Honestly, the first thing you have to realize about Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray is that it wasn't supposed to be a "clean" book. Most people open this massive Victorian doorstop expecting a polite tea party with some old-timey drama. Instead, they get a puppet show run by a narrator who basically admits he’s a liar.
It’s messy.
Thackeray launched this thing in monthly yellow-covered installments between 1847 and 1848. Back then, it was titled Vanity Fair: Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society. He was literally drawing the pictures himself while writing the chapters. Imagine a modern showrunner writing a script, directing the actors, and doing the concept art all at once. That’s the energy here.
The Real Story of Becky Sharp
We need to talk about Becky. Everyone remembers Becky Sharp because, well, she’s a disaster in the best way possible. She’s the daughter of a penniless artist and a French opera girl—which, in 1815, was basically code for "stay away from her."
Becky doesn't care.
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She leaves Miss Pinkerton’s academy and immediately hurls a dictionary out of a carriage window. It’s the ultimate Victorian "I’m done with this" move. She has zero money, zero connections, and a brain that works twice as fast as the aristocrats she’s trying to con.
Was Becky Sharp a real person?
People always ask this. The short answer is: sort of. Thackeray didn’t just copy-paste one woman from history, but he definitely had some "inspiration."
- The Kensington Governess: Oscar Wilde claimed Thackeray knew a governess in Kensington who lived with a rich, selfish old lady. She ended up running away with the lady’s nephew, which sounds exactly like Becky’s move with Rawdon Crawley.
- The Infamous Courtesans: Some scholars, like John P. Frazee, point toward Mary Anne Clarke and Harriette Wilson. These were women who basically held the British Regency in their hands through scandals and affairs.
- The Composite: Mostly, she’s a mix. Thackeray was a journalist first. He spent his life watching people lie and social-climb. Becky is the culmination of every person he ever saw "faking it to make it."
Why Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray Is Labeled a Novel Without a Hero
This is the big subtitle that confuses everyone. "A Novel Without a Hero." Most 19th-century books had a clear-cut good guy. Thackeray? He looked at that tradition and decided to set it on fire.
The two leads, Becky and Amelia, are two sides of a very flawed coin. Becky is "the bad girl" who is actually interesting to watch. Amelia Sedley is "the good girl" who is—let's be real—kind of a wet blanket. She spends twenty years crying over George Osborne, a guy who was literally planning to cheat on her the night before he died at the Battle of Waterloo.
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Thackeray’s point was simple: in a world obsessed with status (the "Vanity Fair" of the title), everyone is a bit of a villain. Even the "nice" characters like William Dobbin are pathetic in their own way. He waits decades for a woman who doesn't even notice him until she's out of options.
The Waterloo Scene
The Battle of Waterloo is the hinge of the entire book. But here’s the genius part: Thackeray doesn't show the battle. Not a single shot. Instead, he stays in Brussels with the wives and the cowards. He shows Jos Sedley (Amelia's brother) panicking and shaving off his mustache so he can flee without being recognized as an official. He shows Becky Sharp making a killing by selling her carriage horses to desperate people trying to escape.
It’s cynical. It’s brilliant. It’s also incredibly human.
The Weird, Sad Life of the Author
You can’t understand Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray without knowing that Thackeray’s own life was a bit of a wreck. He was born in India, sent to England at six, and felt abandoned. Later, he lost his entire fortune (about £20,000) through gambling and bad investments.
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Then came the real tragedy. His wife, Isabella, had a complete mental breakdown after their third child was born. She spent the rest of her life in professional care. Thackeray couldn't remarry because she was still alive, and divorce wasn't a thing for him. He lived in this weird, lonely limbo, raising two daughters and writing for humor magazines like Punch to pay the bills.
When you read his biting sarcasm about marriage and money, you’re reading the words of a man who was living a very difficult reality. He wasn't just making fun of high society for the hell of it; he was a guy who had been chewed up and spat out by the system.
Actionable Tips for Reading (or Re-reading) This Beast
If you’re tackling the book for the first time, don't treat it like homework. Treat it like a long-form gossip column.
- Pay attention to the narrator: He’s often called "unreliable." He’ll tell you something happened and then basically say, "Or maybe it didn't, who knows?"
- Look for the "Sermons": Thackeray often stops the story to rant about how people are fake. Some find this annoying, but it’s where his best lines are.
- Don't root for Amelia: You're going to want to. Don't. She’s meant to show how "virtue" can sometimes be just as selfish and blind as vice.
- Watch the money: The characters are constantly calculating pounds and pence. It’s a book about the "marriage market." If you keep track of who has money and who is faking it, the plot makes way more sense.
The legacy of Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray isn't just that it’s a "classic." It’s that it predicted exactly how we live now. We’re still in the Fair. We’re still social-climbing on Instagram, still faking wealth, and still occasionally throwing dictionaries at things that annoy us. Thackeray just had the guts to call us out on it first.
Next Steps for Your Collection: Check out the 1848 first edition illustrations (digitized by many libraries) to see how Thackeray actually wanted these characters to look—it’s often much grittier than the movie versions. If you want a shorter taste of his wit before diving into the 800-page novel, read The Book of Snobs first. It’s basically the field guide he wrote before starting the big book.