US and in the UK and pretty much anywhere in the world is people who would behave that way toward somebody high up in the political system. If they met a senator or a minister or secretary of something or other, they would behave the way that Thackeray describes here. He writes, quote, the old gentleman pronounced these aristocratic names with the greatest gusto. Whenever he met a great man, he groveled before him and my lorded him as only a freeborn Britain can do. He came home and looked out his history in the peerage. He introduced his name into daily conversation. He bragged about his lordship to his daughters. He fell down prostrate and basked in him as a Neapolitan beggar does in the sun. End quote. Talking about an old woman who's about to die, he writes, quote, the last scene of her dismal Vanity Fair comedy was fast approaching. The tawdry lamps were going out one by one and the dark curtain was almost ready to descend. End quote. And there are a few passages here about women that are interesting. The first one deals with long engagements and gives some advice to young women about getting married. And on the one hand, he's being a little bit cynical and sarcastic here, but he's also being realistic. Thackeray writes, quote, a long engagement is a partnership which one party is free to keep or to break, but which involves all the capital of the other. End quote. And what he means there is that in those days, if you were engaged for a long time, that wasn't a big deal for the man, but it would harm the reputation of the woman if the engagement didn't end in a marriage. Now back to the text, quote, Be cautious then, young ladies. Be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly. Never tell all you feel, or a better way still, feel very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselves married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and the confidants. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable or make any promises which you cannot at any required moment command and withdraw. That is the way to get on and be respected and have a virtuous character in vanity fair. End quote. And this next passage might annoy a certain kind of person, but let me read it first and then we can talk about it a little. Thackeray writes, quote, How the floodgates were opened and mother and daughter wept when they were together embracing each other in this sanctuary. May readily be imagined by every reader who possesses the least sentimental turn. When don't ladies weep? At what occasion of joy, sorrow, or other business of life, and after such an event as a marriage, mother and daughter were surely at liberty to give way to a sensibility which is as tender as it is refreshing. About a question of marriage, I have seen women who hate each other kiss and cry together quite fondly. How much more do they feel when they love? Good mothers are married over again at their daughter's weddings. And as for subsequent events, who does not know how ultra maternal grandmothers are? In fact, a woman, until she is a grandmother, does not often really know what to be a mother is. End quote. And here Thackeray is making an observation that should be uncontroversial, which is that women cry more often than men do. And somewhere along the way, stating this fact became controversial, or loaded somehow. But I think it's observably true, and I don't think it's because there's some artificial social pressure on men to withhold their emotions or something. My wife and I have talked about this. I really think that men and womenexperience emotions differently, and that women cry more often because they experience something that is more intense than what men experience. That men are a little bit dull in this particular way. Like if emotions were hearing, they would be a little bit deaf. So if a woman has a lot going on in her life that she's trying to balance and then suddenly she gets in a fight with a friend that she really likes and it all becomes too much and she cries about it, that's not because men and women would experience that sequence of events the same way and women just can't handle it. I think there's something about the intensity of that subjective experience for the woman that's qualitatively different than it is for the man on average. And of course, we have to footnote this as we would any similar conversation with a reminder that we're talking about bell curves. That if you imagine a graph and there's a line going along the bottom, which is intensity of subjective emotional experience, whatever exactly that might mean. On top of it, you would have two bell curves. One would be for the population of men, the other for the population of women, and they would overlap some, right? There would be some women who are less likely to cry and in my framing I'm saying are experiencing emotions with less intensity, though that's not perfect either, than some men. There would be some overlap in the lower tail of the women's bell curve and in the upper tail of the men's bell curve. And we could also debate how much the two bell curves would overlap. Would it be way out at the edges or would they overlap more than that? And with this model, you can say yes, obviously, there are many men who cry more than many women. We can accommodate that fact and acknowledge it while still saying overall there is a general pattern women cry more than men. And that's fine. To then immediately assume that crying is bad and women are weak because they do it is ironically a very male-centered way of looking at things. Thackeray says it's as tender as it is refreshing. This is a nice thing for women to do, of course, when they're crying because they're happy about something. And for whatever reason, stating this observable fact that, on the whole, women cry more than men is seen as anti-feminist. And it might well be anti-feminist if we're taking feminism to be the effort to make women more like men, which is what it often seems to be, whatever its claimed intentions may be. But to make this observation is in no way anti-woman. It's a neutral observation. If there were space aliens able to observe humanity as we go about our daily lives without our being aware of it, this is something that they would notice. The female cries more often than the