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Acoustics in the Thackeray Theater

David Kurnick

in Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel

This chapter examines the tonal shifts of the narrative voice in Vanity Fair as encoding a yearning for public scenes of performance. Moving between public speechifying and chastened intimate ... More

This chapter examines the tonal shifts of the narrative voice in Vanity Fair as encoding a yearning for public scenes of performance. Moving between public speechifying and chastened intimate address, the Thackerayan narrator offers readers an acoustic map of different imaginary scenes of reception. The pitch of Thackeray's voice—both its tone and its reach, its sound and the spaces it organizes—indexes various fantasmatic scenes of readerly witness, conveying in the process a vivid sense of the erosion of public space in the face of the exaltation of the domestic sphere. The sociohistorical imagination evident in Vanity Fair was given a new intensity of focus in his unperformed play The Wolves and the Lamb (1854) and the novel into which he later adapted it, the formally innovative Lovel the Widower (1860). In retreating from the stage, Thackeray both amplified his critique of mid-Victorian domesticity and pioneered the practice of interior monologue.Less

Some Blunders

Kent Puckett

in Bad Form: Social Mistakes and the Nineteenth-Century Novel

This chapter begins by looking at the social mistake in relation both to the novel and to the rather sudden appearance of the etiquette book in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. While ... More

This chapter begins by looking at the social mistake in relation both to the novel and to the rather sudden appearance of the etiquette book in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. While there had long been other works on manners—courtesy manuals, conduct books, etc.—the etiquette book differed from what came before because it made its case for of good form without offering the reader a stable ethical ideal. In the absence of shared social or cultural ends, the mistake emerges as an object that is at once reliable and disturbing. Then, in the context readings of eating peas with your knife in Thackeray and pointing at people in Balzac, the chapter develops a psychoanalytically inflected theory of the social mistake both in general and in relation to the particular form of the nineteenth-century novel.Less

The Sounds of Silence: W. M. Thackeray and Preston Sturges

in Better Left Unsaid: Victorian Novels, Hays Code Films, and the Benefits of Censorship

This chapter examines the works of William Makepeace Thackeray and Preston Sturges, two artists who share a penchant for thematizing the subject of scandal (and, by extension, the subject of ... More

This chapter examines the works of William Makepeace Thackeray and Preston Sturges, two artists who share a penchant for thematizing the subject of scandal (and, by extension, the subject of censorship) throughout the course of their storytelling. Focusing on their most scandal-ridden texts, Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848) and Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941), it discusses the ways in which the authors harness the perverse powers of the logic of scandal to their own artistic advantage. By repeatedly pointing out to their audiences all the things that they, in the name of propriety, should not and will not say, Thackeray and Sturges are simultaneously able to condemn, ridicule, and appease the more squeamish and conservative members of those audiences. Throughout their respective works, words and images are played off one another in a well-orchestrated juggling act that allows the artists to show us that which they “cannot” tell us, and that which they “cannot” show.Less

Interiority and Its Discontents

David Kurnick

in Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. The book considers the contribution of writers' theatrical ambitions to their invention of what by many accounts are among ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. The book considers the contribution of writers' theatrical ambitions to their invention of what by many accounts are among the most “novelistic,” and thus reputedly individualizing, of novels. It demonstrates that the novel's interior spaces are lined with longing references to the public worlds they would seem to have left behind. The book considers four would-be playwrights noted for their antitheatricality. From William Makepeace Thackeray's hatred of pretense and George Eliot's suspicion of vain women to Henry James's early diagnoses of the culture of publicity and James Joyce's contempt for Buck Mulligan's performative flourishes, these writers are capable of rhetorically employing “theater” as a synonym for everything they most despise.Less

At Home and Abroad in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction: From Vanity Fair to The Secret Agent

Patrick Parrinder

in Nation & Novel: The English Novel from its Origins to the Present Day

The chapter begins with a summary of the life of William Makepeace Thackeray and how he started writing novels. During his time, he wrote Vanity Fair, based in London, which was the centre of the ... More

