文档介绍：标题:Middle-Class Life in Vanity Fair
作者:John Peck
出版详细信息: English: The Journal of the English Association (Spring 1994): p1-16.
来源:Novels for Students. Ed. Elizabeth Thomason. Vol. 13. Detroit: Gale, 2002. From Literature Resource Center.
文章类型:Critical essay
全文: COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning
全文:
This revolting reflex of society is literally true enough. But it does not shew us the whole truth. Are there not women, even in Vanity Fair, capable of nobler things than are here set down for them? (Robert Bell. Fraser's Magazine, 1848)1. is there any women for nobeler things?
Everywhere we turn in the early reviews of Vanity Fair we encounter this kind of criticism; the reviewers are enthusiastic but appreciation of the brilliance of Thackeray's performance is always qualified by reservations about his view of human nature. Modern critics have, of course, moved beyond the moral quibbling evident in the early reviews. Essentially, criticism of the novel now follows one of three courses: there is appreciation of plexity of its moral and social vision, or praise for Thackeray's handling of the narrative voice, or, and perhaps most persuasively, a sense of the disturbing darkness of his vision. 对名利场的现状评论有三点:appreciation plexity of moral and social vision, praise for the handling of the narrative voice, a sense of the disturbing darkness of his vision.
There is no novel that thrusts us more quickly into a whole set of assumptions about class than Vanity Fair. By the end of the first scene we understand most of the niceties and pretensions of social gradation.
BarbaraThree approaches study Vanity Fair, highlighted.
Hardy, identifying Thackeray as a radical social critic, takes the first approach, seeing the novelist as a wise and concerned mentator. All of Gordon Ray's work on Thackeray, including his biography, was informed by just such a sense of the author's purpose and achievement. The second approach, focusing on the