This essay examines the episode of Vanity Fair in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, analyzing its allegorical function as a representation of worldly temptation and meretricious social life. Drawing on Bunyan's own verse interpolations and marginal Gospel citations—particularly the temptation of Christ in Matthew 4 and Luke 4—the paper traces how Christian and Faithful's suffering at Vanity Fair is meant to model Christ-like conduct for the reader. The essay also situates the episode within the broader context of the allegory's purpose: to guide readers toward a heavenly rather than earthly reward, and to demonstrate how righteous pilgrims must endure worldly hostility without compromising their spiritual mission.
A sign of the enduring popularity and influence of The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan is that one of the allegory's more memorable episodes — the passage of Christian and Faithful through the town of Vanity and its market festival of "Vanity Fair" — continues to be a recognizable allusion long after Bunyan's death. In 2012, Vanity Fair remains the title of a Condé Nast magazine celebrating wealth and fame. To a certain degree, Bunyan would approve the title of this magazine, for his own conception of Vanity Fair is a place of glossy and meretricious emptiness.
It is worth examining what happens to Christian and Faithful in the episode in order to read the allegory for its full meaning. Because Bunyan's goal in Pilgrim's Progress is to provide the reader with an allegorical model for righteous conduct, the vicious treatment that Christian and Faithful receive at Vanity Fair is understood as somehow necessary.
This is, after all, the etymological meaning of "Vanity." Although contemporary usage is more likely to refer to conceitedness — as, for example, with "Vanity Smurf" always gazing in a hand-mirror — the original meaning was of worthless vacuity. This is "Vanity" in the sense of "vain effort" or something done "in vain." Bunyan's allegorical use of "Vanity Fair" is intended to emphasize the worldly aspects of the world in which his readers find themselves: a place defined not by pride, but by hollow and transient distraction from spiritual purpose.
Bunyan is careful to note, on more than one occasion, that Jesus himself had to pass through Vanity Fair. This point is summarized in one of the interpolated verses Bunyan wrote for the illustrated edition of the book:
Behold VANITY-FAIR; the Pilgrims there?
Are Chain'd and Ston'd beside;
Even so it was, our Lord past here,
And on Mount Calvary dy'd.1
In other words, even Jesus had to pass through Vanity Fair. The episode thus represents the most worldly aspects of human social life — a gauntlet every true pilgrim must endure.
Beyond its representation of worldly distraction, Vanity Fair also embodies a specific kind of temptation, as Bunyan makes clear in his longer prose account of what happened to Jesus there:
The Prince of princes himself, when here, went through this Town to his own Countrey, and that upon a Fair-day too; yea, and, as I think, it was Beelzebub, the chief Lord of this Fair, that invited him to buy of his Vanities, yea, would have made him Lord of the Fair, would he but have done him Reverence as he went thorow the Town.2
Allegorically speaking, we are meant to understand this passage in light of the Gospel accounts Bunyan cites in the margins: Matthew 4:8–9 and Luke 4:5–7, both of which recount the temptation of Jesus Christ by the Devil in the wilderness, where the Devil offers Jesus unlimited earthly powers in exchange for his loyalty. Jesus, needless to say, rejects the temptation of worldly or earthly reward.
Bunyan's episode of Vanity Fair is intended to show the reader how a good Christian — like the allegory's protagonist, Christian — must emulate Christ by seeking a kingdom not of this world, and a heavenly rather than an earthly reward. The figure of Beelzebub as "chief Lord of this Fair" reinforces the diabolical nature of worldly ambition and social advancement, casting the marketplace itself as a site of spiritual danger.
"Suffering at Vanity Fair as Christ-like righteous conduct"
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