Reading Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray

       This is a novel which attempts to look at life with a sarcastic, detached gaze. Yet every now and then a sample surfaces of how the author is touched by some of the awful things that went on in the 19th century. To wit, “Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts, as they do of their deformed children.” Or "That effort was too much for her; she placed them back in her bosom again--as you have seen a woman nurse a child that is dead."

       I am aware that the first quotation might perhaps do a better job showcasing the prevalent male chauvinism of the period. I am also aware that both quotations are nothing if compared with the luxury of squalor and despair that other novelists of the time gorged themselves on. But I think that these tiny jewels of horror (plus the ones I may come across as I go on reading) are the more poignant because they have been dropped, in passing as it were, in a story which is so filled with irony. And what makes them so 19th century is maybe the casualness, not to mention the lack of political correctness, with which they are included.

      I have googled "dead child", perversely intent on illustrating the point with one of those 19th century and early 20th century photographs of the deceased "prettily" arranged in "natural", "artistic" poses or with their relatives. I have given up -the web is full of far too many 21st century instances, the war photographers are totally devoid of the artistic knack and there is only so much I can stomach.