VANITY FAIR: Chapt. 51 to end (Wk. of 10/26/09)

[ConnieAnnKirk]

How do you like the ending chapters of VANITY FAIR?  Let us know!

[Josepher]

I just finished reading the novel yesterday. I have to thank everyone who urged me to read further when I wanted to drop it. The ending is everything you want it to be.

I was really expecting Becky to use the note, the one that George wrote to her the night of the army's departure, which the contents have yet to be revealed to both Amelia and the reader, for her personal gain. But on the contrary, our heroine used it to free our Emmy from a ghost idol. Becky has nothing to gain from Emmy's marriage; it is the first altruistic gesture of this complex character, right at the end of the novel! But ah! There is more, did she or did she not poison Jos for insurance money!?

I love how both reader and author alike are left to decide the darkness of Becky's heart. Although wrong-doings are insinuated, the author never declares it. 

How everything is not quite "happily ever after" is the cherry on top of Thackeray's  Vanity Fair.

[dulcinea3]

I'm up through chapter 63 now - four more to go!

Poor Rawdon!  Lord Steyne definitely had his designs on Becky - first he got rid of her son, then her companion, and then her husband.  Very methodical.  Thackeray does not really tell us how complicit Becky herself was, but at any rate, I doubt she would greatly miss having any of those people around.  At least, in the boy's and Miss Briggs' cases, the changes were to their benefit.  I saw a parallel between Rawdon and Amelia in that they both gave up their sons, to an extent, for the boys' good.  But Rawdon was not as destroyed by it as Amelia, although he also greatly loved his son and knew he would miss him.  In both cases, their son was really their main companion.  Amelia's parents had become bitter and complaining in their misfortunes, and Rawdon's wife didn't have much use for him.

Rawdon's detention and Becky's refusal to help him heaped additional insult on him.  Thank goodness for Lady Jane!  At this point in the story, Rawdon has really transformed from a rake and a cad to a good man, and he deserves his family's aid.  When he gets home, the s*** really hits the fan!  Finally, Rawdon's eyes are opened once and for all, as to the character of his wife, whom he once adored.

And then, of course, is one of the great questions of the novel - just how guilty or innnocent was Becky?  This, of course, is just my own opinion, but I still think that Becky had no intention of sleeping with Steyne.  I'm sure that she gave him every reason to believe that she would, as part of her manipulation of him.  I think that that is her general modus operandi - she flirts and convinces men that they will get whatever they want from her, so that she can use them and benefit from them, but really has no intention of following through.  Usually she just moves on to her next and greater conquest.  In this case, though, if Rawdon had not come home, I wonder whether she would have been able to physically resist Steyne.  She probably self-deluded herself into thinking that she could control men to such an extent that she could take care of herself in any situation, but her luck may have been about to run out.  Or, of course, she could have been a complete slut who had every intention of sleeping her way to the top.  But my impression is that she thinks too much of herself and her powers for that.  What does everyone else think?  This is actually why I was put off by the Reese Witherspoon movie - it seemed to make it quite clear that Becky was sleeping around at least as early as Brussels.

I'm glad that the duel between Rawdon and Steyne did not occur, and I am not sure whether I am happy or sad about Rawdon's appointment to a post where he could be very successful, but that was generally fatal to its posessors.  But what a delicious play on words, in that he was, literally, 'sent to Coventry'!