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 a person never really knows how their neighbors live their lives. Then they resume their story. After spending three or four years in Paris, Becky and Rawdon returns London to settle down there. Despite having no income, they manage to live fairly comfortably, although the narrator clarifies that living on “nothing a year” really just means that no one knows where a gentleman gets his money. Over time, Rawdon has become a true master at hustling others at billiards. He is similarly good at tricking people into thinking he’s bad at cards, then winning back the money. Some say Rawdon is so lucky that he must cheat.
The narrator pokes fun at the idle lifestyles of many gentlemen and ladies. He claims that Becky and Rawdon live on “nothing,” and in a way it’s true that neither of them has a traditional source of income. “Nothing” is a helpful euphemism because it leaves it ambiguous whether they are living off wealth they already have, getting wealth through questionable means (betting on billiards), or simply going into debt and hoping things will sort themselves out in the end. Whatever the case, this passage seems to capture Becky and Rawdon during a lucky period of their lives, perhaps setting up their eventual demise.
Themes
Literary Devices
When they’re still back in Paris, Becky worries about how much of their finances depend on gambling. This is part of why she encourages Rawdon to leave Paris with her and move back to London. Just then, news breaks that Miss Crawley has died—and Rawdon’s many creditors in Paris follow this news with interest. Becky mourns very publicly, and the two of them go with their new son (also named Rawdon, and sometimes called Rawdon minor or Rawdy) to Brussels.
The mention of creditors here indicates that as much as Becky and Rawdon try to project that they are successful, in fact their whole lifestyle would fall apart if they were forced to pay back their debts all at once. Becky’s public mourning gives her an excuse to put her debts just a little longer, allowing her whole family to move. While it might seem as if Becky is escaping the consequences of her debts, she is quickly burning bridges and might eventually run out of new cities to escape to.
Themes
Becky entrusts most of Rawdy’s childcare to a nurse and even leaves him in Europe for a while as she goes back to settle business in London. The narrator comments that around this time, 1817–1818, many British people were relocating to various capital cities around Europe. It was only after they left Paris that many people realize how much money the Crawleys owe them.
Though Becky eagerly pursued Rawdon to marry him, now that they’re married, she shows little interest in acting as either a wife or a mother. Her neglect of Rawdy (the opposite of Amelia’s total devotion to Georgy) reflects how Becky has zero interest in people who can’t help her advance her social standing—not even her own child. Once more, the novel shows how money and social status corrupt characters’ relationships.
Themes
Becky’s trip to London is about striking a deal with Rawdon’s many creditors there to make it so he can come back to his home country. She arranges the whole thing without consulting a lawyer of her own. She succeeds in impressing the people she meets with, and so she returns to Rawdon and Rawdy to tell them that they can return to England.
As Becky grows older, she becomes even more proficient in charming the people around her, and she also learns more about the world of the wealthy, like how to use lawyers to her advantage. And so, this passage represents both Becky’s maturation and decline, as she becomes more proficient in her morally gray scheming
Themes
Get the entire Vanity Fair LitChart as a printable PDF.
