History Literature / VanityFair

''Vanity Fair'' has been filmed and televised several times, beginning with a silent film released in 1911. The most famous of these adaptations is ''Becky Sharp'' (1935), which inaugurated the Technicolor era. Mira Nair's 2004 film version, starring Reese Witherspoon, turned Becky into the real heroine.

** Becky Sharp, obviously.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Amelia's best moment. The morning after George leaves to fight Napoleon's army, Amelia thoroughly tells Becky off for brazenly flirting with George, disregarding her own husband's safety and ignoring all of Amelia's earlier kindness towards her. She remains estranged from Becky for years but naively reconciles when she hears that Becky has been unwillingly separated from her child.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The very first we see of Becky, she bids goodbye to her school's headmistress with icy politeness in perfectly accented French, which she knows the headmistress doesn't speak, and refuses to shake hands. Then on the way out, she throws the Dictionary the headmistress's sister gave her as a goodbye present in an attempt to be nice out the carriage window.

* StarvingArtist: Becky's father, who is also a physically abusive drunk. Becky's rough start in life explains to some extent why she is so ruthless and scrupleless as an adult.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Amelia's best moment. The morning after George leaves to fight Napoleon's army, Amelia thoroughly tells Becky off for brazenly flirting with George, disregarding her own husband's safety and ignoring all of Amelia's earlier kindness towards her. She remains estranged from Becky for years but naively reconciles when she hears that Becky has been unwillingly separated from her child.

** George's older sisters and other women sometimes wonder what so many men see in Amelia, but this is largely attributed to jealousy. It is pointed out by the omniscient narrator that Amelia only as popular as she was at her school because there were no men around.

* BrokenPedestal: It is only very near the ending [[spoiler:when Becky gives Amelia physical proof that George was planning to run away with her, that Amelia comes to realise that her beloved husband wasn't the perfect angel she had spent years thinking of him as.]]

** "Dobbin" was a common name for horses at the time (Dobbin is a little horse-faced).
** The Marquis of Steyne is both filthy ''and'' an utter pig.

* ProfessionalGambler: Becky's husband Rawdon Crawley makes what little money he has this way.

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* {{Deconstruction}}: Amelia pretty much deconstructs the PuritySue Victorian novel heroine. Sure, she's nice and well-intentioned, but she's also a HorribleJudgeOfCharacter and can be pretty oblivious to others' feelings.

* DirtyOldMan: Sir Pitt Crawley

* EvilRedhead: Becky; Lord Steyne
* FatBastard: Jos

* GoldDigger: Becky.

* HeelFaceTurn: Rawdon.

* AllTheLittleGermanies: The setting of the "''Am Rhein''" section of the novel.

* CruelToBeKind: Becky, on a rare occasion when she shows concern for someone other than herself. She knows that the only thing keeping Amelia from marrying Dobbin is Amelia's blind devotion to her deceased husband George. Becky breaks George's spell by showing Amelia the letter he wrote to Becky asking her to run away with him. Amelia weeps but is relieved to be freed from her delusions.

William Makepeace Thackeray's ''Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero'' (1847-48) is a multiplot novel tracing the varied fortunes of the charming (but vicious) Becky Sharp and her sometime friend, the beautiful (but blank) Amelia Sedley. During the Napoleonic era, the novel's many characters travel throughout Europe--fighting battles, scheming, and looking for cash. As the title suggests, the novel satirizes the social and sexual pretensions of a thoroughly dissolute High Society. The reader meets adulterers, gamblers, and con(wo)men of every description, only some of whom get their rightful comeuppance. Although readers, both in the [[VictorianBritain Victorian Era]] and since, have sometimes found Thackeray's treatment of Amelia to be [[{{Glurge}} gushingly sentimental]], ''Vanity Fair'' can be exceptionally hardheaded in its attacks on moral hypocrisy and romantic cliches. The subtitle may be ironic, but it's also serious: even the honest soldier William Dobbin, who is the closest thing the novel has to a moral center, [[KnightInSourArmor doesn't end the novel unscathed.]]

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/VanityFair.jpg
[[caption-width:240:Mr. Joseph Entangled]]

* HollywoodCostuming: When Thackeray was drawing his illustrations to the story, which is, of course, set in the [[NapoleonBonaparte Napoleonic]] era, he appended a note to the text explicitly stating, "I have not the heart to disfigure my heroes and heroines by costumes so hideous," (!) and so clothed them in the fashions of the years of the novel's serial publication (1847-1848).

* HeyItsThatGuy: [[Series/LifeOnMars2006 Phil]] [[AshesToAshes Glenister]] plays Dobbin in the BBC miniseries.

* SelfMadeMan: Plays out in an interesting way with the Osbournes', Sedleys', and Dobbins' backgrounds. The Osbournes made their way into society the earliest in the novel's past, and really hate people remembering that they ever worked for their money. Thus, George's father betrays Amelia's father when his financial situation sours, and George is contemptuous of Dobbin for being new money.
* ShrugOfGod: In a famous interview, Thackeray was asked if [[spoiler: Becky murdered Jos.]] Thackeray's response? "I don't know."

* SpoiledSweet: Subverted with Amelia, who is sweet but also very gullible and selfish.

* BeautyEqualsGoodness: Subverted with Becky but played straight(ish) with Amelia. Dobbin looks horsey, but is the most noble character in the novel -- in fact, the subtitle can be taken to mean both that the novel has heroines and that Dobbin doesn't look the way a hero "should."

* MisaimedFandom: Plucky and resourceful she may be, but Becky is also two-faced sycophant who is indifferent about whom she hurts in her social climbing.

* MisplacedFandom: Plucky and resourceful she may be, but Becky is also two-faced sycophant who is indifferent about whom she hurts in her social climbing.

* MispacedFandom: Plucky and resourceful she may be, but Becky is also two-faced sycophant who is indifferent about whom she hurts in her social climbing.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic: Amelia is terrified of the bed she has to share with her husband.

* CoolOldLady: Subverted with Miss Crawley who likes the company of clever if impoverished young people until they forget their place, as Becky does when she marries Rawdon.