A Classic Art Form: Nature and Function of a Tragedy - Essay Example

Nature and Function of a Tragedy in Vanity Fair by William M. Thackeray and The Way of All Flesh authored by Samuel Butler Introduction Tragedy plays a paradoxical part in human life. Although it is something that usually brings about grief and pity, the ancient Greeks had developed tragedy into a classic art form. Tragedy has an important role in forming cultural identity and at the same time illustrates the history of a society. More importantly, tragedy dramas convey an important moral lesson to its audiences as well that will linger on in their memories for a long time indeed. The Greeks’ tragedy in dramas is a unique art form and this has been transferred to other media as well. It is a staple theme in modern story telling such as novels and short stories too. This paper discusses the nature of tragedies in two different novels; the two novels are “Vanity Fair” by William M. Thackeray and the other is “The Way of All Flesh” authored by Samuel Butler. Both novels utilized tragedy to illustrate a telling human lesson for its readers. Both stories expound on the constant human themes of loss, regret, pain and suffering to have a profound impact on their readers and have attained the status of literary classics; the themes appeal to certain individuals but the lessons they contained are universal indeed. Modern literary tragedies still espouse the compelling narrative that the lesson must in some way lead to catharsis and reformation. In ancient times, tragedies normally involved the people who were high and mighty, those who had fame, fortune and power but suffered a fall from their high perch in society and life. Today’s tragedies have evolved to include ordinary people just like you and me who somehow missed their opportunities in life and realized their mistakes only much later to their everlasting regret. This is the central theme of this essay. Discussion The story of “Vanity Fair” is a harsh critique of Victorian-era England during the early nineteenth century. The author Thackeray used his novel to portray the distorted values at the time through his two principal characters which were Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley. The time and setting of the novel was used to illustrate the futility of how some people tried to attain the good things in life through a compromise of their cherished values, primarily in the attitude and behavior of Becky. The title of the story comes from the name of a town called Vanity in the Pilgrim’s Progress which itself was an allegory of the times when it was written. The fair pertains to a never-ending year-round fair held in the town of Vanity and so the novel of Thackeray used “Vanity Fair” to imply how people can be vain throughout their lives. This was certainly the case with Becky as she struggled to attain respectability in her life in which she tried all means to gain wealth and fame as she was orphaned at an early age. To fully understand the context of the story of “Vanity Fair” and Becky’s behaviors in her time, England at the nineteenth century was a country undergoing great changes in many areas of its society. This was the time of the Industrial Revolution which saw the usual things being upended and overturned by the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. What this means is that it was a time of great struggles for everyone just to survive in this new highly-competitive society now based more on material greed. The greatest change occurred in the gradual abolition of the old feudal system and the rise of the new capitalist class. In this new set-up, wealth no longer came primarily from the land but from new facilities and factories which churned out manufactured products for their domestic market and for export to the English colonies all over the globe. In this setting, the young Becky was left adrift and penniless due to the untimely death of her father. The result of the rise of capitalism in England made people to become aware of their wealth and this caused them to be more materialistic in their attitude towards life. This is the case with Becky who at a young age already was wise in the ways of the world (street smart) and conspired to marry the brother of Amelia named Joseph because Becky saw in him as the savior and the way out of a humdrum existence and into the exalted position in society that she had desired for herself. Young Becky at this time has no qualms about using trickery and flattery to attain her self-imposed objectives in life. She saw material wealth as the only way to compensate for the deprivations and harshness of her childhood. Becky and all the people around her were no different from the people portrayed in the Pilgrim’s Progress in which they were all obsessed with the temporary and ephemeral. A lot of characters in “Vanity Fair” were preoccupied with material wealth and social position to the detriment and disregard of anything else. Friendships were betrayed for the sake of the pursuit of money and prestige. Thackeray used his story’s characters as a biting satire to the moral values of the Victorian era and an indictment of English society which was populated by the modern-day