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