Vanity Fair (1)

[여국현]

"As the Manager of the performance sits before the curtain on the boards, and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing, and fiddling: there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (other quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack Puddings behind the canvass. The curtain will be up presently, and he will be turning over head and heels, and crying, "How are you?"

"I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of "Vanity Fair." Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such, with their servants and families: perhaps they are right. But persons who think otherwise and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love making for the sentimental, and some light comic business: the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery, and brilliantly illuminated with the Author's own candles. (Before the Curtain)

"The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face--Frown at it and it will in turn look sourly upon you--laugh at it and with it and it is a jolly kind companion, and so let all young persons take their choice." (11)

"If people would but leave children themselves; if teachers would cease to bully them; if parents would not insist upon directing their thoughts and dominating their feelings--those feelings and thoughts which are a mystery to us all.....if, I say, parents and masters would leave their children alone a little more--small harm would accrue although a less quantity of as in praesenti might be acquired."(40-41)

".....'Vanity Fair' for a title and that Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falseness and pretentions." (83)

"O Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair!--this might have been but for you a cherry lass--Peter Butt and Rose a happy man and wife, in a snug farm with a hearty family, and an honest portion of pleasures, cares, hopes, and struggles. But a title and a coach and four are toys more precious than happiness inVanity Fair."(86)

"But though virtue is a much finer thing; and those hapless creatures who suffer under the misfortune of good looks ought to be continually put in mind of the fate which awaits them; and though very likely the Heroic Female character which ladies admire is a more glorious and beautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless, tender little domestic goddess, whom men are inclined to worship--yet the latter and inferior sort of women must have this consolation--that the men do admire them after all." (115)

".....there are two parties to a Love-transaction: the one who lives and the other who condescends to be so treated. Perhaps the love is occasionally on the man's side: perhaps on he lady's. Perhaps some infatuated swain has ere this mistaken insensibility for modesty, dullness for maiden-reserve, mere vacuity for sweet bashfulness and a goose in a word for a swan--Perhaps some beloved female subscriber has arrayed an ass in the splendour and glory of her imagination; admired his dullness as manly simplicity; worshipped his selfishness as manly superiority, treated his stupidity as majestic gravity and used him as the brilliant Fairy Titania did certain Weaver of Athens. I think I have seen such comedies of errors going on in the world. (128)

"The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide the dullness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call this pretty treachery truth. A good housewife is of necessity a humbug." (175)

"When one man has been under very remarkable obligations to another, with whom he subsequently quarrels, a common sense of decency, as it were, makes of the former a much severe enemy than a mere stranger would be." (180)

"A long engagement is a partnership which one party is free to keep or to break, but which involves all the capital of the other. Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still) feel very little." (182)

[여국현]

작가, 새커리는 몹시 '수다스럽다' 독자들이 한 눈 파는 걸 몹시도 싫어하는 변사처럼 시시콜콜 작가의 손길이 미치지 않는 구석이 없는 빽빽한 이야기를 쉼 없이 해댄다. 밉지는 않다. 그런데, 가끔 숨이 차기도 하겠다, 독자들. 읽다가 가끔 각 장 마다 남은 페이지를 한 번 힐끔 들춰보게 된다^^;; 그 얼얼한 에너지와 거미줄보다 더 촘촘한 글의 얼개가 독자의 손과 눈을 잘 놓아주려 하지 않는다.