Penguin Readers 3: Vanity Fair

Indeed the interests that drive her-to secure work in order to live and not be morbidly self-enclosed-have no place in women-centered romance, even though the imagination may want to indulge "the life of thought" and escape "that of reality." From the time she looks as a young girl on the idealized Paulina Home and sees that the child must "necessarily live, move, and have her being in another," whether father or lover, Lucy knows that such a life cannot be hers. She is too alienated and unconnected, and too ambitious to be herself-whatever that is. And if, at times, she envies women's ability to be angels in the houses of men (and wants to «live» in a romance with Graham Bretton), she knows that such a life will not satisfy. She knows too that marriage and novels that close in lovers' vows are allied in a way that leaves no room for representing a woman who cares for herself as an independent human being. Thus she must be a spectator, a reader of others' romances, whether of Ginevra Fanshawe's flirtatious fooleries or Paulina Home's progress toward domestic bliss in marriage to Bretton: "It was so, for God saw that it was good." Lucy Snowe must also be a debater with men about her "role." The word appears repeatedly; indeed, few novels since Mansfield Park and -361- Vanity Fair have used the language of the theater and of art so tellingly to describe a woman's behavior in a patriarchal world ...»