The chapter begins with a summary of the life of William Makepeace Thackeray and how he started writing novels. During his time, he wrote Vanity Fair, based in London, which was the centre of the global economy and part of a large empire. The chapter also discusses in detail other novels written inthe Victorian and Edwardian periods. Insights about xenophobia are also contemplated through an analysis of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now and George Eliot's Deronda. A contrast of ideas can be spotted from the analysis: The Way We Live focuses on showing how the English nation degenerates at the hand of the foreigners. To show a contrast, the Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad is also elaborated in the chapter. Its dramatis personae are non-English characters.Less

Throwing Things in Thackeray

Jami Bartlett

in Object Lessons: The Novel As a Theory of Reference

This chapter argues that Thackeray devises a physical approach to reference in the world of the realist novel, and develops a theory of demonstrative identification that is nothing less than a ... More

This chapter argues that Thackeray devises a physical approach to reference in the world of the realist novel, and develops a theory of demonstrative identification that is nothing less than a motor-intentional philosophy of language. His novel Barry Lyndon is obsessed with lost objects, and with what one has in the losing of them. This chapter also shows how Thackeray uses the act of throwing objects as a bidirectional referential strategy, a tracking behavior that gets rid of an object in order to take meaning away from it. Barry’s frame of reference is constituted by these thrown objects: as they fly into the world, their trajectories allow its possibilities and restrictions to emerge. Because there are no intentional terminations in this novel—throwing isn’t a throwing-away—Barry’s attempts to reference, pick out, and hold on to the objects that ambiguously signify his narrative desire create arcs of beginning and ending that generate narrative through their attention to the physical distance between objects, characters, and plots.Less

Thackeray and the ‘Old Masters’

Leonée Ormond

in Translating Life: Studies in Transpositional Aesthetics

William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the great novelists of the Victorian period and a natural connoisseur of the fine arts. He introduced his knowledge of the fine arts into his novels, cognizant ... More

William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the great novelists of the Victorian period and a natural connoisseur of the fine arts. He introduced his knowledge of the fine arts into his novels, cognizant of the fact that certain painterly techniques could be translated directly into fiction. Thackeray was an absolute pre-Aesthetic writer who played a role in stimulating the Queen Anne revival, one of the most important movements in aesthetic taste. He made a number of copies of paintings by the Old Masters such as Titian, Pieter de Hooch and Gerard Terborch. Most of Thackeray's fictional references to the Old Masters can be found in The Newcomes, which he began publishing in 1853. In 1840, Thackeray was very impressed by Raphael's drawings which he saw in an exhibition, an experience that probably conditioned Clive Newcome's comment about works on ‘gray paper’.Less

Paleontology in Parts

Gowan Dawson

in Show Me the Bone: Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America

This chapter explores how the law of correlation became inextricably entwined with Victorian Britain’s most distinctive and prevalent mode of publication: serialization. Owen’s celebrated ... More

This chapter explores how the law of correlation became inextricably entwined with Victorian Britain’s most distinctive and prevalent mode of publication: serialization. Owen’s celebrated reconstructions of prehistoric creatures from just fragmentary parts were published sequentially in serial form, and rendered considerably more remarkable and compelling by the suspense and anticipation involved. Owen, at the same time, was particularly enthralled by the dynamics of serial fiction and his literary reading practices shed important light on his Cuvierian paleontological procedures. This connection between correlation and serialization was one that was also recognized by many of the leading serial novelists of the period including William Makepeace Thackeray and Henry James, who adopted metaphors from paleontology to describe their own authorial practices.Less

The Aftermath of the Hot Summer

Rosemary Ashton

in One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, and the Great Stink of 1858

This chapter details events that occurred after the summer of 1858. Among these is the fallout from the petty quarrel between Thackeray and Yates at the Garrick Club. In the fall of 1858, it was ... More

