Vanity Fair in Venice

So I've been in Venice for the last three days, and feeling bad that I wasn't reading some nineteenth-century novel about English-speaking idiots in Venice, instead of Vanity Fair & A Clash of Kings, neither of which has anything to do with Venice. I read around in Stones of Venice on the vaporetto on the way to San Marco, and i read Paul Ruskin's description of Saint Mark's rising out of the vast square like a treasure-heap of color and how its angels are robed head to foot and blend vaguely into the golden ground and how the jaspers and marbles like Cleopatra offer the sunlight their blue veins to kiss, and we were standing next to one of those cafes with the orchestra and they were playing what Paul called "noir music," so this morning at breakfast Paul did a recitation of the Ruskin passage as performed by a private dick, into whose office a Byzantine-Gothic-Renaissance cathedral had walked & looked like trouble. But I couldn't find the passage about the good sculpture of a doge and a bad sculpture of a doge (the one with half his face unfinished, which, although you can't _see_ that it's unfinished, enraged Ruskin) and although I did find one description of a doge I couldn't locate the Baptistery in Saint Mark's to look at him, so altogether I was a terrible Ruskinian in Venice, and totally didn't even ruin my honeymoon peering over statuary and up at capitals and ignoring my spouse, as Ruskin did and as my professor claimed to sort of have done himself in Venice, wandering around the churches with Ruskin under his arm, even though when we were talking about it in class I felt very much inspired to do so.

Instead we rode around on vaporetti and explored tiny alleys and miniature canals and deserted piazze, and took a lot of overexposed pictures, and read novels on our Kindles that had nothing to do with Venice. The only parallel I can find between our travels & Vanity Fair is that Rawdon Crawley is always cheating everyone at cards and being a pool shark & so on & ruining tradesmen, and similarly Rory and Alison went to the Venice Casino on Saturday night, dressed respectively in Paul's suit from the wedding we went to in Greece and one of my sundresses, and totally cleaned up at the blackjack table. By which I mean they both instantly got 21, won 15 euro, and quit while they were ahead. Apparently the 10 euro chip they'd gotten with their 10 euro entry fee couldn't be cashed in, however, so they played another hand just using that chip and some high-roller rolled up and bet 400 euro on their success, and they lost, so I guess they ruined that high-roller just as Rawdon Crawley has ruined many a tradesman, as well as the faithful companion of his aunt Miss Crawley, Miss Briggs, whom Becky Sharp gets to be her "sheepdog" after Miss Crawley's death (you know, like her chaperone so she can entertain lords & dandies when her husband isn't home), and whom the Crawleys bilk out of her annuity, how awful.

As you may be able to guess, Becky is getting increasingly more awful as the novel goes on. After Amelia & George get secretly married, they meet up with the Crawleys while honeymooning in Brighton and everyone has a wonderful time together, except Amelia because Becky keeps flirting with George. Then the men get sent to Belgium for Waterloo, and Becky is like, "I'll go too!" because she likes adventure I guess, and Amelia is like, "oh, I'll go too, I guess" because she likes George, and Amelia's brother Joseph takes all the girls over and gets military fever and starts wearing a cocked hat and a gold-braided coat even though he's totally a civilian. Becky keeps on flirting with George and doing splendidly at balls (apparently everyone thinks it is super fun to be waiting for Waterloo to happen in Belgium and there are civilians everywhere staying at hotels and having a wonderful time) and Amelia is beside herself, but then when it's time to actually go into battle George feels bad about his dad and Amelia and wants to be a good son and a good husband but it's too late because he totally gets killed at Waterloo! but we don't find that out for a while. Instead we stay in the hotels with the women & civilians and watch Amelia flip out and Becky be hilarious. Everyone thinks the French are going to win, based on the evidence of some cowardly Belgian deserters who show up like ten minutes after the battle has started, being like "The French are really scary, we just ran out of there, we're the only survivors" so everyone's trying to get out of town. These mean English aristocrats want to buy Becky's two horses and she's like "No way! Ha ha good luck getting out of town without any horses, have fun while the French rip out those diamonds you've sewn into your boots." Instead she sells the horses to Amelia's brother for an extortionate sum on which she & Rawdon will be able to live for two years. Joseph Sedley totally hightails it out of there on the horses even though everyone says the English are actually winning and that he's a coward. Amelia just flips out for a while and does some nursing and then when she finds out her husband is dead actually flips out, possibly for years. Becky sews all HER valuables into her clothes and figures she will be a rich widow, but her husband survives and she amuses him and this general Tufto (with whom they've been having this confusing menage-a-trois) by maybe stripping down as she rips everything out of her clothes. Becky Sharp, made of money!

After that it's all Becky being the belle of Paris, and Becky and Amelia having matching babies, and Becky weaseling out of Paris when their credit runs out, and negotiating with all the creditors in England so they can come back and she can kind of be the belle of London. This is where you know that the author actually thinks Becky is evil because it turns out she is a terrible mom. Crawley actually loves their little boy and secretly hangs out with him and gives him presents, but Becky has no time for him, she's too busy entertaining Lord Steyne, who is not Gabriel Byrne after all but rather a horrible little balding red-haired man! Meanwhile Sir Pitt Crawley dies and Becky makes up pretty good with the heir, her brother-in-law; and Amelia is languishing away with her ruined parents in some suburb; and the two matching kids meet in the Park; and the Osborne family finds out about Amelia's kid and I think they will want to steal him. Also there is Dobbin, the gawky soldier who is in love with Amelia and who just heard some news about her (maybe that she's getting married? but she isn't; maybe that the in-laws want to get their hands on little Georgy?) so he's flipping out at Madras and asking for a leave to go deal with things in London.

That's about how far I am now. I guess you can also make a case for Becky's hypocrisy being like all the masks we tried on in Venice. Also WMT tells us that all good wives are hypocrites, because you try to make your husband feel good even if he is a booby. That's like when a friend of mine told me I was a hypocrite because I tried to comfort some girl who was crying, even though I thought the reason she was crying was stupid. Maybe my standards for honesty are pretty low, because I think that's much better than telling a crying person they are a booby. Who knew? I am as wicked as Becky Sharp!!