History in the Novel Vanity Fair

History in the Novel There is a strong sense of history which pervades Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. The novel opens with; “while the present century was still in it’s teens” and this not only places the story firmly in the history and society of the early 19th century, but also introduces the idea of ‘looking back’, both on behalf of the reader and the narrator. The peculiar use of the word “teens” immediately creates …

…Thackeray’s “Novel Without a Hero” in that she fights against history and society, and claws out for herself a place in the sun: “She never was Lady Crawley, though she continued so to call herself.” Because of the novel’s unique relation to reality, and the characters and events of the novel are submerged in ’history’, all novels are in part historical novels, and part of the characteristic method of the novel is historical.