Resumo de Vanity Fair - W.M.Thackeray

A novel by William Makepeace Thackeray,in which the genius of the novelist is displayed in its fullest potential. It is primarily concerned with the career of Becky Sharp, the witty, courageous, unscrupulous daughter of a poor artist whose wife is a French opera-dancer. Becky Sharp, an articled pupil at Miss Pinkerton?s Academy teaches French there. Here she gets acquainted with Amelia Sedley, a pretty, gentle, rather simpleton daughter of a rich business person. Becky puts her charms to full use to captivate Amelia?s brother Jos Sedley. Her ambitions to scale the social ladder runs high. She engages herself as a governess in the house of a slovenly, cynical baronet Sir Pitt Crawley ,whom she wins by her charms. The baronet, on the demise of his wife proposes to her only to learn that Becky has married his second son, Rawdon, a cavalry officer and a roué ,on the sly. Rawdon is abandoned by the irate father. The remainder of her story is occupied mostly by the trickery, double-faced attitude ,supple energy with which she heads on to carve a niche in the high society circle, first in Paris and thereafter in London, despite her poverty and disadvantages of birth. Her ways are not always pure and moral. She yields on to the advances of old Lord Steyne only to extort fabulous sum of money from him. Rawdon Crawley, despite his lasciviousness, is devoted to his wife Becky. But once he gets shocked to find her with Lord Steyne in an incriminating situation and he breaks with his wife in a jiffy, giving vent to his anger with the Lord. The parallel story of Amelia Sedley winding through vicissitudes and rapid changes ends with her wedding to Dobbin, the trusted lover, who always stood by her in times of trials and hardship. Amelia, in the scheme of the novel , stands as a foil to Becky Sharp. The canvas, on which Thackeray has portrayed life with realism that is often mingled with romantic sensibility and calm irony is sprawling. The plot is loose, long, complicated, often interspersed with extraneous elements and frequent digressions. The multiplicity of characters is amazing. Becky Sharp is an immortal creation of English fiction. She is a most finished portrait of ?certain type of the eternal woman?the actress, the adventuress who scandalizes and conquers the world, invincible in her defeats, insecure in her triumph.? Her history is a credible illustration of the rise and fall of the courtesans of all ages, not just of the Victorian era! Dr. Ketaki Datta

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