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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
To one who would explore the range and variety of fictional technique, the Victorian novel presents an infinite resource. It shows us novelists in the exciting awareness of a new literary genre shaping under their hands, aware of a vast new audience to whom they could appeal. They write often uninhibited by conscious theories of technique; they write with gusto and with what Edith Wharton once called the true mark of vocation in any art—abundance.
1 See Lionel Stevenson, “The Second Birth of the English Novel,” UTQ, xiv (July 1945), 366-374.
2 The Writing of Fiction (New York, 1925), p. 77.
3 “Point of View in Dickens,” PMLA, lxv (March 1950), 90-105.
4 See, for Dickens, Gerald G. Grubb, “Dickens' Pattern of Weekly Serialization,” ELH, ix (June 1942), 141-156; John Butt, “The Composition of David Copperfield,” Dickensian, xlvi (1950), 90-94, 128-135, 176-180; xlvii (1950-51), 33-38; for Meredith, Royal A. Gettmann, “Serialization and Evan Harrington,” PMLA, lxiv (Dec. 1949), 963-975; for Reade, Royal A. Gettmann, “The Serialization of Reade's ‘A Good Fight’,” NCF, vi (June 1951), 21-32; for Hardy, Mary Ellen Chase, Thomas Hardy from Serial to Novel (Minneapolis, 1927).
5 Such a study has not previously been made of Thackeray's fiction as a whole. Two valuable detailed analyses have been made of Vanity Fair: Ludwig Baucke, Die Erzählkunst in Thackerays “Vanity Fair” (Hamburg, 1932), and Erwin Walter, Entstehungsgeschichte von W. M. Thackerays “Vanity Fair” (Berlin, 1908).
6 Percy Lubbock, The Craft of Fiction (New York, 1945), pp. 108-109. Cf. Edwin Muir, The Structure of the Novel (London, 1946), p. 68.
7 The totals for the other important novels are: Barry Lyndon (1844), no major and 16 minor; Pendennis (1848-50), 13 major and 34 minor; Henry Esmond (1852), 2 major and 9 minor; The Newcomes (1853-55), 11 major and 38 minor; Philip (1861-62), 2 major and 47 minor. It goes without saying that in the course of these free redoublings Thackeray often falls into chronological discrepancies. W. A. Hirst to the contrary (“The Chronology in Thackeray's Novels,” Cornhill Mag., lxvii N. S., 553-563), there are clear errors in chronology in all Thackeray's major novels, with the exception of the fragment Denis Duval. Hirst himself provides more specific evidence against his thesis of “exquisite chronological accuracy” than he does for it.
8 Examples of apparently random redoubling appear in The Virginians, Ch. xcii, pp. 792-793; Philip, Ch. xxi, p. 349; Denis Duval, Ch. v, pp. 503-505; and indeed in all Thackeray's fiction. (Page references throughout this article refer to the Biographical Edition of The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Anne Ritchie, 13 vols., New York, 1903.)
9 The most specific recognition I have found of this technical problem by a Victorian novelist is Anthony Trollope's, in the opening paragraph of Is He Popenjoy? (1878).
10 The Virginians varies slightly from the pattern in that two chapters are employed in the initial scene instead of one. Thackeray first used this method of commencing a story in The Bedford-Row Conspiracy (1840). Significantly, neither the opening scene nor the consequent redoubling is present in the French source for this story, Charles de Bernard's Le pied d'argile.
11 A Consideration of Thackeray (London, 1936), p. 180. J. Y. T. Greig (Thackeray: A Reconsideration, New York, 1950, p. 112) fails to recognize the technical necessity of this device.
12 Notably in “On a Peal of Bells,” in Roundabout Papers. See also his letter to Mrs. Baxter, 10-23 April 1858, in Gordon N. Ray, ed. The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), iv, 80.
13 Dickens also realized the importance of winning the reader's interest with the opening of the novel: “If you do not fix the people in the beginning, it is almost impossible to fix them afterwards” (Nonesuch Letters, iii, 187).
14 Vanity Fair, Ch. xxxiv, p. 324.
15 It does so in Chs. xxxiv (pp. 334-336) and xxxv (pp. 336-346).
16 Occasionally Thackeray makes deliberate acknowledgment of this device. See Pendennis, Ch. vii, p. 72; Virginians, Ch. lxx, p. 596; Denis Duval, Ch. i, p. 448. To a degree, some such redoubling is inevitable in narrative which aims to portray complex social history. “Narrative,” as Carlyle observed, “is linear, Action is solid” (“On History,” in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, London, 1869, ii, 351). The distinguishing traits of Thackeray's method are the complexity of the social fabric he portrays (see pp. 397-398) and his readiness to give prominence to many different strands of it.
