Becky Sharp: Vanity Alert!
“Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or having it, is satisfied?” (Thackeray 809). William Thackeray ends his novel, Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero on a pessimistic note. Up to this point, Thackeray has not failed to show the piercing hypocrisies of Vanity Fair, revealing the disgusting, brutal, degrading affliction behind and below its elegant gleam. The main attack here is on the Victorian, bourgeois society and the extreme and bizarre motives that drive some characters’ passions. Rebecca Sharp (Becky), known as Rebecca Crawley later in the book, is one of those characters: She is calculating, manipulative, crafty and most of all, vain. Becky is not virtuous, and in speaking of her as a morally significant figure, one should not possibly confuse her moral meaning with the meaning of “virtue.” By representing her world at its highest energetic potential, by molding all its evil, confused, and formless impulses into brilliantly controlled intention, she tricks the reader in believing that she actually endows her world with meaning. Becky is the orphaned daughter of destitute parents, and she learns early on how to look out for her own interests. Her urge to climb the social ladder and claim social status is concretely portrayed in the novel. Becky herself is a member of no particular class, and her desires for upward mobility are that much stronger. Thackeray, through the character of Becky, discusses the acquisitive society in great detail, by revealing the actual corruptions of performance.
Vanity Fair, of course, is most concerned with performance for personal advancement. Although Becky is an attractive character because she is refreshingly active and lively in contrast with the passive and uninteresting Amelia Sedley, the daughter of John Sedley who is successful and moneyed as the novel opens, and refreshingly natural in contrast to the self-righteous and hypocritical characters like Mrs. Bute Crawley or Lady Southdown, still her ongoing act and performance to gain rise above her state is cunning and deceptive. Early in the novel, she appears to be greatly managing her performance, and she is yet only an apprentice. By attending and earning her keep at Miss Pinkerton’s academy, Becky overshadows Miss Pinkerton by her wits and “sweet” and “timid” aims. Thackeray uses two phrases about her for this case, which are worth dwelling upon. The first is not striking in itself, but still shows her ambitious nature: “Began acting for herself” (22). Here, the literal sense of acting is emboldened by its context. There is an absolute comparison with the first pages in her childish mockery of Miss Pinkerton when “the dismal precocity of poverty she talked and turned away duns, and coaxed and wheedled tradesmen” (Thackeray 18). Thackeray, here, presents her as gifted in performance, wit, and mimicry, and turning her gifts into a necessary trade. Thus, in a way, as Christopher Lindner points out in his article, “Thackeray’s Gourmand: Carnivals of Consumption in ‘Vanity Fair’,” “Thackeray’s narration exhibits a fascination with commodity culture’s spectacular and performative aspects” (566). In her constant urge for consumption, Becky Sharp is thoroughly corrupt in reaching her goal—upward mobility. Her vanity, self-fashioning, and performance have one purpose—to gain control in every situation. These blemishes she possesses are never to be lost.
Thackeray further emphasizes the notion of performance for personal gain through Becky’s character. He also shows her encouraged and contaminated by her father’s “wild companions,” performing the part of “the ingénue” (19) at Miss Pinkerton’s. In order to get in to the upper circles and be accepted, Becky puts on a different kind of act in burlesque and caricature at home. Thackeray intentionally seems to blur the distinction between performance as profession and as a way of life, and within that way of life he shows the reader Becky’s act being as persuasive, self-commodifying, deceptive, and subversive. Becky goes through stages in order to achieve the stated foibles: At the Academy, Becky is driven to act by loneliness and boredom, especially among women, then by envy, and lastly, by a carefully crafted project of ambition: “She had not been much of a dissembler, until now her loneliness taught her to feign . . . Yet, she determined at any rate to get free from the prison in which she found herself” (Thackeray 20). The “prison” is referred to the Academy, but also, metaphorically, it alludes to the world to which Becky belongs—the world of the common people. Brian McCuskey, the author of the essay, “Fetishizing the Flunkey: Thackeray and the Uses of Deviance,” makes a commentary on people like Becky Sharp, who feel as downcast and alone, outside of the noble circle: “Without an invitation to the very best dinners, the lower-middle-class snob sees little of high society apart from the liveried footmen who . . . stand between him and those dinners” (387). Living so close to such lavishes and not being able to taste the treasures of the high rank motivates Becky even further and gives way to the act of performance, both literally and figuratively.
Moreover, in order to better understand Becky’s character and her motivation through act, one ought to scrutinize her first non-professional performance. The event takes place in Amelia’s house, and Thackeray stresses two things: her experience, as when she surprises Amelia by saying, unnecessarily, that she dotes on little children, and her avariciousness, as she envies Amelia’s things—“her books, and her piano, and her dress, and her necklaces, brooches, laces and gimcracks” (22). In this novel, objects are envied, used, acquired, bought, presented, and the result is to emphasize through them the apparent and overplayed consumption, and also their dramatic use. Mostly, Thackeray accentuates the act itself, rather than the materials desired. The exceedingly cunning Becky Sharp will stop at nothing to get social power—whether through performance or cunningly artful dialogue or seduction; she will coax the prey into her dungeon.
Not only does Thackeray, through the actual description of scenes of performances, convey meaning across and further unveil Becky’s character, but also through her language patterns, costume and property, cumulative behavior description, the account of her controlled behavior enclosed to words, tones, gestures, and at times extending to laughter and even tears. In her conversation with George Osborne, a wealthy young man, though not a nobleman, who is Mr. Sedley’s godson, performs one of her best acts, with great show of emotion: “And she dropped her voice, and looked so sad and piteous, that everybody felt how cruel her lot was, and how sorry they would be to part with her” (Thackeray 39). Becky continues her overdramatic acting, “‘Oh heavenly, heavenly flowers! Exclaimed Miss Sharp, and smelt the [flowers] delicately, and held them to her bosom . . . in an ecstasy of admiration” (Thackeray 45). The author shows Becky arranging her language, tone, and behavior, often simply doing things in appropriate emotional fashion, like entertaining her friends, or in talking about fascinating India, or in arranging her clothing and appearance to bring out her pathos.