equivalent of social climbers who want to keep up with the Joneses. The vain social climbing as exemplified by Becky was a rebuke to the English society but Thackeray cannot say so directly in his novel since Queen Victoria was very strict on the matter of criticisms against her reign. The function of Becky’s tragedy and those around her is to show that people are better off concentrating more on the things that really matter in life such as honor, dignity and relationships than money. The loss of wealth may have disastrous effects such as what happened to the family of Amelia Sedley whose father became bankrupt from fortuitous events and bad decisions. Many people want to keep appearances up like the Jenkinses (Thackeray 3) and it was also how Becky was able to manage her living expenses for a year by borrowing without paying off her creditors and live well enough. Nineteenth century England was a time of great ferment also due to the huge increases in native population. During this time, the country saw its population double from a mere 14 million in 1831 to about 32 million by 1901. The ordinary people had to struggle very hard to earn their daily sustenance in exploitative factory jobs which grew in the urban areas and had to live in the slums which grew around those factories. Only a few people enjoyed privileged lives such as those belonging to the old aristocracy and the new capitalist class which built up their wealth through employment of child labor and payment of very low wages. The thought of Karl Marx about working-class exploitation was the primary motivation for the ideas in his thesis which in turn led to the concept of communism. A young girl like Becky in these times saw the social ferment as a way to get ahead and get even by compromising her values. The tragedy in this novel is the lesson that material things do not last forever. This is clearly illustrated in Becky’s case in which she ended up being destitute towards the end of the story despite having attained a measure of material success in her earlier adult years. This is what Aristotle himself emphasized as the ultimate function of a tragedy which is to put fear and pity in the audience and readers. In “Vanity Fair” we do not read about powerful people who had gotten their comeuppance but ordinary persons like Becky who were misguided. The function of the tragedy in “Vanity Fair” is to show to people how material wealth does not equate into happiness itself. Further, the story’s nineteenth century context and today does not differ very much in which people go to extreme lengths to acquire wealth and status to the extent of mortgaging their homes and maxing out their credit cards. Becky had utilized the same strategy by heavy borrowing without any intention of paying. Early England had a strict set of laws with regards to debts and people who do not pay up end in a debtor’s prison. Thackeray may have wanted to remind his readers the utter hopelessness, nihilism and ennui in general human experiences as people go through life (Catalan 176). On the other hand, “The Way of All Flesh” is a metaphor of how extreme spiritualism can often backfire on some people. The nature of the tragedy in this novel was the failure to pursue one’s dreams in life. In the early part of the story, the main character named Ernest is an outstanding student of some sorts. He had garnered a good reputation as an intellectual; he further cemented this distinct honor with a high grade in mathematics and in the classics. It is often said people regret at the end of their lives for paths not taken and this is the case with Ernest. He followed his parents’ wishes only partially by dabbling in religion but he did not make a good account of himself in this endeavor. His father previously was pressured to enter the religious ministry and this same pressure was brought to bear on him too. Ernest therefore had an unhappy and antagonistic relationship with his parents. The life of Ernest is used by the author to illustrate the travails of the Church at that time. The problems encountered by Ernest as a young man, especially on becoming a clergy was in some ways a metaphor of the ferment occurring in religion in Victorian-era England. He was a brilliant young man but was generally misguided and failed to develop his potential. Acknowledged as an intellectual, he used his talent in the wrong ways which compounded his tragedy that eventually landed him in jail. He failed to bloom into a full intellectual despite a great promise while still in the university where he could have gone on to greater heights. All individuals deserve to be given the needed support to become what they are to be and achieve their full potentials. In the case of Ernest, a confluence of events prevented this from happening and as a consequence, he had been relegated to an ordinary life when he was destined for perhaps greater things in life. He had settled into an ordinary existence because his own parents failed to nurture his talents. He flitted from one problem to another and in the process managed to lose a lot of money as he was easily taken in by false promises of his own friends in the church. The tragedy in this story is that of a promising life wasted. Most