Novel: Vanity Fair

Overview
Vanity Fair, first published in 1847–1848, is William Makepeace Thackeray’s panoramic satire of British society during the Napoleonic era, famously subtitled “A Novel without a Hero.” It follows two sharply contrasted women, brilliant, unscrupulous Becky Sharp and tender, passive Amelia Sedley, as they move through a world where fortune, fashion, and rank dictate moral standing. With an intrusive, puppet-master narrator and a gallery of vividly drawn characters, the book exposes the hypocrisies of the marriage market, the brittleness of gentility, and the ruthlessness of social climbing.

Plot
Becky, the impoverished, sharp-witted daughter of an artist and a French opera girl, and Amelia, the sheltered daughter of a prosperous London merchant, leave Miss Pinkerton’s academy to enter society. Amelia is engaged to handsome, vain George Osborne, while George’s loyal friend William Dobbin silently worships her. Becky briefly stays with the Sedleys, then takes a governess post at Queen’s Crawley, charming the dissolute baronet Sir Pitt Crawley and his household, including the rich, capricious spinster Miss Crawley.

Amelia’s fortunes collapse when her father is ruined in a market crisis. George’s mercantile father forbids the match, but George defies him and marries Amelia, coached by Dobbin’s steady honor. Becky, meanwhile, secretly marries Rawdon Crawley, Sir Pitt’s dashing but indebted younger son, thereby alienating Miss Crawley and losing the fortune she had angled to secure. The two couples converge in Brussels as Europe braces for Waterloo. Becky flirts recklessly, even enticing George’s attentions; his note inviting her to a rendezvous later shatters Amelia’s illusions. The battle intervenes, George is killed, and Amelia bears a son, clinging to the memory of a husband unworthy of her devotion.

After the war, Becky and Rawdon live by gambling, charm, and credit. In London she becomes a sensation under the patronage of the cynical Lord Steyne, whose jewels and favor she accepts while concealing funds from Rawdon. When Rawdon bursts in to find her with Steyne, he thrashes the lord and quits Becky, learning she had money all along. Through influence he receives a colonial post and later dies of fever, while Becky drifts across the Continent, sliding in and out of shabby respectability.

Amelia, impoverished and gentle, raises her son until the tyrannical Mr. Osborne claims the boy as heir. Years pass. Dobbin’s constancy endures; Amelia’s gratitude remains blind. A reunion abroad brings Becky back among them, now with Amelia’s brother Jos Sedley comfortably in tow and susceptible to Becky’s arts. The discovery of George’s old letter to Becky finally cracks Amelia’s idol of her first husband, and she accepts Dobbin’s steadfast love. The reconciled pair marry and achieve a quiet domestic contentment; Amelia’s son inherits wealth and position.

Themes and Style
Thackeray’s narrator exposes a society where money bestows morality and everyone plays a part in the fair. Becky’s resourceful amorality and Amelia’s sentimental goodness mirror complementary flaws: one worships advantage, the other illusion. War and commerce frame a world of transactions, while the narrative’s asides, mock playbills, and puppet-show metaphors keep reminding readers that the spectacle is staged.

Ending and Significance
Becky survives in ambiguous respectability, long suspected of hastening Jos Sedley’s death after an advantageous insurance policy appears. Amelia and Dobbin settle into modest happiness, their virtue real but hardly triumphant. The fair goes on, its prizes tawdry and its morality negotiable, leaving a brilliantly unsparing portrait of ambition, delusion, and the price of getting on.