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A Novel with a Diva: Becky Sharp and the Operatic Tradition

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A Novel with a Diva: Becky Sharp and the Operatic Tradition A NOVEL WITH A DIVA: BECKY SHARP AND THE OPERATIC TRADITION by VIRGINIA BOYETT BLEDSOE (Under the Direction of Anne Williams) ABSTRACT Addressing the common critical problem of interpreting Becky Sharp in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, I argue that Becky sharp may be best understood as an opera diva. I examine the theoretical issues of an interdisciplinary study of music and literature, and specifically focus on the operatic tradition as an effective and revealing way to read literature. This thesis also suggests that reading Becky as a diva reveals what makes her such a dangerous presence both in the novel and in critical and popular reception. INDEX WORDS: William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Becky Sharp, opera, diva, music and literature A NOVEL WITH A DIVA: BECKY SHARP AND THE OPERATIC TRADITION by VIRGINIA BOYETT BLEDSOE B.A., Middle Tennessee State University, 2003 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA 2006 © 2006 Virginia Boyett Bledsoe All Rights Reserved A NOVEL WITH A DIVA: BECKY SHARP AND THE OPERATIC TRADITION by VIRGINIA BOYETT BLEDSOE Major Professor: Anne Williams Committee: Tricia Lootens Roxanne Eberle Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2006 iv DEDICATION For my family. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to offer special thanks to Dr. Anne Williams, Dr. Tricia Lootens, and Dr. Roxanne Eberle; your advice and instruction have been invaluable. I would also like to thank Dr. Elizabeth Kraft, whose course provided some important connections for this project. To the friends, colleagues, and family members who helped along the way, please know that you are appreciated. To Jonathan, thank you for always being so patient, supportive, encouraging, and loving. Finally, I want to thank my parents for always supporting me (financially and otherwise); you have made me who I am. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 Introduction....................................................................................................................1 2 The “Problem” with Becky: Critical Interpretation, Performed Femininity, and Pamela.......................................................................................................................4 3 Opera and Literature: Theoretical Considerations.......................................................20 4 The Opera and the Players ...........................................................................................24 5 A Novel with a Diva ....................................................................................................32 6 The Diva Off-Stage: A “Dangerous Bird”...................................................................48 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................................54 1 Introduction Critics and the public have always had problems reading Becky in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. The debate is waged largely over the issue of Becky’s character and the attempt to decide whether her actions are justified. It is also difficult to determine how the author feels about the novel’s main character, and critics have disagreed since Vanity Fair’s publication about whether Thackeray seeks to excuse Becky as a product of a flawed society or if he seeks to expose her as a threat to a vulnerable aristocracy. This desire to define and categorize Becky is important, because it reveals that we are not comfortable with Becky as she is. I argue that although Thackeray presents Becky as a threat, he is also critiquing the society that makes her actions necessary. My discussion, then, will not focus on defining Becky as heroine or villain; rather, I would like to uncover what makes Becky such a threatening presence in Vanity Fair. The obvious response to this question is that Becky is threatening because she performs ideal femininity, manipulating and penetrating the supposedly impenetrable aristocracy. Becky’s ability to perform to expectations of class and gender is certainly a cause for anxiety, but Thackeray insists throughout the novel that Becky’s imitations are not the sole cause for alarm. After all, many females perform femininity, and many critics suggest that gender is always a construction or performance. 1 My discussion of Becky Sharp’s performances will examine the history of performed femininity in fiction and will reveal the frequency of such performances. 2 Because such performances are so frequent, the idea that Becky performs ideal femininity does not go quite far enough in explaining her as a threat to society. The complexity of Becky’s character can best be explained by comparing her to a more infamous counterpart, the opera diva. Robert Bledsoe in “Vanity Fair and Singing” and Joe Law in “The Prima Donnas of Vanity Fair” have each noted the connections between the Thackeray’s novel and the musical arts. These articles, published in 1981 and 1987 respectively, discuss and analyze the musical allusions in Vanity Fair, explaining the references to specific operas, composers, and vocalists. Specifically, Law’s article finds in Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley strong evidence of “the diva,” an opera presence and personality with its own set of stereotypes. Citing such characteristics as “duplicitous,” “greed[y],” and, above all, “selfish” (Law 95-101), Law (perhaps unconsciously) reiterates what many critics who incorporate musical analysis into their literary studies have begun to notice: opera and the opera diva provide an illuminating way to reveal that performed femininity, whether domestic or as public spectacle, is a threatening reality. The unsettling reality of performed femininity as currency for financial stability is blatantly exhibited in the world of professional opera. Female opera divas also perform various aspects of femininity in exchange for financial stability; that is, they sing and act for money. If the diva convincingly portrays the ideal feminine heroine on stage and can make a profit by doing so, it logically follows that she is capable of the same performance off-stage as well. I contend that this is the problem with Thackeray’s heroine: Becky Sharp is a diva, acceptable as a spectacle, but a serious threat to polite society. Indeed, Becky Sharp’s very name brings to mind the musical symbol, and her character is also sharp, in the musical sense of the term (music that 1 See Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble for a thorough examination and analysis of gender as a constructed performance. Nancy Armstrong’s Desire and Domestic Fiction also considers aspects of performed femininity, 3 is “sharp” is off-key, strident, uncomfortable for audiences). The narrator’s question of the boarding school mistress echoes as Becky moves throughout the novel: “Oh, why did Miss Pinkerton let such a dangerous bird into her cage?” (Thackeray 17). concentrating on the idea in the history of domestic fiction and women’s writing. 4 The ‘Problem’ with Becky: Critical Interpretation, Performed Femininity, and Pamela Despite being attractive, talented, intelligent, witty, and accomplished, Becky is still consistently described as dangerous. She is called a “dangerous bird” and a “viper” on more than one occasion. Why exactly is Becky so dangerous? Nancy Armstrong, in her introduction to Desire and Domestic Fiction, discusses the threat of women like Becky and suggests that the danger has to do with sexual desire: “Nor do novels often question that such desire, if it is not so domesticated, constitutes the gravest danger and root of all other threats – to society” (6-7). Perhaps the idea that Becky is not solely defined by her position in the domestic sphere is what prompts critics to read her as such a “bad” person. Robert Bledsoe’s “Vanity Fair and Singing” condemns both of the novel’s leading female characters: Just when we think that Amelia is supposed to be all good, if a bit dumb, we begin to perceive her parasitical egotism. Becky is even more horrifying. Readers sometimes deem this totally exploitative and destructive character rather likeable (on account of her “vitality,” or some such euphemism) – a fact which grimly confirms Thackeray’s assertion that he is holding up a mirror, and which suggests that the warped reflection is not so much in the mirror as it is in the bourgeois society, comprised of both characters and readers, which the mirror reflects. (55) Bledsoe’s condemnation of Becky becomes even sharper: “But of course she is not innocent: she is guilty of perverting every essential human moral value for the sake of her egotism, not just in 5 one situation, but in the whole series of choices she has made for her life” (59-60). These judgements are particularly revealing, especially when one closely regards Bledsoe’s wording. Having agreed that Vanity Fair represents a reflection of society, it would seem that Bledsoe is himself threatened by Becky’s “egotism;” after all, are not the readers’ faces reflected in the mirror? Indeed, Joseph Litvak notes, in “Kiss Me, Stupid: Sophistication, Sexuality, and ‘Vanity Fair,’” that Thackeray exhibits “a mixture of admiration and condescension” towards Becky: “The sharper Becky seems, the more Thackeray needs to shove her back into the frame of his moralistic puppet show,
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