17 See n. 7, above.
18 The influence of parts-publication on Thackeray's work as a whole has not previously been considered. Erwin Walter (see n. 5) on p. 133 touches briefly on the problem as it relates to Vanity Fair.
19 See examples at the conclusions of No. xvi (Ch. lvi) of Vanity Fair, and No. xi (Ch. xxxv) of Newcomes.
20 The conclusions of Virginians, No. xii (Ch. xlviii), and Vanity Fair, No. ix (Ch. xxxii), respectively.
21 The same principle was recognized by Dickens (Butt, “The Composition of David Copperfield,” Dickensian, xlvi [Spring 1950], 92), Meredith (Gettmann, “Serialization and Evan Harrington,” PMLA, lxiv, 973), and Reade (Gettmann, “The Serialization of Reade's ‘A Good Fight’,” NCF, vi, 28).
22 See, e.g., John W. Dodds, Thackeray: A Critical Portrait (New York, 1941), p. 164.
23 Nos. vii (Chs. xxi-xxiii), ix (Chs. xxvii-xxix), x (Chs. xxx-xxxii), and xvii (Chs. liii-lv)—chapter numbers given as in first edition. Thackeray's illness and the consequent lapse of several months in the publication of Pendennis, and his acknowledged weariness with the story (Lionel Stevenson, The Showman of Vanity Fair, New York, 1947, p. 154) may possibly have led him to plan the novel in larger sections, rather than in parts.
24 There are many exceptions to this pattern, for example in the sequence of Nos. vi (Chs. xviii-xx) and vii (Chs. xxi-xxiii) of the first edition of Pendennis.
25 Harry Warrington's proposal of marriage to Maria Castlewood is by-passed in the same way. Virginians, Chs. xviii and xxxvi.
26 Ch. xxv, p. 230. There are no grounds for Mr. Greig's implication (p. 116) that a chapter “chronologically misplaced” in Thackeray is therefore “probably an afterthought.”
27 Redoublings of this type are most numerous in Vanity Fair, but play a major part in the narrative technique of Barry Lyndon, Pendennis, and Virginians. They are least apparent in Esmond and Philip.
28 “William Makepeace Thackeray,” in Early Victorian Novelists (New York, 1935), p. 85. See also Dodds, p. 113.
29 See e.g. Philip, Chs. iii (pp. 121-125), xviii, xxi (pp. 360-361), xxiii (pp. 384-389). This type of redoubling to follow different scenes and characters is naturally encouraged when the characters are separated geographically, as when Dobbin is in India, Philip Firmin is in France, or Harry Warrington, in his later years, is in America.
30 Newcomes, Ch. xxxix, p. 408.
31 Philip, Ch. xxv, p. 402. The long sweep ahead to “after days” occurs most markedly in the three late novels, Virginians, Philip, and Denis Duval.
32 The Major is called on for further comments in Newcomes (Ch. xxiv, p. 240) and Philip (Ch. xiv, p. 259).
33 Virginians, Ch. xliv, p. 377. Imprisonments in Thackeray invariably bring on redoublings into the reactions of other characters; duels and threatened duels usually have the same effect.
34 Thackeray: The Sentimental Cynic (Evanston, Ill., 1950), p. 200. The quotation is from Thomas Carlyle.
35 The phrase is Greig's, Ch. xvi.
36 Ch. iv, pp. 490-491. Cf. Newcomes, Ch. xxiv, pp. 237-238.
37 Philip, Ch. xxxi, p. 486. Cf. Virginians, Ch. liii, p. 445.
38 Virginians, Ch. xliii, p. 363.
39 Boswell's Life of Johnson, entry for 6 July 1763.
40 Great Hoggarty Diamond, Ch. ix, p. 74,
41 Newcomes, Ch. xvi, p. 170.
42 Vanity Fair, Ch. li, p. 490.
43 Philip, Ch. xxiii, p. 375.
44 Here is the clearest critical distinction between Thackeray's work and Dickens'. Dickens' first advice to the would-be novelist was, “… the people should tell it and act it for themselves” (Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter, New York, 1879, ii, 292).
45 Page 94. Cf. Cecil, p. 98. The amount of narrative which receives some degree of scenic treatment is proportionately about equal in all of Thackeray's novels with the exception of Barry Lyndon and Philip, in both of which the proportion of the scenic is unusually high. The common assumption (e.g., Greig, p. 114) that the proportion of commentary to scene increased in Thackeray's later work is not borne out by the facts.
46 Such scenes grow perceptibly more numerous in the later novels. One suspects that it is in this increased appeal to melodramatic effect, rather than in his allegedly greater chattiness, that a falling off of Thackeray's creative power can be detected.
