Vanity Fair

MODEL QUESTIONS

VANITY FAIR

William Makepeace Thackeray

1. Becky Sharp is without doubt the novel's most intelligent and interesting character. Yet in frequent asides, the novel's narrator goes out of his way to expose her stratagems and condemn her motives. What do you think of the narrator's constant moralizing—about Becky as well as the novel's other characters?

Ans 1. William Thackeray’s ceaseless moralizing of the characters of the novel is, I believe quite justified and well founded. It reveals his apparent motive to escort into prominence the social evils which are too rampant in our society. Not only that, but his effort to condemn these social ills, most of which are not even disregarded in a society like ours, are indeed appreciable. The author even slashes at those characters who wear a disguise of all divinity and goodness and underneath, their personality is an embodiment of numerous negative traits.

The author has made a point to highlight the negative aspect to each of the characters in the play, even though Rebecca Sharp has been disparaged most strongly and underlined as treacherous, manipulative, and a vanity parasite. She has also been demonstrated as a woman who is eager to get her way by resorting to every possible means.

The author does not spare any other characters in the novel. He condemns Captain Dobbin for his persistent melancholy and even his initial vanity when he conducts flamboyant annuity to financially back Amelia Sedley. He even exhibits open disregard for Joseph Sedley for his cowardice, Amelia for her naivety, George Osborne for his spendthrift nature and his disloyalty to an immensely caring wife, Rawdon for his lust for money and his remarkable agreeableness to employ all underhand methods possible and last but not the least, Ms Crawley who deeply cherishes scandal and high scale town gossip.

2. Amelia is lauded by the narrator as a paragon of womanhood, though he admits that some people, especially other women,...