Andrew's Wiki
Barry Lyndon

Folks

• Barry Lyndon, an adventurer, bully, liar, a cad; pugilistic and heartless, a good dresser, dancer, and swordsman, he’s an anti-Victorian hero for Victorian times. He hates women (abuses, impoverishes, and imprisons his wife and beats stepson) and for Thackeray is a figure of history, a relic of the 18th century that puts into relief Victorian morality

• Father, second son who steals the property from the first son; dissipates the family fortune (such as it is)

• Mother, Mrs. Barry, the old Miss Bell Brady, the “Dasher” of great beauty; never loved her husband; snobbish and clothes hungry, ridiculous in claiming her “rights” from everyone, she has one weakness: her son, whom she loves and for whom she becomes a gaoler for Lady Lyndon

• Quin, whose duel with Barry over his cousin Nora precipitates Barry’s running over to the army, though it turns out in the end that Barry didn’t actually kill him

• Captain and Mrs. FitzSimmons, the imposter fashionable folk who take advantage of his innocence and take his money in Dublin

• Fagan, friend of Quin’s, becomes friend of Barry in the army; dies in Seven Years’ War

• Herr Pastor, the last Renaissance man, unappreciated by Barry

• Potzdorff, Barry’s boss in the Prussian army after the Seven Years’ War; Barry spies for him, so he shows the paranoia of the monarchies of Europe

• Cornelius Barry, who goes by the name “Chevalier de Balibari” so as not to sound Irish abroad; a gamester whom Barry is hired to spy on, but they team up and make money all around Europe, getting kicked out of everywhere they go and continuing to move on

• Sir Charles Lyndon, husband of Lady Lyndon, gouty and apoplectic, going to die soon, dissolute and as cynical and worldly as Barry; but he does get upset when Barry openly shows his plans around him

• Lady Lyndon, the famous countess and bluestocking, poet, beloved by poets and wits; her disgust for him is what makes him fasten on her (to prove himself), wants to be loved and admired; is patient and loving when Barry abuses her, but eventually gets out of his clutches with an old flame – but insists that her family support him financially; she shows how Barry can’t understand true morality and strength

• Viscount Bullingdon, the original Lyndons’ son; moody, protective of his mother, and nice to everyone but Barry, he plays Hamlet to Barry’s Claudius; he protects his mother until he can’t stand Barry, then runs off to fight in the Revolutionary War; everyone thinks he’s killed (ie, Barry’s fault), but he shows up later just to kick Barry’s butt

• Bryan, Barry and Lady Lyndon’s son; a beautiful boy who is sacrificed at age 9 from running off to ride his new, unruly horse (he dies b/c Barry doesn’t discipline him); cf Handful of Dust and Gone with the Wind! – the little boy dying on the emblem of mature manhood, the horse: the end of British manhood?

Themes

• Influenced by picaresque novels of Fielding and Smollett
  • In that way, comparable to early Dickens (names: George Savage FitzBoodle, Biddy Brady of Bradyville, Tobias Tickler)
  • Mentions Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith, Sheridan
    • Johnson is “a schoolmaster”
  • Temperamentally Georgian: unromantic, direct
• Thackeray’s first full-length novel
  • Tried to make it free from “love or talking or any of that nonsense”
• For Thackeray, a countercurrent to Victorian cultural productions
  • Barry hates the Romantic novels (he writes in the Napoleonic Wars)
  • Thus, Thackeray doesn’t like the Romantic influence on Victorians
• Chocolate houses and coffee-shops everywhere
  • They perform same operation as family or female gossip and newspapers, esp the scandal sheets
• Realism
  • Traditional realist qualities
    • Uses embedded narratives, chapter titles, and reflections on who was mistaken or emotional at the time
    • Believes himself a “puppet of Fate” (realism about debating determinism)
    • Claims the truth of the narrative
  • Says that “romance-writers” who have “a drummer or a dustman for a hero” are unrealistic (how could they possible meet all these famous people?)
    • Against the “Forrest Gump” model of narrative
    • Even pictures of battle are unreal; battle is nasty, disgusting, violent, piggish, and boring, not chivalrous
  • 112, 147: does have self-reflexive writing (“I must end my chapter here” kind of stuff), but in Realism, they’re just there to help you read, just disgressions
    • Whereas in modernism such reflexivity is largely the point of the whole narrative
• Nostalgia for 18th Century: A changed world
  • Gone are the days of elegance and luxury, chivalry and courtship, beauty and extravagance in dress, honor and gentlemanship
  • World used to be full of gaiety and splendor: the world was young and drunk and fun then—but now it’s just “moral and matter-of-fact”
  • The editor notes in the end how everyone’s dead now, how all the buildings have changed, and the Lyndon property is back in safe hands (so the Victorians win)
  • Napoleonic Wars that break out as he writes his memoirs are a symbol for the turning point (esp because they occur as a result of French Revolution
    • He says that no one will understand his story or care about him now that the wars are going on
• Critique of Bourgeois Victorian Values
  • Argues that his profession (gamester) is just as moral as being a shopkeeper or lawyer etc
    • Gambling requires skill, audacity
    • Doctors sell you drugs they don’t believe in: that’s crime
    • Shopkeepers and farmers are gamblers
    • Lawyers live off other people’s problems
    • A soldier was just as much an adventurer as he
    • He had the command of all the money he wanted, even if he didn’t have a normal bank account
  • 212, 216: women were used to men being drunk, and newspapers were openly scandalous
• The work of leisure
  • Being a part of the upper classes: “business it certainly is!”
  • “It seems all pleasure,” but he feels like he did work, getting up at all hours of the night, hardly any sleep, etc
• Democracy
  • He’s nice to soldiers, the poor, and the Irish, but cruel to everyone else
    • Makes him sound pro-proletariat
    • He likes being generous with his money
  • Then again, he does love being on the top
    • He most dreadfully wants to be in the nobility
    • He loves luxury
  • Thus, he contradicts himself: just like England at the time, he’s torn between oligarchy and democracy
• Morality
  • The Editor is not on Barry’s side
  • His footnotes correct Barry’s misstatements and point out his inconsistencies
  • One footnote says that novels need to portray terrible figures like Barry so the world knows the truth
  • “The world contains scores of such amiable people; and, indeed, it it because justice has not been done them that we have edited this autobiography.”
  • Then the editor goes on to say that “the student of nature” should depict the rogues, not just “fairy-tale princes” and “impossible heroes.”

Comps Questions

• Barry and Lady Lyndon meet at Spa