名利场论文

Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero

Abstract

Vanity Fair is Thackeray’s masterpiece. The subtitle of the book, “A Novel Without a Hero,”emphasize the fact that the writer’s intention was not to portray individuals, but the bourgeois and aristocratic society as a whole. Rebecca Sharp , shrewd and unscrupulous ,is an orphan. Amelia Sedley is a daughter from a wealthy London merchant. Rebecca is determined to go to the upper society at all costs .She attempts but fails to entrap Amelia’s brother Joseph for a husband . And then she becomes a governess in Sir Pitt Crawley .She marries his son, Rawden Crawley , to inherit a big sum of money from Rawden’s aunt. But her hope doesn’t come true. Amelia marries her father’s business friend’s son, George Osborne. The people in this novel all have a strong desire for money and position. The author depicted their libido for ugly things vigiously.

Outline

1.Introduction to Thackeray’s life and work

2.The plot of Vanity Fair

3.My view about the characters

Body

1. Introduction to Thackeray’s life and work

Thackeray, like Dickens, was a representative of critical realism in 19th century England. He was bone in 1811 in India, in the family of an English official. His first literary success came with a series of satirical sketches entitled The Snobs of England. The book draws a galley of snobs from different walks of life. In Thackey’s view a snob is a person who fawns upon his social superiors and looks dawn with contempt upon his inferiors. The book may be regarded as a prelude to his major literary career, as it contains all the important ideas that constitute the contents of his later works.

In the forties his realistic writing method became mature and firmly established.

A brilliant example of this method and one of the greatest masterpieces of critical realism is Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair was the peak of his literary career. At last, he abandons the noise and unrest of city life to find happiness and peace in country life.

He published two historical novels, Henry Esmond and The Virginians. He also wrote many other works including short stories, sketches, and satirical poems. These were popular during the writer’s lifetime but for the most part forgotten by the next generation of readers. During the last year of his life, he worked on the novel Denis Duval which remained unfinished owing to the author’s death in 1863.

2. The plot of Vanity Fair

The title of Vanity Fair was taken from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The scene of the story is England in the first half of the 19th century. The book opens with the two girls from their school in a London suburb, where they have studied for 6 years. One of them was Amelia Sedley , the daughter of a wealthy London family. The other