30. Vanity Fair. - a podcast by Suzanne and Chris @ Megaphonic.fm

“I am alone in the world,” said the friendless girl. “I have nothing to look for but what my own labour can bring me; and while that little pink-faced chit Amelia, with not half my sense, has ten thousand pounds and an establishment secure, poor Rebecca (and my figure is far better than hers) has only herself and her own wits to trust to. Well, let us see if my wits cannot provide me with an honourable maintenance, and if some day or the other I cannot show Miss Amelia my real superiority over her. Not that I dislike poor Amelia: who can dislike such a harmless, good-natured creature?—only it will be a fine day when I can take my place above her in the world, as why, indeed, should I not?”

William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is a massive novel that follows the lives of two women: Amelia Sedley, who is naive and sweet and devoted, and Becky Sharp, who is cunning and manipulative and beautiful. But novel’s subtitle is “A Novel without a Hero”, and Thackeray doesn’t paint either woman as entirely good or entirely evil. And as their fortunes rise and fall, they offer a glimpse into the mercurial, ambitious, and often cruel world of Vanity Fair, in which everyone scrambles for money, power, and status, and for what? It’s a world that the narrator lampoons mercilessly while also participating in fully, and Chris and Suzanne start to unpack it—and talk about whether they’re #TeamBecky or #TeamAmelia. (Oh, come on, you know the answer to that one.)

Show Notes.

William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair. [Gutenberg. Librivox. Bookshop.]

Our episode on C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins.

John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress.

Our episode on Little Women.

Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy.

Also by Thackeray: The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon [and its film adaptation] and The History of Henry Esmond.

Becky Sharp (1935).

Speaking of that spicy meal that Becky can’t handle…

How a recent ITV adaptation of Vanity Fair dealt with the book’s racism.

On Mira Nair’s recent adaptation of the book into a movie.

Next episode: C.L.R. James: Beyond a Boundary. [Bookshop.]

Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon, if you can.

Further episodes of The Spouter-Inn; or, A Conversation with Great Books

Further podcasts by Suzanne and Chris @ Megaphonic.fm

Website of Suzanne and Chris @ Megaphonic.fm