Vanity Fair in Reading the Classics

Sep 05, 2022 Drkshadow03 rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-in-2022, western-canon

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The story follows social climber Becky Sharp as she maneuvers her way through high society using her talents, wits, and charms to manipulate men, leading to her eventual downfall after a scandal. The other main character is the naive, innocent, and dutiful Amelia Sedley who goes from riches to poverty and back again, while idolizing her deceased husband George who dies during the Battle of Waterloo and her obsessive care of their son they have together sometimes to the point of selfishness.

The The story follows social climber Becky Sharp as she maneuvers her way through high society using her talents, wits, and charms to manipulate men, leading to her eventual downfall after a scandal. The other main character is the naive, innocent, and dutiful Amelia Sedley who goes from riches to poverty and back again, while idolizing her deceased husband George who dies during the Battle of Waterloo and her obsessive care of their son they have together sometimes to the point of selfishness.

The book satires English and London upper-class and middle-class society as representing a new Vanity Fair, a place where your social status depends not on important things like personal qualities or virtue or good character, but on wealth, titles, and connections. Vanity Fair takes its title from a place featured in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which in turn alludes to the famous biblical lines from Ecclesiastes that all is vanity. Although society might value wealth, rank, and political connections, the book shows it is all fleeting vanity, all of it worthless, and full of illusions and lies.

For all Becky Sharp’s character flaws as a manipulative schemer who will lie in a heartbeat if it is to her advantage, the book makes clear that society judged her right from the start based on her low birth, poverty, and the disreputable professions of her parents. The past both motivates her to desire to rise into high society and gives her the tools that she needs to climb up the social ladder. At the beginning of the novel Miss Pinkerton clearly treats Becky Sharp differently than Amelia as she prepares to send them off into the world, despite Becky’s evident talents in comparison to Amelia. Although Amelia has something that the amoral Becky lacks: a kind-heart.

For all her lying, Becky provides one of the most powerful and honest moments of the books when she shatters Amelia’s illusions about George as some sort of idealized angel who she would be betraying if she pursued a relationship with Dobbin.

In countless ways, we witness how wealth, rank, and other vanities of this world corrupt people. Old Osborne abandons his former friend, John Sedley (Amelia’s father) the minute he loses his fortune after Sedley’s speculations fail due to the Napoleonic Wars. He even abandons his own son, when George disobeys him about marrying Amelia after her family is impoverished. He is willing to sacrifice his relationships out of spite over hurt pride and George shattering his ambitions about acquiring more money through a different marriage he commands him to pursue.
Another minor character demonstrates the vanity of worldly pursuit. Sir Pitt Crawley spends his time in parliament hoping to become a major name in politics and possibly gain a peerage only to lose his parliamentary seat in the end. All that time spent only for all that effort and ambition to be worthless in the end.

In Vanity Fair, it is not only wealth and rank that matters, but reputation and appearance. As the novel shows through many characters, many of the rich and nobles are not virtuous or good people. Amelia’s brother Jos likes to tell all sorts of made-up stories about his adventures and bravery at the Battle of Waterloo and hunting tigers in Indian to improve his reputation in society, but in reality he is coward. Lord Steyne may be one of the highest ranking peers, extremely rich, and have direct connections to the royal court, but the man is not virtuous. He clearly is trying to use his riches and influence to be able to sleep with Becky, then uses his influence to ruin her reputation in society, and later on when they briefly encounter her threatens to have her murdered all while seemingly seducing a different married woman. Becky’s downfall comes when she is caught alone with Lord Steyne by her husband Rawdon Crawley with the implication that she has been having an affair with the great lord. The novel ultimately leaves whether they actually slept together ambiguous. Becky denies it, but also demonstrates in numerous ways throughout the book that she is a liar and will do anything to protect her own interests. At the same time, the society that disowns her is also full of liars who will use gossip and innuendo to save face and protect their interest. The novel does a great job at leaving it ambiguous enough that the reader cannot tell definitively one way or the other.

Major Dobbin, best friend to George and secret lover of Amelia, is the moral center of the novel. He is a genuinely good, affectionate, and caring person who often puts the needs of others before his own out of genuine sentiment. He represents virtue and often advises many of the characters such as George on correcting their vices. He is everything vanity fair is not. He wants genuine affection and sincerity, he avoids vices like gambling, and displays sober judgement with little consideration for appearances. However, it is through his genuineness and virtuous qualities that he gains a reputation anyway. It is through Dobbin that the reader understands that a reputation based on virtue and love for others is superior to the illusionary reputation of wealth, rank, and connections. ...more

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