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 muses about how friendship seems to have a special power to make people better. In the days before he arrived at Brighton, Dobbin, for example, was so busy helping George that he didn’t even take time to follow his own interests. During the early days right after George and Amelia’s wedding, Dobbin stays behind to try to make amends between George and Mr. Sedley as well as to build up the relationship between Jos and George (since Jos’s position in India makes him currently the richest one in the family).
Dobbin is so devoted to making sure Amelia is happy that he does everything in his power to try to build up the relationship between George and his new in-laws. The fact that George himself doesn’t even attempt to improve these relationships suggests once again how George avoids responsibility and difficult conversations.
Themes
Next, Dobbin tries to mend George’s relationship with his own family. At a dance, he starts telling Jane Osborne about George’s marriage. Jane gets the wrong idea and thinks Dobbin has come to propose to her, but he clarifies that he’s asking about George, disappointing Jane. Dobbin says he needs to tell Mr. Osborne about the wedding, since currently Mr. Osborne doesn’t even know where George is. Later, one of Jane’s friends consoles her by saying she’s likely to get a bigger share of the inheritance after Mr. Osborne disowns George.
George is so afraid of his father’s reaction to his wedding that he doesn’t even tell him. This passage helps to convey how wide the gulf between generations can be, with Mr. Osborne not even knowing that his own son got married, and George not knowing how to communicate with his father and so just choosing not to. George’s sister Jane ends up being a perennially unlucky character, to the point where it sometimes becomes comedy, helping to illustrate why the other women in the book are so eager to marry as soon as they can. Her friends’ consolation that she’ll at least get a larger share of her father’s inheritance once Mr. Osborne disowns George humorously drives home the cold, calculating attitude characters have toward family, relationships, and love—all of which ultimately center around money.
Themes
