The reaction of Vanity Fair
I have read a book named Vanity Fair. It was written by William Thackeray, a famous writer in 19th century.
The book has told a story about a beautiful woman named Rebecca Sharp. She was an orphan and she had suffered during her childhood due to her privation. So she wanted to be rich and powerful. When she grew up, she used her beauty and resource to get into the upper society. In this process, she had ever succeeded, but finally she had nothing.
The author said this is a novel without a hero. The characters are all small potatoes in that society. Their stories just like the ethos in the real society. Almost everyone wants to become rich and powerful. They may give up a friend, a relative even a lover to get more. Some of them get what they want but they do not happy. And some people just lose everything. I really thing it is a tragedy for someone lose its way in the Vanity Fair. A real happy life should not along with money and lust.
第二篇：名利场(vanity fair)读后感
The Brief Analysis of Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley
Vanity Fair is the most famous and marvelous work of Thackeray’s, which satirizes the downfallen upper class and utilitarian bourgeois upstarts in Britain. In this long novel, Thackeray depicts a comely young woman, Rebecca Sharp, who is smart enough to take advantage of her beauty to climb upward in the Vanity Fair. To make a comparison with Rebecca Sharp, Thackeray also creates another pretty woman, Amelia Sedley, a friend of Sharp’s, who lives a totally different life. As these two women, especially Rebecca Sharp, are the most important characters in the novel, and they have different attitudes toward wealth and fame, so in my article, I’d like to make a brief analysis of the characters of Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley.
Rebecca Sharp is the daughter of a deceased drawer and a French dancer. Her parentage is rather poor. It is exactly the poor parentage that makes Rebecca Sharp go through many difficulties in her early age, and makes her decide to join the luxurious upper class so desperately that she is willing to do whatever she can. I have to admit that Rebecca Sharp is really smart and beautiful. Her beauty and keen mind is her capital in the venture of stepping into the upper class. Though she dose not have a prestigious pedigree, she still finds her own way of surviving and succeeding in the society where wealth and fame is highly adored. She makes it by proper utilization of her beauty, sharp observation of people’s mind, accurate words to flatter the noble, as well as wonderful techniques of asking and rejecting a certain demand.
In order to step into a comparatively good family, Rebecca Sharp has to make compromise. So when she has heard that Joseph Sedley is single, she makes up her mind to seduce him, even though she has neither known him nor seen him. In her eyes, Joseph Sedley is just a ladder used to climb to an upper level. In this case, she dose not care much about how Joseph Sedley is, but what he is. In the case of aesthetic appreciation, Joseph Sedley is not as decent as Rebecca Sharp. He stammers, and likes to boast. But Rebecca endures his flaws and tries to cater to his topic.
It is maybe the first time that Rebecca gets the chance to change her fate, and she is rather a green hand. She chooses Joseph Sedley without deliberation lest she may lose the opportunity. Given by nature, she is definitely good at using her beauty to capture a man. The victim surrenders at the first sight of Rebecca and soon gets captured thoroughly. The seduction is about to succeed, but unfortunately, another man, George Osborne, ruins it. Much as Rebecca, George Osborne is a lady-killer. He is so experienced that he knows clearly what Rebecca is thinking. So her first attempt to raise her social status has failed.
Another scene can show that Rebecca has a very sensitive mind. When she has heard of the departure of Joseph Sedley, she immediately knows that it is George who urges him to leave. For only George has the ability to catch her thought, because of his abundant experiences of dealing with women. William Dobbin is so obsessed with Amelia Sedley, so he is unlikely to observe Rebecca so slightly.
Mr. Sedley is just a merchant, relatively wealthy, but far less than highly
respected. On one hand, Rebecca has failed to marry Joseph Sedley. On the other hand, she can not be confined to the Sedleys. She needs a better-off family to reach her satisfaction. So Rebecca takes a position as governess at Queen's Crawley.
Before she goes to Queen’s Crawley, Rebecca Sharp has attracted Sir Pitt Crawley so that she will have a more advantageous position Queen’s Crawley. She is more than a governess at Queen’s Crawley, and even the maid knows that she is likely to be the next Mrs. Crawley.
Here is the evidence that Rebecca Sharp is not totally infatuated by wealth and fame. If she is, she should accept Sir Pitt’s proposal so that she can get heritage after Sir Pitt dies. For such girls like Rebecca, love can be discarded for wealth and fame, rather than reverse. So if she falls in love with someone, she really means that, even though she knows that her beloved may be disinherited due to the marriage. It is a genuine coup de foudre for both of Rebecca Sharp and Rawdon Crawley.
