in Jane Austen, buoyant in Disraeli, and thoroughly canvassed by Trollope. The clas-
sic satire on this famous English preoccupation is Vanity Fair, subtitled A Novel
without a Hero, rather as Fielding called Tom Jones a ‘comic epic in prose’. It follows
the fortunes of Becky Sharp, a fearless social mountaineer. These are contrasted
throughout with those of Amelia Sedley, the daughter of a stockbroker; Becky is the
orphan child of an artist and a French opera dancer. In Chapter 1, as Becky sits in
her friend Amelia’s carriage outside Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for young ladies, she
is presented with Johnson’s Dictionary. As they leave, Becky tosses it out of the
window; she does not intend to be a governess. The first man Becky enchants is
Amelia’s brother Jos, the wealthy, witless and cowardly Collector of Boggley Wallah.
Becky is sharp and unscrupled, Amelia mild, decent and silly. Amelia hopes to wed
the handsome Lt George Osborne, a merchant’s son. Then, ‘in the month of March,
Anno Domini 1815, Napoleon landed at Cannes, and Louis XVIII fell, and all
Europe was in alarm, and the funds fell, and old John Sedley was ruined.’ Against his
father’s will, George Osborne marries the penniless Amelia, shamed into doing the
decent thing by his honourable friend Dobbin, who loves Amelia. It is a mistake.
Becky begins as governess in the family of Sir Pitt Crawley, a Hampshire baronet, so
bewitching him that the old boor actually proposes.
‘I say agin, I want you,’ Sir Pitt said, thumping the table. ‘I can’t git on without you. I
didn’t see what it was till you went away. The house all goes wrong. It’s not the same
place. All my accounts has got muddled agin. You must come back. Do come back. Dear
Becky, do come.’
‘Come – as what, sir?’ Rebecca gasped out.
‘Come as Lady Crawley, if you like,’ the Baronet said, grasping his crape hat. ‘There!
will that zatusfy you? Come back and be my wife. Your vit vor’t. Birth be hanged. Your’reTHE TRIUMPH OF THE NOVEL 297‘Mr Joseph entangled’,Vanity Fair
Sedley helps Becky Sharp wind a
skein of green silk. One of W. M.
Thackeray’s illustrations for his
Vanity Fair, published in monthly
parts, 1847–8.