| It is a known fact that W. M. Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair begins with an author’s preface entitled “Before the Curtain”, where the characters in the novel are already referred to as ‘puppets’, ‘dolls’ and ‘figures’, the stage being a ‘Fair’, all these being ‘looked at’ by the ‘Manager of the Performance’. The paper aims at identifying and analyzing the dramatic discourse in the novel, the roles, positions and functions of characters which are relevant to our analysis, so as to decide who pulls the strings of all these marionettes. Another purpose of the paper is to deal with this game between the roles of passive spectator and active producer, and also with the reader’s role. |
