This chapter argues that the complexities of Thackeray’s style play on the conceptual uncertainties embedded in the idea of style itself. It demonstrates that Thackeray’s prose exacerbates the interpretive conundrums posed by the very notion of style, including such puzzles as whether style expresses authorial personality or a more general standard, whether style is the sign of intention or contingency, and whether style is personal or historically contingent. The chapter focuses on the use of first- and second-person pronouns in Vanity Fair (1847) and on the curious third-person autobiography that is Henry Esmond (1852) to argue that Thackerayan style oscillates between two radically distinct affective temperatures: a “hot” style that gets in the reader’s face and a “cold” one that turns away from us, in an alternation between unparalleled effects of intimacy and uncanny feats of distance. The chapter argues that this wavering makes Thackeray’s style particularly suited to an investigation of the historicity of language (the ways living meanings ossify and go dead over time) as well as to an inquiry into the mystery of authorial intention (the question, particularly pointed for Thackeray’s uneven reputation, of whether authors are in control of their own most characteristic effects).

The second half of the book turns to the novels of Thackeray, Trollope, and Meredith to demonstrate how stylistic virtues offer an historicized hermeneutic that can change our understanding of texts and Victorian prose forms. It begins with William Makepeace Thackeray because he was considered by many to be the period’s most capable stylist, though few understand this assessment today. The fault lies in part with the traditions of Thackerayan criticism. Obsessed with the quality of his narrative voice, many have focused on Thackeray’s unity (or disunity) of tone, leading to dubious interpretations of key early works. By rethinking these interpretations, which stem from thematically oriented criticism, Chapter 4 shows that there is a difference between Thackeray’s satirical personality and the protean adaptability of his stylistic guises. The consequence for readers of major works like Pendennis or The Newcomes is a hyper-awareness of “grace,” a form of stylistic versatility and detachment that exists in productive tension with the author’s other ethical attitudes.