male does. And yet somehow I can imagine that in a university discussion of this book, if anyone is still assigning it in the universities, some college student, male or female, would point to this passage as an example of sexism in Victorian society. And they might use a word like stereotyping. They're stereotyping women. Two things can be true at the same time. It might be the case that sometimes women are characterized in a certain way that doesn't apply to them individually, but that the stereotype still holds in the aggregate. And somehow we have to figure out how to have these two thoughts at the same time as a society, or else we're going to continue to be confused about many things. An individual exception does not disprove an aggregate pattern. And in a couple short passages about how women bully each other, Thackery writes, quote, women only know how to do so. There is a poison on the tips of their little shafts, which stings a thousand times more than a man's blunter weapon. Our poor Emmy, who had never hated, never sneered all her life, was powerless in the hands of her remorseless little enemy. And quote, and then much later in the book, quote, who has not seen how women bully women? What tortures have men to endure comparable to those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex? Poor victims, end quote. In this next passage, he's almost admitting defeat as a writer on this one point. He's describing something by not describing it, but he avoids describing it. He describes by not describing in a very nice way. He's talking about this ineffable quality that women can have that makes them so attractive to men, and that it can come through in a very unimportant moment when they're saying something innocuous. Thackeray writes, quote, her simple artless behavior and modest kindness of demeanor won all their unsophisticated hearts, all which simplicity and sweetness are quite impossible to describe in print. But who has not beheld these among women and recognized the presence of all sorts of qualities in them, even though they say no more to you than that they are engaged to dance the next quadrille, or that it is very hot weather, end quote. In this next passage, Thackeray is talking about how women will sometimes say that another woman must be dumb because she'sbeautiful. Or they'll criticize her in that way. And he gives his response. He writes, quote, A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips and sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. Oh, ladies, ladies, there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise, end quote. And if you haven't read this book yet, and it sounds like Thackeray is unduly criticizing women, remember that this is satire, that it's a general criticism of English society, and he has more than enough to give everyone a second helping. Here he is talking about men and courage. And this guy has been called off to war, and he just said a rather difficult goodbye to the lady in his life. Thackeray writes, Thank heaven that is over, George thought, bounding down the stair, his sword under his arm as he ran swiftly to the alarm ground where the regiment was mustered, and wither-trooped men and officers hurrying from their billets. His pulse was throbbing and his cheeks flushed. The great game of war was going to be played, and he one of the players. What a fierce excitement of doubt, hope, and pleasure. What tremendous hazards of loss and gain. What were all the games of chance he had ever played compared to this one? Into all contests requiring athletic skill and courage, the young man from his boyhood upwards had flung himself with all his might. The champion of his school and his regiment, the bravos of his companions had followed him everywhere. From the boys' cricket match to the garrison races, he had won a hundred of triumphs, and wherever he went, women and men had admired and envied him. What qualities are there for which a man gets so speedy a return of applause as those of bodily superiority, activity, and valor? Time out of mind, strength, and courage have been the theme of bards and romances, and from the story of Troy down to today poetry has always chosen a soldier for a hero. I wonder, is it because men are cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, and place military valor so far beyond every other quality for reward and worship?" And that's an interesting question. Are men cowards at heart? And is that why courage is valued the way that it is? And first, we have to figure out what we're talking about when we refer to courage in this context. And this isn't the 21st century individualistic courage to overcome your anxieties or something. Courage has been used to describe that. And in a way, if you're somebody who has a hard time speaking up in meetings and you get yourself to do that, that's one category of courage. And it's nice to encourage people to try to develop themselves in that way. But when we talk about a more civilization-sustaining courage, we're talking about significant sacrifice for the sake of the community, or at least the risk of that sacrifice. And in particular, we're talking about risking pain and usually death. So if you have a little village somewhere and a group of guys work really hard to repair the dike that's keeping away the flood, as we saw in The Rider on the White Horse, that's a kind of sacrifice. You're working hard, you're making yourself tired, and it's for the community so that the water doesn't come in and flood the community. But we wouldn't call that courage because it doesn't risk pain or death, really. But if a wild and hungry animal gets into your house and is clearly not interested in leaving, and you fight it off rather than ditching your friends and running out the back door, then that's courage because it risks some level of danger. And that example also shows that it doesn't necessarily have to be a military context, but when we're talking about top-tier courage, we're talking about risking pain and death. And this next concept came up a couple of weeks ago, but I may have left out a key component of it, so I'll go over it again briefly. One of my working assumptions when I look at society in the world is that the more prevalent a meme is across cultures, across time, across