Vanity Fair was originally published as a serial novel. The reader may be able to tell as much from the frequency and intensity of cliffhangers at the end of certain chapters or sections: these would have kept the original reader guessing and in suspense as they awaited the next published chapter in the next serial.
Vanity Fair is also a domestic novel—a work that primarily follows the lives of two women (Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp) who learn to navigate the world and make it their own, though in two very different ways. At the same time, Vanity Fair differs from most domestic novels—and most novels of any subgenre—for its lack of a clear heroine or hero. Thackeray himself makes a pointed, if playful, note that Amelia, who would be an obvious contender for such a title, "is not a heroine" and does not look the part.
In addition to being a novel, Vanity Fair is a satire—a study of human "hilarity." Thackeray is quick to poke ruthless fun at the ridiculousness of English society, and particularly the preoccupations that the upper class has with class, status, and wealth at the expense of any actual virtue. All in all, Thackeray finds the nobility to be extremely vain.
