Becky Sharp

Common card · No. 232141

Rebecca "Becky" Sharp, later describing herself as Rebecca, Lady Crawley, is the main protagonist of William Makepeace Thackeray's 1847–48 novel Vanity Fair. She is presented as a cynical social climber who uses her charms to fascinate and seduce upper-class men. This is in contrast with the clinging, dependent Amelia Sedley, her friend from school. Becky then uses Amelia as a stepping stone to gain social position. Sharp functions as a picara—a picaresque heroine—by being a social outsider who is able to expose the manners of the gentry to ridicule. The book—and Sharp's career—begins in a traditional manner of Victorian fiction, that of a young orphan (Sharp) with no source of income who has to make her own way in the world. Thackeray twisted the Victorian tradition, however, and quickly turned her into a young woman who knew what she wanted from life—fine clothes, money and a social position—and knew how to get them. The route was to be by marriage, and the novel follows Sharp's efforts...

Read on Wikipedia · Image William Thackeray, Public domain