geography, the more likely it is to have some survival value, even if that value is not immediately obvious. And that's because if something, for example, like marriage, existed in East Asia and in Europe before these cultures had very much contact, it's likely that they developed independently. It wasn't a fashion that spread from one to the other, but there's some reason why this behavior emerged in both situations. Now, we might be left to speculate about why that is in any given case. So, if we take the example of marriage, we can see that Medieval East Asia and Medieval Europe both had marriage. Society basically only approves of sex between men and women and only in the context of marriage. Now, it's possible, though unlikely, that these two cultures could have developed independently to resemble each other by chance. It's possible, but it seems much less likely than there being some survival value to this cultural practice. As for specifically why that might be in any particular case...Case you have to try to look at it And of course this gets more blurry once different parts of the world have much more communication with each other because you could just have Imitation you have for example East Asians wanting to act more European Starting in the 19th century basically because that was high status because at that time Europeans had more wealth And so then you can't say that that's because wearing a necktie has survival value. Absolutely not That's not what I'm talking about wearing a necktie is an example of a meme that spread across the world by imitation Not because it had some kind of survival value in a range of different human societies but by the way, this view that I'm articulating is an answer to this very modern and very popular view of tradition as people simply imitating each other because Somebody initially did something or some strong guy said here's how we're gonna do this and a thousand years later We're still doing it. There are certain traditions that fall into that category Singing Silent Night at Christmas time arguably fits into that category I think more broadly singing carols at holidays is conducive to a sense of community that does have a survival value But first of all, it doesn't have to be any particular Carol necessarily Though it does matter what values and memes the Carol is instilling in the people singing and listening to it but also if we were to create a hierarchy of how universal certain memes are the meme of Singing carols around holy days is not nearly as universal as the meme of marriage For example, I don't think in East Asia they sing carols around holy days at all though maybe they do so the argument against certain traditional memes is made by grouping everything in that hierarchy as if it were the lowest level of Universality that marriage between a man and a woman is as transient and arbitrary as Trick-or-treating on Halloween and these are not in the same category at all. Now we can bring it back to Thackery talking about courage it's possible that courage this kind of self-sacrifice for the sake of the community is the subject of poems and It's something that society and men value and idealize both because it is often very Valuable and necessary for the community There are often situations in which the survival of the community depends on the courage of the members in it whether it be settlers in North America dealing with a pack of wolves or with Fighting the army of a neighboring country or city, but also men don't want to do it on the whole It's not fun to be seriously injured and it's not much fun to die either But it is something that stoked across time and across cultures as far back as the Iliad Which is 8th century BC and as far across as the medieval Japanese epic the tale of Heike Because it's valuable to the community or even more So the average level of the courage of the men in the community However, you could measure such a thing is a prerequisite to its survival and that average level of courage is something that's easy to lower And not that easy to raise in part because as Thackery speculates men are probably naturally cowards And by that I just mean they'd rather not risk death or pain, but it's often necessary that they do And so this is all theoretical and conjecture But you have some relationship between the ubiquity and the necessity Anyway let's get back to the book and read a few more passages the book overlaps with the period of the Napoleonic Wars in the beginning of the 19th century and at one point the characters are in Brussels and it becomes clear that the English have suffered a defeat nearby and the French army is presumably now marching toward the city and Everyone goes into a panic and this passage stood out to me because we see often in movies some fictional setting in which people are going crazy in a city because there's a meteor coming or Zombies or something and the city is overturned But here we have a description of something that while this particular example is fictionalized This is certainly something that happened hundreds if not thousands of times throughout the history of Europe That is the people in the town or the city get news that some army is heading toward them and they don't know exactly what's Gonna happen when the army gets there, but it's probably gonna be bad Thackery writes quote Joseph's spirits rose with his meal He would drink the regiment's health or indeed take any other excuse to indulge in a glass of champagne We'll drink to O'Dowd said he bowing gallantly to his guests. Hey miss O'Dowd fill miss O'Dowd's glass Isidore But all of a sudden is it or started and the majors wife laid down her knife and fork the windows of the room were Open and looked southward and a dull distant sound came over the sunlighted roofs from that direction. What is it said Joss? Why don't you pour you rascal sis left you said Isidore running to the balcony God defend us It's canon miss O'Dowd cried starting up and followed to to the window a thousandpale and anxious faces might have been seen looking from other casements, and presently it seemed as if the whole population of the city rushed into the streets. We of peaceful London City have never beheld and please God never shall witness such a scene of hurry and alarm as that which Brussels