Vanity Fair

Style and Technique

"Vanity Fair" is an epic novel written with sarcasm, irony, and social satire. William Makepeace Thackeray employs a wide array of literary devices to critique early 19th-century English society. The text features an omniscient narrator who comments on events and characters, often addressing the reader directly. This creates a sense of intimate "communication" with the narrator. Thackeray also uses contrast in depicting characters and their moral qualities to sharpen social criticism. The structure of the novel reflects a panorama of the time, intertwining the lives of the characters into a single narrative, allowing the author to expose the "vanity fair" of the world.