47 Pendennis, Ch. xxv. Cf. the close of Ch. xli, where there is a scene of plans and anticipations of a dinner-party at Greenwich, but the party itself is passed over in a sentence.
48 Vanity Fair, Ch. lv; Virginians, Ch. xi.
49 Esmond, Bk. i, Ch. xiv; Bk. ii, Ch. xv; Bk. iii, Ch. vi; Newcomes, Ch. xxxiv.
50 Denis Duval, Ch. iii. The most extensive duel-scenes in Thackeray appear in A Shabby Genteel Story, Ch. ix, and Barry Lyndon, Ch. ii; both duels turn out to have been faked.
51 Ravenswing, Ch. i, p. 373.
52 Virginians, Ch. lxiv, p. 551.
53 Philip, Ch. xvi, p. 298.
54 Newcomes, Ch. lxxx, p. 804.
55 Baucke (see n. 5), pp. 94-116, identifies some of the complex methods of scenic presentation used in Vanity Fair.
56 Esmond, Bk. ii, Ch. iii, p. 309.
57 See Ravenswing, Ch. vii, pp. 453-454; Barry Lyndon, Ch. xiii, p. 160; Newcomes, Ch. lxxiv, pp. 748-749.
58 One habitual quotation occurs earlier, in Catherine (1839-40), Ch. iv, p. 569.
59 The sequences at the openings of Chs. lxxi and lxxv of The Newcomes are peculiarly unsuccessful.
60 Newcomes, Ch. xxvi, pp. 262-265. The intermittent scene is used more frequently in The Newcomes than in any of the other novels,
61 “I know the sound of their voices,” Thackeray said of his characters when (in “De Finibus,” Roundabout Papers) he wished to show that he knew them utterly. It has not been sufficiently remarked that Thackeray's scenes generally are heard rather than visualized. Frequently he is content to use straight line-by-line dramatic dialogue in his scenes, without benefit of stage-directions.
62 See Shabby Genteel Story, Ch. iii, pp. 25-26; Philip, Ch. xxiii, p. 374; Newcomes, Ch. i, pp. 1-5.
63 See Newcomes, Ch. lix, p. 619; Ch. lxi, pp. 642-643; Virginians, Ch. xlii, pp. 353-354; Ch. lxii, p. 519.
64 See Barry Lyndon, Ch. iii, p. 43; Newcomes, Ch. lxxi, p. 726.
65 See Catherine, Ch. iv, p. 568; Pendennis, Ch. xv, p. 136; Philip, Ch. xvii, p. 296.
66 Vanity Fair, Ch. xxx, p. 279.
67 Newcomes, Ch. xxi, p. 203.
68 The same conclusion is suggested if one asks what sort of material normally demands scenic treatment in Thackeray's fiction. One finds that the majority of his scenes exist to illustrate an accent of speech, trait of character, or recurrent note of human vanity.
69 There are examples of changes of names in A Shabby Genteel Story and Philip, and in Vanity Fair; in Pendennis and Newcomes characters die, only to be revived later on. For Thackeray's confession of such blunders, see his Roundabout essay, “De Finibus,” and Ray, ii, 500, 685.
70 Notably, of course, in the last lines of Vanity Fair and in the Preface, “Before the Curtain,” to the first book-form edition. See also Philip, Ch. xlii, p. 620, the last paragraphs of Newcomes, and many other places in Thackeray's work.
71 The same can be said of a point advanced on the other side of this issue by Stevenson (p. 154), who regards Thackeray's “habit of carrying characters over from one story to another” as “evidence of the strong reality that his creations had in his imagination.” This does not necessarily follow; the carrying-over can be explained quite as satisfactorily in terms of Thackeray's often expressed loneliness and longing for companionship.
72 Pages 106-108. Lord David is thinking especially of Lady Castlewood in Esmond. Other characters deserving of such analysis are Morgan in Pendennis, Philip Firmin, and Lord Castlewood, Fanny Mountain, and the Baroness Bernstein in Virginians.
73 Gordon N. Ray (The Buried Life: A Study of the Relationship between Thackeray's Fiction and his Personal History, Cambridge, Mass., 1952) provides valuable biographical evidence to account for inconsistencies in several of Thackeray's major characterizations.
74 In this Thackeray is in clear contrast to Dickens, who (as Thackeray recognized and deplored—Ray, Letters, ii, 772) rejoices in depicting eccentricities.
75 Virginians, Ch. lxi, p. 513.
76 Lubbock, p. 101. That Thackeray was aware of the special power of the scene is evidenced by the fact that well over two-thirds of his chapters and monthly instalments conclude with a scene of some sort.