Vanity Fair 名利场 简介 英文情节.docVIP

The story opens at Miss Pinkertons Academy for Young Ladies, where the principal protagonists Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley have just completed their studies and are preparing to depart for Amelias house in Russell Square. Becky is portrayed as a strong-willed and cunning young woman determined to make her way in society, and Amelia Sedley as a good-natured, loveable, though simple-minded young girl. At Russell Square, Miss Sharp is introduced to the dashing and self-obsessed Captain George Osborne (to whom Amelia has been betrothed from a very young age) and to Amelias brother Joseph Sedley, a clumsy and vainglorious but rich civil-servant fresh from the East India Company. Becky entices Sedley, hoping to marry him, but she fails because of warnings from Captain Osborne, Sedleys own native shyness, and his embarrassment over some foolish drunken behavior of his that Becky had witnessed at Vauxhall. With this, Becky Sharp says farewell to Sedleys family and enters the service of the crude and profligate baronet Sir Pitt Crawley, who has engaged her as a governess to his daughters. Her behaviour at Sir Pitts house gains his favour, and after the premature death of his second wife, he proposes to her. However, he finds that she is already secretly married to his second son, Rawdon Crawley. Sir Pitts elder half sister, the spinster Miss Crawley, is very rich, having inherited her mothers fortune of ￡70,000. How she will bequeath her great wealth is a source of constant conflict between the branches of the Crawley family who vie shamelessly for her affections; initially her favorite is Sir Pitts younger son, Captain Rawdon Crawley. For some time, Becky acts as Miss Crawleys companion, supplanting the loyal Miss Briggs in an attempt to establish herself in favor before breaking the news of her elopement with Miss Crawleys nephew. However, the misalliance so enrages Miss Crawley that she disinherits her nephew in favour of his pompous and pedantic elder brother, who also