Becky plays many roles, yet Thackeray does not fail to portray her cunning nature through the use of language in her manipulative performances. According to critic, Lisa Jadwin, “Thackeray emphasizes that this discourse of acquiescent duplicity—‘the female double discourse’—is a universal female genderlect spoken by ‘coquettes,’ ‘domestic models,’ and ‘paragons of female virtue’ alike” (663). Certainly, Jadwin, in her mentioning of “domestic models” and “paragons of female virtue” has in mind Amelia, and not Becky. However, it is clear that the term “coquette” undeniably refers to Becky. She flirts with George and Jos, Amelia’s brother, simultaneously right in front of Amelia of whose feelings toward George she is aware. The Coquette’s flirting is not just a girly, innocent act, but also a calculated epilogue of gaining as many rich, marriage candidates as she can. Her egotistical self surfaces during her every show, yet all who surround her, especially those who are directly betrayed by this paragon of vanity, fail to notice the blemishes. Even in the first few chapters of the novel, Becky is already too steeped into her own self-fashioning and self-centeredness that it foreshadows no point of return to virtue. Leila S. May, in her piece titled “The Sociology of Thackeray’s ‘Howling Wilderness’: Selfishness, Secrecy and Performance in Vanity Fair,” suggests that “Psychological egoism therefore rejects the possibility of altruism, if by altruism one means the sacrifice of one’s own interest for the interest of another” (22). Becky seems to enjoy the control she has over others, without caring about somebody else’s feelings. Her cynical obsession with money lies beneath all her actions as a major cause.
As the novel progresses, the reader is expected to understand the behavioral mode without invasions into Becky’s mind, which also turns out to be unnecessary because both she and the reader become more efficient. Sometimes the words alone show the performance, but Thackeray usually accompanies them with non-sentimental descriptions. Now that both the character and the reader are masters in their roles, Thackeray describes language merely in terms of sound: “she dropped her voice,” “said Rebecca,” or “Becky thought” (352). This creates a sharp contrast between what’s visible and audible in Becky, and what goes on in other characters’ minds, whose behaviors are less controlled and calculated. Some of the characters are after riches and status, but none of them has her desires, determination, wits, and cold-hearted nature. Her mind is saturated with the notion of accumulation of wealth or at least the appearance of it. “To achieve these goals” and May continues, “each organism becomes a dissembler, and each performance is a weapon—offensive or defensive—in a larger armamentarium” (33). Most of Becky’s plans harm and offend many of the characters in the novel, but at the same time, her actions are a defense mechanism for her confined self—in her separation from the nobles.
Moreover, Becky’s performances continue and merge the highly professional acting, singing, and dancing with her continuous personal performance, but of course, that professionalism is relative. Thackeray depicts this when showing Becky’s attitude to the professional artists engaged to entertain the upper circles of London. Much later in the novel, she discusses performance with Lord Steyne. The connection between the use of art in human relations and aesthetic effort has already been made clear, by now, in the case of Becky. She has entered the great world of vanity and fashion, and she had begun to perform, by singing to a little group at a party given by the Prince of Peterwardin, with Lord Steyn (Thackeray 586). On one occasion, she tells Steyne, “I would rather be a parson’s wife, and teach a Sunday School than this . . . O how much grayer it would be to wear spangles and trousers, and dance before a booth at a fair” (Thackeray 589). She uses for effect an absolutely honest view, which comes up again when the reader sees her resilience and adaptability in Bohemian society. She confides a genuine boredom, but the confiding is a performance: “She used to tell the great man her ennuis and perplexities in her artless way—they amused him” (Thackeray 589). Becky is clever enough to use even truth-telling artfully. Her performance not only exploits and enjoys truth and candor, but it has a subtle impact.
The characters in Vanity Fair are involved in performance in many ways, as actors, actresses, singers, and audience. Becky Sharp is the ultimate performer in the novel and the epitome of vanity. Her constant strive for social status desensitizes her to any kind of emotion. Thackeray makes it clear that Becky needs all her arts in “the great world,” and that great world while demanding entertainment, sucks her into its glitz and glamour, vanity and commodities. Becky seldom does anything disinterestedly—everything is calculated and is done for profit. Her egoism is most apparent in the beginning of the novel and even left uncommented by the narrator toward its end. Thackeray then shows performance as including the dramatic sense, the desire to project, to win, to be admired by an audience within and without. Becky’s audience within is her own self-possessed essence, which displays the ensnaring and uncommon performance of her own passions. All the irony and cynicism, the obsessed urge for worldliness, and the scorn of fools, gives this note a deeper compassion: “Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or having it, is satisfied?” (809).
Works Cited
Jadwin, Lisa. “The Seductiveness of Female Duplicity in Vanity Fair.” Studies in
English Literature 1500-1900 32.4 (1992): 663-87. Print.
Lindner, Christopher. “Thackeray’s Gourmand: Carnivals of Consumption in Vanity
Fair.” Modern Philology 99.4 (2002): 564-81. Print.
May, Leila S. “The Sociology of Thackeray’s ‘Howling Wilderness’: Selfishness,
Secrecy and Performance in Vanity Fair.” Modern Language Studies 37.1 (2007):
18-41. Print.
McCuskey, Brian. “Fetishizing the Flunkey: Thackeray and the Uses of Deviance.”
NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 32.3 (1999): 384-400. Print.
Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero. Ed. John Carey.
New York: Penguin Books, 2004. Print.
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