An impression is to be created, growing and
growing; and it can well be created in the loose panoramic style which
is Thackeray's paramount arm. A general view, once more, a summary of
Becky's course of action, a long look at her conditions, a
participation in her gathering difficulties--that is the nature and
the task of these chapters, that is what Thackeray proceeds to give
us.
He sets about it with a beautiful ease of assurance. From his height
he looks forth, takes in the effect with his sweeping vision,
possesses himself of the gradation of its tone; then, stooping nearer,
he seizes the detail that renders it. But the sense of the broad
survey is first in his thought. When he reflects upon Becky's life in
London and all that came of her attempt to establish herself there, he
is soon assailed by a score of definite recollections, tell-tale
incidents, scraps of talk that show how things were going with her;
but these, it would seem, arise by the way, they spring up in his mind
as he reviews the past. They illustrate what he has to say, and he
takes advantage of them. He brushes past them, however, without much
delaying or particularizing; a hint, a moment, a glance suffices for
the contribution that some event or colloquy is to make to the
picture. Note, for example, how unceremoniously, again and again, and
with how little thought of disposing a deliberate scene, he drifts
into his account of something that Becky said or did; she begins to
talk, you find there is some one else in the room, you find they are
in a certain room at a certain hour; definition emerges unawares in a
brooding memory.
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