Vanity Fair Analysis

In the satiric novel, Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray exposes and examines the vanities of 19th century England. Numerous characters in the novel pursue wealth, power, and social standing, often through marriage or matrimony. Thackeray effectively uses the institution of marriage to comment on how these vanities often come at the expense of the true emotions of passion, devotion, and, of course, love.

In Vanity Fair, money and high status is the pinnacle to all solutions to nearly all of the characters ' relationships. Thackeray connects England 's merchant families, the lesser nobility, and the high aristocracy through money and marriage as parents are evidently the chief negotiators in business transactions. Mr. Osborne is perhaps

There is not only a very minute amount of happiness, but also a lack of respect in their marriage especially since Sir Pitt is generally rude to Rose, often leaves her completely alone, and frequently hits her. Thackeray contrasts this passionless love with a relinquished past relationship that attracted Rose to give her hand a truer, purer love, “O Vanity Fair -- Vanity Fair! This might have been, but for you, a cheery lass; Peter Butt and Rose a happy man and wife, in a snug farm, with a hearty family, and an honest portion of pleasures, cares, hopes, and struggles: - but a title and a coach and four are more precious than happiness in Vanity Fair ...” (Thackeray 83). Thackeray insinuates that the lower classes, far less concerned with social standing, perhaps are happier than those with wealth and power are. In contrast, the high socialites of the Fair are willing to sell their happiness for social prestige. Thackeray further develops this idea upon the death of Lady Crawley when he says, "Her heart was dead long before her body. She had sold it to become Sir Pitt Crawley 's wife” (140). While this narration has a rather blunt tone, there is little doubt that it is a stark condemnation of the "business" of marriage. The most interesting character in Vanity Fair engaged in the transactions of marriage is understandably Rebecca ‘Becky’ Sharp. In Thackeray 's novel, the anti-heroine is continuously scheming to advance her social position in life through marriage through any necessary means. Rebecca 's own considerable wits and schemes, however, are more than enough to captivate several men. Her first attempt at advancing in society through marriage centres on Joseph ‘Jos’ Sedley. Even before she has met him, Rebecca decides that she will attempt to wed him: "If Mr. Joseph Sedley is rich and unmarried, why should I not marry him? I have only a