Chapter 11 Vanity Fair and Wuthering Heights

Now for two more novels: Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Emily Brontë's.Due to space constraints, I can't talk too much.Today's critics are mostly harsh on Thackeray.Maybe Thackeray was born in the wrong age. If he was born today, he would ignore the constraints of various Victorian traditions and write directly about reality, even if this reality is as painful as he sees it.His point of view is very novel, he deeply understands the mediocrity of human beings, and has a strong interest in various contradictions in human nature.However much you may dislike the pathos and sermons in his books, even if his underlying weakness makes him conform, there is no denying that Becky Sharp is the truest, most vivid, most powerful character in British fiction.

It is a unique work.The book is a bit tricky to read, as the potential for atrocities to occur at any moment leaves the reader overwhelmed.Yet it is passionate, deeply moving, and has poetic depth and power.Reading this book is not at all like reading a novel. No matter how immersive an ordinary novel is, you can remind yourself that this is just a story, but reading is a broken, wrenching experience of life. There are three more novels which it would be a pity not to read, but I have no space left for them other than to mention their names: George Eliot's Middlemarch, Trollope's Us The Teece Diamond, and Meredith's The Egoist.