Rebecca’s life is full of opportunities. At Queen’s Crawley, she encounters another person who can get her position raised, Rawdon’s rich aunt, who is flattered by everybody and sees clearly that Rebecca wants to flatter her. Hearing the first word of Rebecca, she says “Miss Sharp? You are a little sharp. Mind not cut yourself. ” But she soon gives up and likes Rebecca very much, for Rebecca contrives to find out proper words to praise her, no matter when they are talking and what they are talking about. To such old ladies like her, beauty is not the sticking point to get appreciation. Rebecca Sharp is smart enough to see it, so she
timely changes her key emphasis in her daily work. She resort to speaking-rush, a technique used to quickly achieve something by flattering or irritating someone with proper words. Nobody feels easy to resist compliment, and Rawdon’s rich aunt is no exception. So she decides to take Rebecca to London.
Rebecca knows she can never step into the upper class unless she leaves the countryside. So she instantaneously accepts the old lady’s invitation and moves to London. She is surely to be put into an important position in the house, but she secretly marries Rawdon Crawley, which infuriates old lady Crawley, for she does not want a governess to be a member of her family.
It is the turning point for Rebecca Sharp. After the marriage, she must make a living by her own, not rely on someone. It is hard to say whether it is good for her or bad for her. Her life will be much more difficult, of which I am quite sure, but at the same time, she can join the upper class entitled Mrs. Crawley, not merely as the maidservant of the Crawleys. Every coin has two sides. The new couple loses their source of income, so they must find a way to make money to cover their expenditure of being people of quality. Based on her talent, Rebecca soon finds another prey, the Lord Steyne. As a member of British aristocracy, Lord Steyne has more privileges than Joseph Sedley and Sir Pitt Crawley. He is much more qualified than any other person as a deposit book and a ladder to the upper class. Her seduction goes smoothly until Rawdon finds they are not innocent. After that night, Rawdon is convinced that wealth and fame means more to her than him or her son whom she has always hated. He refuses to see her again and takes a post in
Coventry Island, where he dies of yellow fever. Lord Steyne also loathes her. She finds nobody to rely on.
The ending for Rebecca Sharp is tragic, but we like this ending. Finally Rebecca loses everything which she has contrived for lifetime, and completely loses the chance to enter the Vanity Fair by relying on the noble. She is born poor, and her intention to get wealth and fame is put to an end with nothing. Frankly speaking, Rebecca has a sincere desire of amendment. But what we loathe is the method she resorts to. In the society where pedigree is highly emphasized, the poor little girl can never achieve her goal in a normal way. So the only way out is using her beauty, just like prostitutes using their bodies. It is her destiny that makes Rebecca fail, though she succeeds in ensnaring Joseph Sedley at last.
Another main character in this long novel is Amelia Sedley, the best friend of Rebecca Sharp. She represents a totally different kind of people, who believes in love and is willing to sacrifice everything for pure love. But unfortunately, she goes to another extreme.
In this novel, we can see, George Osborne is not faithful to Amelia Sedley. The reason why he marries her resolutely is that he disdains his father for the betrayal of Mr. Sedley. He uses money Dobbin gives him to buy Amelia a present to buy him a brooch, and even slips a note into Rebecca’s hand and urges her to elope. When she has heard of her husband’s unforgivable behavior, she still believes that George loves her. She is too innocent to reach those playboys hearts.
Amelia’s adherence to the love between herself and George has gone too far this time and later been proved meaningless. Many years after George has died in Waterloo, Amelia still believes that he is faithful and refuses Dobbin for many times. Ironically, it is Rebecca who finally jolts Amelia into the recognition that George, her first love, is not worthy. She uses her own slatternly behavior to help Amelia quit living in the past. It maybe the only right thing Rebecca does in the novel.
Amelia is kind, undoubtedly, but her kindness is not always come with good results. She has suffered a lot and makes Dobbin, the only good man in the novel, also suffer a lot. She prefers to love the photo of George rather than show any affection to Dobbin. She may live a happier and easier life if she timely gets over the grief and accepts Dobbin. She can not forget any man she has loved, while Rebecca can easily forget any man she used to love.
By the way, Amelia’s life is better off at last, which indicates that the kind-hearted will receive good blessings.
Vanity Fair is a great novel, and Thackeray is definitely good at composing his work in the parallel structure. By the comparison between Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley, we can see the cruelty of the wealth-and-fame oriented society. And in order to reach the upper class and enjoy the luxurious life, different people resorts to different methods. How to distinguish flattering person like Rebecca and how to keep one’s personality is what we should learn from this novel.