History in the Novel Vanity Fair
There is a strong sense of history which pervades Thackeray's Vanity Fair. The novel opens with; "while the present century was still in it's teens" and this not only places the story firmly in the history and society of the early 19th century, but also introduces the idea of 'looking back', both on behalf of the reader and the narrator. The peculiar use of the word "teens" immediately creates connotations of youth, and thus the beginnings of a story rather than the end. It is a colloquial way of describing that period, suggesting the narrator's familiarity with that time, and this is borne out again and again by references to historical events; "while the army is marching from Flanders, and, after its heroic actions there, is advancing to take the fortifications on the frontiers of France, previous to an occupation of that country-" What makes Vanity Fair so tangibly 'historical' is the juxtaposition of people and events; their involvement in them, most obvious in the experiences of Rawdon, Dobbin, and George, but also their opinions of them; "Bonaparty was to be crushed almost without a struggle." This places both the characters and the story in an historical context which enriches the story- history is
Besides being a report on social reality the novel is a formal construction, and historical infidelity will reveal itself as internal contradiction (e.g the invincible refinement of Oliver Twist in spite of the surroundings in which he has been brought up). Internal inconsistencies may point to an unwillingness on the author's part to face certain social realities. But although it is the speciality of the novel to present its characters enmeshed in social circumstances, living in history, not in a fantasy extra-historical world, the novel also deals with the attempts of human beings to escape from history and social circumstances. The frequency of the theme of courtship in the novel is genetically a legacy from comedy and mediaeval romance; but it survives for another reason- because love is, for a time, a way out of history and social circumstances and the novel chooses to make it absolute by stopping at the moment of fulfilment. Though the interweaving of the story with actual historical events (most noticeably the tail-end of the Napoleonic Wars) is particularly striking in Vanity Fair, there are grounds for considering the novel a special case. It is its unique relation to reality that constitutes the speciality of the novel. This is a fundamental sort of distinction, and it seems to set the novel apart from most of the traditional kinds- comedy, tragedy, heroic poetry and pastoral, which each deal with a specific area of human experience. Novels cover a multitude of human experience, and this is achieved by including in the work the social and historical situation in which the characters find themselves, enriching our experience of their experiences. The novel doesn't deal with an area of experience
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1159
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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