parents would naturally be inclined to make their kids follow their own wishes. It is not a good idea, though, because this could result in a child being unhappy and would in later years rebel against such a parental imposition. Moreover, it is best to let a child choose his own path in life but parental guidance must still be provided nonetheless. The whole idea is to let each individual develop his full potentials based on his talents. The tragedy is when a person reaches the end of his life and has plenty of regrets for the things that could have been. The title of the novel is a euphemism for death itself; it is how people of olden years refer to death as the way of all flesh when flesh becomes rotten. It is often how people rue the things they could have taken, the path not taken in which they could only surmise the what-ifs in their lives because they cannot turn back the clock. The tragedy in Ernest’s life was his failure to attain his dreams in life because he followed the wishes of his parents and of people around him. He failed to follow his own wishes in a remarkable repetition of the same fate that befell his father Theobald who was considered as a weakling for not being determined enough to reject his own father’s wish to join the clergy. It can be said that the best intentions quite often end up being misguided in retrospect. This was very true in the polite society of the Victorian era (Knoepflmacher 202). The function of the tragedy in “The Way of All Flesh” is to show to people what will happen when a child is prevented or restrained from doing and attaining his natural wants and inclinations because the tendency is conflict between the parents and a child. This results into a lot of wasted opportunities since both parties are now working at cross purposes instead of working cooperatively for the attainment of one’s dreams and ambitions in life. There is a parallel here to the tragedy in the earlier novel of “Vanity Fair” and this is the way how these matters are viewed in today’s more enlightened times. In Becky Sharp, the reader is shown how harsh Victorian-era penology was when the emphasis was on criminal’s punishment instead of today’s rehabilitative aspects of the justice system. Likewise, in “The Way of All Flesh” it was the harshness of parental wishes that can bear down on the children and subjected to intense pressure to follow parental wishes despite their valid objections. Both novels criticized the Victorian mores but “Vanity Fair” emphasized this through a portrayal of how people lost their personal values in favor of pursuits of material wealth while “The Way of All Flesh” basically made the same thing but used the life story of Ernest as an example of how religious hypocrisy can ruin a person’s life instead. Conclusion The function of a tragedy as espoused by Aristotle is catharsis. This was shown by how the reformed Becky at the end of the novel was selling some trinkets and personal effects purposely for raising some funds for an orphanage and other charitable institutions. It is perhaps her way of purging herself of some guilt from her past actions in which she lied on many occasions in order to get along in life and obtain financial security. In other words, she had been transformed remarkably from her wicked ways and is now a very caring person. It was her own way of being reformed from an evil person to someone deserving pity. The catharsis in the case of Ernest was his being released from prison and going on to become a tailor after he got disillusioned with religion and purged it from his life. He lost his faith and decided not to have anything to do with religion in any way anymore. This is quite a complete turnaround from his earlier years in which he got enamored with religion. The true transformation in his life was his repudiation of his parents after prison (Butler 322), later on Ellen and all of his previous ways. It is quite rare for a child to make his or her parents quite entirely happy. The life stories of Theobald and his son Ernest are actually stories of unhappy childhoods and unfulfilled dreams in life as they matured into adults. Today’s modern tragedies concern ordinary people who failed to make the most out of life while they still can. This is the real tragedy and it is something that people must be fully aware of as they go through their lives and not commit the same mistakes as the tragedies in the two novels had illustrated. It need not be a story of a person who is high and mighty who suffered a reversal of fortunes but also ordinary citizens who failed to develop their potential. Works Cited Butler, S. The Way of All Flesh. Charleston, SC, USA: Forgotten Books, 1925. Print (this is a re-print). Catalan, Z. The Politics of Irony in Thackeray’s Mature Fiction: Vanity Fair, Henry Esmond and the Newcomes. Sofia, Bulgaria: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2009. Print. Knoepflmacher, U. C. Laughter and Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era. Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press, 1971. Print. Thackeray, W. M. Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero. Charleston, SC, USA: Forgotten Books, 1848. Print (re-published in 2008). Read More