The great triumph of Vanity Fair—­the great triumph of modern fiction—­is Becky Sharp:  a character which will ever stand in the very foremost rank of English literature, if not with Falstaff and Shylock, then with Squire Western, Uncle Toby, Mr. Primrose, Jonathan Oldbuck, and Sam Weller.  There is no character in the whole range of literature which has been worked out with more elaborate completeness.  She is drawn from girlhood to old age, under every conceivable condition, and is brought face to face with all kinds of persons and trials.  In all circumstances Becky is true to herself; her ingenuity, her wit, her selfishness, her audacity, her cunning, her clear, cool, alert brain, even her common sense, her spirit of justice, when she herself is not concerned, and her good-nature, when it could cost her nothing—­all this is unfailing, inimitable, never to be forgotten.  Some good people cry out that she is so wicked.  Of course she is wicked:  so were Iago and Blifil.  The only question is, if she be real?  Most certainly she is, as real as anything in the whole range of fiction, as real as Tartuffe, or Gil Blas, Wilhelm Meister, or Rob Roy.  No one doubts that Becky Sharps exist:  unhappily they are not even very uncommon.  And Thackeray has drawn one typical example of such bad women with an anatomical precision that makes us shudder.

And if Becky Sharp be the masterpiece of Thackeray’s art amongst the characters, the scene of her husband’s encounter with her paramour is the masterpiece of all the scenes in Vanity Fair, and has no superior, hardly any equal, in modern fiction.  Becky, Rawdon Crawley, and Lord Steyne—­all are inimitably true, all are powerful, all are fearful in their agony and rage.  The uprising of the poor rake almost into dignity and heroism, and his wife’s outburst of admiration at his vengeance, are strokes of really Shakespearean insight.  It was with justice that Thackeray himself felt pride in that touch. “She stood there trembling before him.  She admired her husband, strong, brave, victorious.”  It is these touches of clear sight in Becky, her respect for Dobbin, her kindliness to Amelia apart from her own schemes, which make us feel an interest in Becky, loathsome as she is.  She is always a woman, and not an inhuman monster, however bad a woman, cruel, heartless, and false.

There remains always the perpetual problem if Vanity Fair be a cynic’s view of life, the sardonic grin of a misanthrope gloating over the trickery and meanness of mankind.  It is well to remember how many are the scenes of tenderness and pathos in Vanity Fair, how powerfully told, how deeply they haunt the memory and sink into the heart.  The school life of Dobbin, the ruin of old Sedley and the despair of Amelia, the last parting of Amelia and George, Osborne revoking his will, Sedley broken down, Rawdon in the sponging-house, the birth and boyhood of Georgy Osborne,