Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Vanity Fair, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Greed and Ambition
Vanity
Social Class and Character
Gender
Inheritance and Family Life
Summary
Analysis
The narrator describes the history of Bute, a reverend who lives at the rectory with his wife and who is the brother of Sir Pitt. He likes boxing and fights in general, and he is more popular in town than his brother. His wife, Mrs. Bute Crawley, runs their household efficiently. Bute and Sir Pitt have many reasons to disagree with each other, due to disputes over inheritance. But on rare occasions when Miss Crawley is around, they always act kindly to each other because they are afraid of upsetting the other and losing out on money.
Bute’s life is a contradiction, since while one might expect a reverend to be peace-loving, in fact, he loves the violence of boxing. In that way, he's like his brother, Sir Pitt, who is also a contradiction, having a title but still acting like a commoner. The disputes over Miss Crawley provide humor in the novel, showing how, in order to fight each other for inheritance, the Crawley brothers paradoxically have to pretend not to be fighting with each other, in order to please Miss Crawley.
Themes
Mrs. Bute pays attention to everything that happens in Queen’s Crawley, and so she soon learns a lot about Becky. She is dismayed to hear how everyone soon takes a liking to Becky. She writes to Miss Pinkerton to find out more about Becky and ask about hiring her own governess. Miss. Pinkerton replies that she has many fine girls available, then she proceeds to list some of their flaws. Mrs. Pinkerton writes that she has nothing bad to say about Becky, but then she writes that Becky’s parents were lower class, and she hopes Becky hasn’t inherited any of their bad qualities.
Mrs. Bute is a classic example of a busybody. Her letter to Miss Pinkerton is a thinly veiled excuse to dig up gossip about Becky. In her reply, Miss Pinkerton keeps up the ruse that Mrs. Bute is looking for a governess, but she seems to understand that the real point of the letter is to give information about Becky, which she’s only too happy to provide. Miss Pinkerton uses polite language, saying she hopes Becky has turned out well, but she strongly implies that in fact, Becky’s low background makes her unworthy.
Themes
Meanwhile, Becky writes to Amelia for the first time in weeks. She describes a visit that the rich Miss Crawley made to her house, which brings the whole place to life again with dinner parties and coach rides. Sir Pitt and Bute always get along when Miss Crawley is around, because otherwise, she threatens to leave all her money to a different branch of the family.
Miss Crawley uses her wealth as a way to force her family members to get along with one another. While her efforts succeed in the short term, she doesn’t do anything to truly mend the rifts in the family, as the competition for her inheritance becomes more and more heated.
Themes
As Becky continues to write in her letter, whenever Miss Crawley comes home, Pitt Crawley finds excuses to go to town, while Rawdon becomes more boisterous. Becky sees that Rawdon must have contempt for Sir Pitt, whom he always insults. At an evening dance, Rawdon compliments Becky on her dancing. Mrs. Bute also compliments her. Later, she starts asking Becky to take Violet and Rose over to the rectory. Becky ends the letter by thanking Amelia for the Indian muslin and other gifts she gave her.
This passage suggests that Becky is starting to admire Rawdon. She likes that he looks down on Sir Pitt and that he compliments her dancing—but perhaps best of all for her, she knows that he is the current favorite to inherit Miss Crawley’s immense fortune. While Mrs. Bute compliments Becky to her face, the letter she sent to Miss Pinkerton earlier makes it clear that she is very skeptical of Becky overall.
Themes
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Becky soon finds out that Mrs. Bute is using her as an excuse to try to bring Bute and Sir Pitt’s families closer together. Later, Bute complains to his wife about how Rawdon is good for nothing and yet he’s still going to get all of Miss Crawley’s fortune. Mrs. Bute tells him that he’s drunk and should just be patient.
This passage makes clear that Mrs. Bute wants Becky to marry Rawdon. Although Mrs. Bute doesn’t like Becky, she thinks this marriage would be useful to her personally, because it would anger Miss Crawley, potentially steering her away from leaving her money to Rawdon (and possibly directing some of it toward the Butes).
Themes
Becky continues to win people over, attracting Rawdon’s attention and earning the right to eat at the family dinner table. At dinner, Miss Crawley says she doesn’t believe much in hereditary nobility and figures Becky is equal to anyone in the county. She talks about how she likes “imprudent matches,” where a nobleman marries someone of lower status. She says she’d also like to see the reverse: for Rawdon (who is poor without his inheritance yet) to run off with a rich young woman.
Miss Crawley says that she likes Becky and that she thinks it would be good if Rawdon married someone below his status. This would seem to imply that she would not only approve a marriage between Becky and Rawdon but favor it. This means that Mrs. Bute is banking on Miss Crawley being a hypocrite—that she likes to talk about being open-minded but that she’ll be less accepting if Becky actually does marry Rawdon.
Themes
Becky and Rawdon start taking walks in the moonlight. One day while talking to a friend, Sir Pitt sees Becky and Rawdon strolling. He gets angry at first, but his friend calms him, suggesting that perhaps Becky is a good match for Rawdon after all.
Sir Pitt’s initial anger at Rawdon for spending time with Becky is hypocritical, given that Sir Pitt himself married a woman who was of a lower status for his second wife. Still, the fact that Sir Pitt overcomes his anger suggests that despite his flaws, he has a self-awareness that other characters in the novel don’t often have.
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