A Comparative Study of Becky Sharp , Amelia and Sedley in Vanity Fair_英语毕业论文.docxVIP

A Comparative Study of Becky Sharp ,Amelia and Sedley in Vanity FairW.M.Thackeray is a representative of critical realism in 19th century in England. His masterpiece Vanity Fair has been considered to be one of the great comic novels of all time, and a landmark in the history of realism in fiction. Vanity Fair is a metaphor for the human condition and takes its name from John Bunyan’s allegory “Pilgrim’s Progress.” The title “Vanity Fair” shows Thackeray’s opinion of the English bourgeois and aristocratic society: hypocritical, money-worshipping, morally degraded. The sub-title of the novel is “A Novel without a Hero”. It was published in 1848. The story is about the upper class of early nineteenth century. This novel of English manners and human frailties centers around two women: Becky Sharp, an orphan whose only resources are her vast ambitions, her wit and her loose morals. She is considered to be one of the most remarkable creations in Victorian literature, while Thackeray’s narrator exposes her subterfuges and insinuates sexual immorality and even murder. Thackeray juxtaposes Becky’s story with that of Amelia, the naive, sentimental daughter of a wealthy merchant who goes bankrupt partway through the novel. Her artless modesty and devotion to her first love—George Osborne, contrast sharply with Becky’s amoral machinations and social climbing. Nevertheless, she is not perfect. Through the comparison between the two heroines, and the analysis of the early nineteenth century, the author reveals the predicaments of women at that time, and readers can get a better understanding of the two heroines.I. Background of Early Nineteenth CenturyThe precisian may limit the Victorian period to the years between 1837 and 1901, but a new era really begins with the passage of the Reform Bill in 1832 and closes at the end of the Boer War in 1902. During the long reign of Queen Victoria, England grows from an agricultural country into an industrialized one and becomes the worksh