Many characters in Vanity Fair put considerable effort into ensuring that they have an heir lined up to inherit their fortune. Succession can be contentious in the novel, spreading disagreement among families. Paradoxically, though, it can also motivate characters to act friendlier toward each other, hoping that their good manners will earn them a share of an inheritance. In the novel, inheritance complicates family dynamics. Transforming the family unit from a group of people who look out for one another and have one another’s best interests at heart into individuals who will betray their kin to protect their own personal interests. Miss Crawley’s fortune motivates much of the action in the first part of the book, with characters from Becky to Mrs. Bute to Rawdon all trying in their own way to win Miss Crawley’s affection before her death. This competition for Miss Crawley’s fortune is darkly humorous, with characters being nice to her face while secretly hoping for her death—but not before she amends her will to include them. Miss Crawley herself isn’t naïve about this competition and attempts to take advantage of the influence she wields over her family.
Mr. Sedley, meanwhile, doesn’t think Becky is worthy of Jos, but he still encourages him to marry her because he’d rather the children of an unworthy white woman inherit his fortune than the mixed-race children of an Indian woman George might marry instead of Becky. woman and giving him a mixed-race son as an heir. Later, Mr. Osborne keeps his grandson Georgy away from his mother, Amelia, because he looks down on her, but he quickly changes his mind when he realizes that Georgy has a chance to inherit his uncle Jos’s fortune. Mr. Osborne initially neglects the fact that Amelia is an attentive mother and that her separation from Georgy will be emotionally devastating, only changing his mind when the issue of inheritance arises. Vanity Fair thus shows how inheritance leads characters to make family decisions based on money rather than love or devotion to one’s kin. In highlighting both the humorous and the dark side of how far people will go to collect an inheritance, the novel suggests that money and inheritance can encourage selfishness, compelling family members to each look out for their own interests rather than the interests of the collective family unit.
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Inheritance and Family Life Quotes in Vanity Fair
‘Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp,’ said Joseph, really interested.
‘A chili,’ said Rebecca, gasping. ‘Oh yes!’ She thought a chili was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. ‘How fresh and green they look,’ she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork. ‘Water, for Heaven’s sake, water!’ she cried.
‘I ain’t going to have any of this dam sentimental nonsense and humbug here, sir,’ the father cried out. ‘There shall be no beggar-marriages in my family. If you choose to fling away eight thousand a year, which you may have for the asking, you may do it: but by Jove you take your pack and walk out of this house, sir. Will you do as I tell you, once for all, sir, or will you not?’
Having examined these papers, and pondered over this one and the other, in that bitterest of all helpless woe, with which miserable men think of happy past times—George’s father took the whole of the documents out of the drawer in which he had kept them so long, and locked them into a writing-box, which he tied, and sealed with his seal. Then he opened the book-case, and took down the great red Bible we have spoken of a pompous book, seldom looked at, and shining all over with gold. There was a frontispiece to the volume, representing Abraham sacrificing Isaac. Here, according to custom, Osborne had recorded on the fly-leaf, and in his large clerk-like hand, the dates of his marriage and his wife's death, and the births and Christian names of his children.
Lady Southdown, from her neighbouring house, reigned over the whole family—Pitt, Lady Jane, Miss Crawley, Briggs, Bowls, Firkin, and all. She pitilessly dosed them with her tracts and her medicine, she dismissed Creamer, she installed Rodgers, and soon stripped Miss Crawley of even the semblance of authority.
“I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.”
Out of the hundred pounds a year, which was about the amount of her income, the Widow Osborne had been in the habit of giving up nearly three-fourths to her father and mother, for the expenses of herself and her little boy.
A quick brain and a better education elsewhere showed the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard, and he began accordingly to command him and to look down upon him; for his previous education, humble and contracted as it had been, had made a much better gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfather could make him. He had been brought up by a kind, weak, and tender woman, who had no pride about anything but about him, and whose heart was so pure and whose bearing was so meek and humble that she could not but needs be a true lady. She busied herself in gentle offices and quiet duties; if she never said brilliant things, she never spoke or thought unkind ones; guileless and artless, loving and pure, indeed how could our poor little Amelia be other than a real gentlewoman!