This chapter details events that occurred after the summer of 1858. Among these is the fallout from the petty quarrel between Thackeray and Yates at the Garrick Club. In the fall of 1858, it was announced in the press that Yates would bring a court case against the Garrick. On 17 November, the Morning Post obliged its readers by going over the whole affair, quoting from Yates' offending Town Talk article, from Thackeray's letter to Yates and the latter's reply, from both men's appeals to the committee of the Garrick, and from the committee's demand that Yates apologise to Thackeray. The remainder of the chapter covers Dickens's success and embarrassment, the end of the Robinson divorce case, and the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species.Less

July–August 1858

Rosemary Ashton

in One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, and the Great Stink of 1858

This chapter details events that occurred in London between July and August 1858. These include the absurdly magnified rift in the Garrick Club caused by the callow Edmund Yates's casually malicious ... More

This chapter details events that occurred in London between July and August 1858. These include the absurdly magnified rift in the Garrick Club caused by the callow Edmund Yates's casually malicious article on Thackeray. The main event in this saga occurred on 10 July, when the Garrick held a special meeting of its members to decide what to do about Yates. After much ado about not very much during the summer, the chief result was ‘the temporary estrangement of Mr Thackeray and Mr Dickens’. The remainder of the chapter describes Dickens's reading tour; the exploits of Dickens's minor character in A Tale of Two Cities, Mr Stryver; the continued press coverage of the Great Stink; and Disraeli's whitebait dinner.Less

Coda: Crocodile and Catawampus

Helen Moore

in Amadis in English: A Study in the Reading of Romance

Taking its cue from the Victorian periodical debates characterizing realism as a crocodile and romance as a monster or ‘catawampus’, this chapter examines the role played by Amadis in early ... More

Taking its cue from the Victorian periodical debates characterizing realism as a crocodile and romance as a monster or ‘catawampus’, this chapter examines the role played by Amadis in early discussions of what the novel was, or should be; how it had developed; and where its future direction lay. For literary historians, Amadis constituted a bridge between the newly constructed ‘medieval’ and the emergent ‘modern’. Philosopher-theorists (Bakhtin) and novelists (Nabokov) alike continued to be fascinated by the relationship of Amadis to Don Quixote and its implications for theories of the novel. Novelists themselves (Bulwer Lytton, Ouida, and Thackeray) enlisted Amadis in their critique of modern masculinity. The final iteration of Amadis in English takes the form of chivalric compilations and abridgements for children; this concluding transformation proves to be emblematic of the many varieties of cultural work into which romance can be enlisted.Less

May 1858

Rosemary Ashton

in One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, and the Great Stink of 1858

This chapter details events that occurred in London in the summer of 858. These include the rift between Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, which can be partially attributed to ... More

This chapter details events that occurred in London in the summer of 858. These include the rift between Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, which can be partially attributed to Dickens's much publicized separation from his wife and Thackeray's role in spreading rumours about the former's marriage troubles; and Benjamin Disraeli's political success stemming from his role in guiding the India Bill to completion, his widely acclaimed budget, and his swift management of the bill to clean up the Thames. The chapter also describes the Divorce Act, which was being tested in suits brought before the new Divorce Court during the spring and early summer of 1858. By the end of the year, 244 cases had been heard, and the general opinion was that the new law was a roaring success.Less

Gender Identities and Relationships

Kaplan Cora

in The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 3: The Nineteenth-Century Novel 1820-1880

This chapter examines representations of gender in the nineteenth century British novel. Nineteenth-century novels provided moralized narratives of gendered subjects and their relationships, and were ... More

