Victorian Women: 2. Vanity Fair
We study six great books by and about women in our Victorian Women course, live online, September to November 2023.
Lecturer Clare Walker-Gore reflects upon each of the books in a series of blog posts. Here she looks at Vanity Fair (1848) by William Makepeace Thackeray.
Vanity Fair
When Miss Sharp had performed the heroical act mentioned in the last chapter, and had seen the Dixonary, flying over the pavement of the little garden, fall at length at the feet of the astonished Miss Jemima, the young lady’s countenance, which had before worn an almost livid look of hatred, assumed a smile that perhaps was scarcely more agreeable, and she sank back in the carriage in an easy frame of mind, saying — ‘So much for the Dixonary; and, thank God, I’m out of Chiswick. […] I hate the whole house,’ continued Miss Sharp in a fury. ‘I hope I may never set eyes on it again. I wish it were in the bottom of the Thames, I do; and if Miss Pinkerton were there, I wouldn’t pick her out, that I wouldn’t. […] But that talking French to Miss Pinkerton was capital fun, wasn't it? She doesn't know a word of French, and was too proud to confess it. I believe it was that which made her part with me; and so thank Heaven for French. Vive la France! Vive l’Empereur! Vive Bonaparte!’
‘O Rebecca, Rebecca, for shame!’ cried Miss Sedley; for this was the greatest blasphemy Rebecca had as yet uttered; and in those days, in England, to say, ‘Long live Bonaparte!’ was as much as to say, ‘Long live Lucifer!’ ‘How can you — how dare you have such wicked, revengeful thoughts?’
‘Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural,’ answered Miss Rebecca. ‘I’m no angel.’ And, to say the truth, she certainly was not.
Vanity Fair is pointedly subtitled A Novel Without A Hero. In this passage, Thackeray introduces us to Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp as they leave school together, one feeling and behaving exactly as she should, and the other literally throwing Doctor Johnson overboard, as she tosses the Dictionary she has been given as a parting gift out of the carriage window. If serious, upright, hardworking Jane Eyre was accused by some reviewers of being ungrateful, what are we to make of devil-may-care Becky Sharp, who cheerfully declares her own wickedness at the outset of her career?
Polar opposites as these self-assertive governesses might be in some ways, they have one important thing in common: they both command the reader’s total attention, casting into shade all the characters who surround them. For while Amelia Sedley is given credit for all the feminine virtues Becky Sharp lacks, there can be no doubt where Thackeray expects his reader’s interest to fall. For much of the novel, as in this opening scene, he more or less ensures that we will have sneaking admiration and perhaps even sympathy for Becky, however much we disapprove of her.
Who can fail to enjoy her rejection of pompous Miss Pinkerton’s gift, so ungraciously and unwillingly bestowed? And while Becky may be punished along the way, Thackeray plots the novel so that Amelia and Becky ultimately share surprisingly similar fates – perhaps prompting us to question whether either woman really plays her assigned role as angel or anti-heroine.
The Victorian Women course first ran in autumn 2022 and is repeated Sept.-Nov. 2023.
Dr Clare Walker Gore has taught at the Open University and the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.
