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Analysis of William Makepeace Thackeray’s The History of Pendennis

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 6, 2025

William Makepeace Thackeray published his second novel, The History of Pendennis, as a serial between November 1848 and December 1850. It ran at the same time as Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, a novel to which it is often compared. The two are similar in presenting Bildungsromans, both with autobiographical elements. However, the two contrast in many ways. While Dickens devotes the first third of his novel to David’s childhood, the section in which details most resemble the author’s life, Thackeray begins with Arthur Pendennis preparing to enter university. Thackeray also spends many pages developing a satire of London’s literary life, including characters representing those who had assisted, or blocked, his own career, such as critic and writer Edward Hook, the model for Thackeray’s Mr. Wagg. Thackeray had received much criticism of his first novel, Vanity Fair (1848), due to his unrealistic division of humans into two groups—wily types who take advantage of others, and the fools who allow themselves to be taken advantage of. He also hoped to change his reputation as a misanthropist, a charge sparked by Vanity Fair’s cynical tone.

When Arthur “Pen” Pendennis’s physician/country squire father dies, his loving but unsophisticated mother raises him at Fair Oaks with his adopted sister, Laura Bell. Pendennis depends on his uncle, Major Pendennis, to rescue him from an improvident love affair with an actress, Miss Fotheringay. The Major appeals to her father, the foolish and drunken Captain Costigan, through their shared military connections, to break the young people’s ill-founded engagement. Pen takes off for Oxbridge, where he performs horribly, fails his coursework, and enjoys an extravagant and idle existence. In a second major rescue, his mother and Laura make good his debts, and, shamed into reform, he returns to classes, improves his performance, and earns a degree.

All is not well in his romantic life, however, when he returns home and becomes enthralled with the silly and vacuous Blanche Amory, daughter of the second wife of baronet Francis Clavering. Out of duty, he proposes to Laura, but she rejects him, having little desire to marry one with little ambition and much ill judgment. When he returns to London to attend law school, he instead begins to write for a publication called the Pall Mall Gazette, through the influence of his friend, George Warrington. He achieves success with his first novel, Walter Lorraine, and enjoys London society.

Pen reunites with Blanche, but does not seek to court her. Instead, he introduces her to his friend Harry Foker, who immediately becomes enthralled. As for Pen, he develops feelings for Fanny Bolton, daughter of a porter, and struggles with his desire to seduce her. When Fanny nurses him through an illness, Mrs. Pendennis suspects her as Pen’s mistress and sends her away. Fanny writes to Pen, with whom she has fallen in love, but his mother hides her letters. Pen at last discovers and reads the letters, which prove Fanny’s innocence to his mother. Pen forgives his mother, who dies soon after.

Pen’s uncle feels the boy should marry, and he sets about to arrange a socially convenient marriage between Pen and Blanche. However, he does so by blackmailing Blanche’s father, Sir Francis, with information regarding a scandal. Sir Francis agrees to the marriage and also gives up his Parliament seat to Pen. The plot becomes complicated when Pen discovers Blanche’s real father is a still-living criminal. He struggles with his commitment to marry Blanche, deciding he must honor it. All ends well when Blanche breaks the engagement to marry Foker, now a wealthy man, leaving Pen to realize his love for Laura. She accepts his wiser, more compassionate character, and the two plan to marry.

Thackeray felt he had ultimately failed in his quest to produce a realistic portrayal of a contemporary man. He had hoped to paint a portrait similar to that of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, to which he refers in a preface appended to the final serial issue. He states, in part, “Since the author of ‘Tom Jones’ was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a MAN. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art.” However, most critics feel Thackeray succeeded in his stated goal to shape in Pen a character with “the passions to feel, and the manliness and generosity to overcome them.” In presenting Pen as an autobiographical figure, Thackeray avoided Dickens’s rendition of David Copperfield as exposed in his youth to mainly abominable, selfish influences. Instead, Thackeray frames the fictionalization of his own youth in irony, reflecting both positive and negative forces.

Some critics feel Thackeray’s own near-death illness just prior to writing the novel corrected the misanthropy present in Vanity Fair. Thus, he frames Pen’s early foolish involvement with Emily Costigan with nonjudgmental affection, creating a comic rendering of the innocence of youth yet to be tried by the world. And although he does include the scandal affecting the Clavering family, he sketches it as part of a broader worldview. Thackeray illustrated the novel himself, drawing on the cover Pen tempted on the one side by a mermaid and flanked on the other by a conventional looking woman with children. He makes clear that the fantasy world, while always a temptation, remains idealistic and unachievable, characterizing the more traditional lifestyle as a viable and attractive option.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lund, Michael. Reading Thackeray. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988.