This chapter examines representations of gender in the nineteenth century British novel. Nineteenth-century novels provided moralized narratives of gendered subjects and their relationships, and were a privileged space where ‘restlessness’ and ‘discontent’ were voiced. Novels also became the favoured site where impossible fantasies of identification and desire were regularly enacted. Realism and fantasy were always intertwined and interdependent in the representation of gender. However, as fiction began to favour greater psychological and social realism, the more central to the novel the register of gender in fantasy became. Novels such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Dickens's Dombey and Son (1846–8), and Thackeray's Vanity Fair raised more questions than they could answer about what was ‘customary’ and what was right in the making of gendered subjects.Less

Reimagining Music in Barry Lyndon

Kate McQuiston

in We'll Meet Again: Musical Design in the Films of Stanley Kubrick

Chapter 4 explores numerous steps and facets in Kubrick’s working process regarding music in Barry Lyndon, with special attention to the slow movement of Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat, op. ... More

Chapter 4 explores numerous steps and facets in Kubrick’s working process regarding music in Barry Lyndon, with special attention to the slow movement of Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat, op. 100, a work which Kubrick’s producer Jan Harlan recomposed and had re-recorded for the film. Schubert’s piece is also considered with relation to its status as a late-style work, a tack that views late style as both an articulation of the composer’s cognizance of mortality and an answer to it. This strategy emphasizes the role of Schubert’s music in the estrangement and ultimate destruction of the central characters.Less

• Appearance and Manner

Clive Brown

in A Portrait of Mendelssohn

As a child, Felix Mendelssohn seems to have attracted attention not only for his musical gifts but also for his manner and physical appearance. According to Mendelssohn's composition teacher Carl ... More

As a child, Felix Mendelssohn seems to have attracted attention not only for his musical gifts but also for his manner and physical appearance. According to Mendelssohn's composition teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, his pupil was “good and pretty, lively and obedient.” In the opinion of most of his contemporaries, Mendelssohn's portraits failed to convey the mercurial traits that often made his features fascinating and arresting. One of his closest English musical friends, William Sterndale Bennett, described Mendelssohn as having the appearance of an angel. William Makepeace Thackeray commented that “his face is the most beautiful face I ever saw...” whereas Richard Wagner claimed that he looked so fat and unpleasant. As he grew older, Mendelssohn apparently did not lose any of his physical attractiveness. Many noted the contrast between his slight build and his athleticism. Others, like George Grove and Bayard Taylor, admired his eyes. In the last few years of his life, however, Mendelssohn's features and bearing showed signs of strain.Less

Addison and the Victorians

Brian Young

in Joseph Addison: Tercentenary Essays

The masculine world of Addison’s eighteenth-century ‘republic of letters’ was mirrored by that inhabited by Victorian ‘Men of Letters’, and hence much of the lively interest taken in him by ... More

The masculine world of Addison’s eighteenth-century ‘republic of letters’ was mirrored by that inhabited by Victorian ‘Men of Letters’, and hence much of the lively interest taken in him by nineteenth-century cultural commentators and makers of (and historians of) public opinion. The agnostic manliness of such men as Leslie Stephen and W. J. Courthope informed the way they wrote about Addison, whose Christianity they tended to slight and who was described by them as ‘delicate’. Macaulay had been more admiring of Addison as a Christian gentleman, while Thackeray praised him as an English humorist. Pope and Swift continued to enjoy an ascendancy in eighteenth-century English literary history, with Addison and Steele appreciated more for having been ‘characteristic’ of their age than as acting in any way as intellectually innovative figures. Matthew Arnold was notably critical of Addison, whom he found provincial and narrow. Both Addison and his Victorian critics were subjected to feminist criticism by Virginia Woolf, who happened to be Stephen’s daughter, but she in her turn slighted the most significant early Victorian study of Addison, the life written by the Unitarian Lucy Aikin. The ‘long nineteenth century’ in the English literary history of the eighteenth century is thus bookended by studies of Addison by women, and it is time that justice was paid to Aikin’s pioneering and still valuable study, submerged as it has been by readers of Macaulay’s essay on Addison, which was ostensibly a review of Aikin’s exercise in literary biography.Less