SILVER-FORKS AND DOUBLE STANDARDS: GORE, THACKERAY AND THE PROBLEM OF PARODY

Abstract

It is ironic that modern scholars know the parodies of the silver-fork or fashionable novel far better than we know the novels themselves. Very few fashionable novels are currently in print, whereas Thackeray's series of Novels by Eminent Hands (1856) (originally called Punch's Prize Novelists [1847]) and Vanity Fair (1847–48) are easily accessible. Not surprisingly, this state of affairs has given us a biased view of the value of fashionable novels; we tend to assume that a genre so frequently targeted must deserve mockery. However, Linda Hutcheon cautions against such an assumption in her study A Theory of Parody (2000), which defines parody as imitation with ironic inversion rather than comic ridicule. This essay explores the relationship between Vanity Fair, Novels by Eminent Hands, and the fashionable novel, applying Hutcheon's theory to explore the ways in which Thackeray imitates and inverts (rather than ridicules or rejects) the conventions of the genre. Catherine Gore (1799–1861) was one of the most prolific authors of fashionable novels in the nineteenth century, producing more than 70 volumes during a writing career of three decades. Despite the great popular and critical acclaim she received during her lifetime, Gore is little known today except as a target of Thackeray's parody. This essay draws important parallels between the works of Gore and Thackeray to illustrate the canonical author's debt to the fashionable novel. A careful examination of Thackeray's literary and personal relationship with Catherine Gore reveals the double standard by which canonical and fashionable novelists have been judged, contributing to the latter group's marginalization.