presented. Crowds rushed to the Namur Gate from which direction the noise proceeded, and many rode along the level chasse to be in advance of any intelligence from the army. Each man asked his neighbor for news, and even great English lords and ladies condescended to speak to persons whom they did not know. The friends of the French went abroad, wild with excitement, and prophesying the triumph of their emperor. The merchants closed their shops and came out to swell the general chorus of alarm and clamor. Women rushed to the churches and crowded the chapels and knelt and prayed on the flags and steps. The dull sound of the cannon went on rolling, rolling." And this next passage uses a couple of unusual words. One is a brouham, which is a type of carriage, and the other is repast, which is a word for a meal or a big feast. And he refers here to an ancient Egyptian practice of having parties, but having a skeleton on display somewhere at the party as a memento mori. I had heard of it as being a whole skeleton. He says death's head, which I guess is just a skull, but maybe it could have been either. And he makes an interesting comparison. He writes, "'An article is necessary to a lady in this position as her brouham, or her bouquet, is her companion. I have always admired the way in which the tender creatures who cannot exist without sympathy hire an exceedingly plain friend of their own sex from whom they are almost inseparable. The sight of that inevitable woman in her faded gown seated behind her dear friend in the opera box, or occupying the back seat of the barouche, is almost a wholesome and moral one to me, as jolly a reminder as that of the death's head which figured in the repast of Egyptian bon vivants, a strange sardonic memorial of vanity fair." So he's saying first that women like to have a friend who's not as pretty as them in order to make them look better by comparison. And then he says seeing this plainer woman sitting next to the prettier one is like the skeleton at the Egyptian party. It's somehow a reminder. And this next one is a bit lighter. This is something that I think all of us can at least relate to a little bit. Thackeray writes, quote, Pitt meanwhile in the dining room with a pamphlet on the Corn Laws or a missionary register by his side took that kind of recreation which suits romantic and unromantic men after dinner. He sipped Madeira, built castles in the air, thought himself a fine fellow, felt himself much more in love with Jane than he had been any time these seven years, during which their liaison had lasted without the slightest impatience on Pitt's part, and slept a good deal, end quote. And we'll close out with this last one, which is also a little bit longer. And he's talking about the staircase in a house and all of the different things that happen on the staircase, all of the people who go up and down it for different reasons at different times, and how this is a kind of reflection of all of life. Let's look at it first and we can talk about it a little after. Thackeray writes, quote, that second floor arch in a London house looking up and down the well of the staircase and commanding the main thoroughfare by which the inhabitants are passing, by which cook lurks down before daylight to scour her pots and pans in the kitchen, by which young master stealthily ascends having left his boots in the hall and let himself in after dawn from a jolly night at the club, down which miss comes rustling in fresh ribbons and spreading muslins brilliant and beautiful and prepared for conquest in the ball, or master Tommy slides preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance and disdaining danger in the stair, down which the mother is fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's arms as he steps steadily step by step and followed by the monthly nurse on the day when the medical man has pronounced that the charming patient may go upstairs, up which John lurks to bed yawning with a sputtering tallow candle and to gather up before sunrise the boots which are awaiting him in the passages, that stair up or down which babies are carried, old people are helped, guests are marshaled to the ball, the parson walks to the christening, the doctor to the sick room, and the undertaker's men to the upper floor, what a memento of life, death, and vanity it is that arch and stair if you choose to consider it and sit on the landing looking up and down the well end quote, and maybe there isn't a staircase where you live but for you the staircase might be something else, some place in your house, the driveway, the front door, the living room, the kitchen, in which over a long period of time lots of different things with lots of different people will play out or have played out and you can imagine all of those people all those events everybody doing different things going by in front of your eyes or maybe you can't imagine them because you don't know quite who or what they are yet and Thackeray says this is an image of life, death, and vanity and one of the interesting things about this novel maybe one of the central messages of it is though the message is that it's all vanity which can be kind of a grim message it's a veryfun novel. It's big, but it's easy to keep reading it. And indeed, in another place, Thackeray writes, quote, it is all vanity to be sure, but who will not own to liking a little of it? I should like to know what well constituted mind merely because it is transitory dislikes roast beef, end quote. And this is the paradox, isn't it? Even if we know on a philosophical level that it's evanescent, that it's ephemeral, that it's transient, that the wise response to anything good or bad is to have no reaction, we still get caught up in it. We're enchanted by it. We're distressed by it. And that's the state we're in living in vanity fair. And those were some of the portions that I would have liked to show you. If you enjoyed this podcast, I hope you will send it to a friend who you think will enjoy it as well and head over to my website, vollrathpublishing.com. The link is in the description. Do yourself and your bookshelf a favor and do your part to support independent publishing and pick up some books for yourself, for your friends, for your family. Farewell until next time. Take care.