vanity fair 张彦芳 朱荣.ppt

Plot
• Becky and Amelia leaving school • In Amelia’s home, Becky tries to entrap Joseph • Becky becoming Sir Pitt Crawley’s governess, secretly married to Rawdon Crawley • Amelia’s father got bankrupt, captain Dobbin helped Amelia and George Osborne to get married who later died in the battlefield
Rawdon Crawley imprisoned for debt, finds Becky entertaining Lord Steyne. Leaves for India and dies of fever Becky met Amelia again and told her the infidelity of George, Amelia married Dobbin Becky lives with Joseph and gets all his property when he dies. Becky lives like a grand lady.
Characters in Vanity Fair
• Amelia Sedley : the daughter of a wealthy london merchant • • Rebecca (Becky) Sharp: an orphan , • • Joseph: Amelia ' s brother • • Sir Pitt Crawley; Rawdon Crawley • • George Osborne • • Dobbin
•
Amelia Sedley
• Amelia is Becky's opposite: pale, passive, and emotionally devoted to her husband and son. She marries George Osborne against the wishes of George's father, and when George dies at the battle of Waterloo she brings up little George alone while living with her parents. She is completely dominated by her spendthrift father (who steals and sells the annuity George's friends put together to try to support her) and her mother. • After George Osborne's death, Amelia is obsessed with her son and with the memory of her husband. She ignores William Dobbin, who courts her for years, and treats him shabbily until eventually he leaves. It is only after Becky shows her George's letter to her that Amelia realizes what a good man Dobbin is, although she has already written to him to ask him to come back. She eventually marries Dobbin.
The Characteristics of Vanity Fair
• (2) Vanity Fair is work of social criticism, and is noted for the author’s realistic depiction, the ironic and sarcastic tone and constant comment and criticism.
• Example: none of the characters are wholly evil ,though, even Becky, who is amoral and cunning ,is thrown on her own resources by poverty and its stigma(耻辱，污名).
Social background
• Since the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 18th century, the class structure of English society had undergone radical changes.But from the thirties of the 19th century, the struggle between the workers and capitalists became the feudalmental contradiction in English social life. The crying social contradictions were reflected in the writers’ work of the time .
Vanity fபைடு நூலகம்ir
张彦芳 2010031139
朱荣 2010031140
Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero is a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1847. The book‘s title comes from John Bunyan’s allegorical （讽刺的，寓言的）story The Pilgrim‘s Progress, first published in 1678 and still widely read at the time of Thackeray’s novel. Vanity fair refers to a stop along the pilgrim‘s progress: a never-ending fair held in a town called Vanity, which is meant to represent man’s sinful （有罪的，罪逆深重的）attachment to worldly things. The novel is now considered a classic, and has inspired several film adaptations（改编）.
Vanity Fair is a trap that everyone is likely to step into however careful he may try to be. Thackeray has drawn a lifelike 逼 真的tableau (画面）of the Vanity Fair in reality in the novel. That is the reason why the novel has been popular for so many years.
• Becky Sharp
• the anti-heroine, an intelligent young woman with a gift for satire, is described as a petite娇小的 sandy haired girl who has green eyes and a great deal of wit. Fluent in both French and English, Becky has a beautiful singing voice, plays the piano, and shows great talent as an actress. She is also completely amoral and without conscience. She does not seem to have the ability to get attached to other people, and lies easily and intelligently to get her way. She is extremely manipulative（操纵的） and, after the first few chapters and her failure to attract Jos Sedley, is not shown as being particularly sincere. • Never having known financial or social security even as a child, Becky desires it above all things. Nearly everything she does is with the intention of securing a stable position for herself.
Theme
• As the title suggests, this is a book about vanity fair. In the novel, under the gay mask of the balls and parties, the world is shown as full of all kinds of vanity, especially snobbery势力, duplicity二重性 of social-climbers, and the weakness of human nature. It shows that the vanity of man is universal and ever present. Now as before, people still climb over and betray each other; relatives still fight over money and property; husbands and wives still deceive each other; and mothers still sell their daughters for money and position. The fact is ugly but it is nonetheless true.