TOWARDS SATIRE
IN
VINITY FAIR
Written by
Wang Yihua
Supervised by Professor Tan Weiguo
A Thesis Submitted to
Foreign Languages College
Shanghai Normal University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
The Degree of Bachelor of Arts
In English Language
April, 2007
1
Contents
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………..
4
Abstract in English………………………………………………………………
5
Abstract in Chinese………………………………………………………………
6
I
7
Introduction
1.1 Brief Survey of Relevant Literature………………….…………
1.2 Main Ideas and Arrangement of the Thesis…………………………..
II
Brief Discussion of Satire………………………….…………
7
2.1
Definition of satire……………..………………………………...........
7
2.2
Function of satire……………..………………………………………..
8
2.3
Examples of satire…………………………..…………………………
8
III Panorama of Satire in Vanity Fair……………………………..
9
3.1
Overall evaluation of Vanity Fair………………………..………….…
9
3.2. Brief introduction to the author………………………………………..
9
3.3
A novel without a hero………………….……………………………..
10
IV Strategic Schemes of Satire in Vanity Fair…………………….
11
4.1
Constant commentaries………………………………………………..
11
4.2
Caricatures……………………………………………………………..
12
4.3
Satirical ending………………………………………………………...
13
4.4
Themes………………………………………………………………… 14
4.5
Contrasts and coexistence of contradictions…………………………... 15
V
4.5.1
Contrast of two heroines………………………………………. 15
4.5.2
Satire and sentiment…………………………………………...
4.5.3
Fashion and war……………………………………………….. 16
4.5.4
Illusion and reality…………………………………………….. 17
Satirical Targets in Vanity Fair………………………………...
15
17
2
5.1
Gentleman………………………………………………….………….. 17
5.2
Lady……………………………………………………………………
18
5.3
Main characters: Becky Sharp & Amelia Sedley……………..…….…
18
5.4
Marriage…………………………………………………………….…
20
5.5
Human beings as commodities………………………………………..
21
5.6
Dark side of human nature…………………………………….………. 21
5.7
Distorted value system………………………………………………… 21
5.8
Gossip and rumor……………………………………………………… 22
Ⅵ Conclusion …………….……
22
3
Acknowledgements
As an undergraduate, I am very grateful to a number of people for their help,
concern and encouragement.
First of all, I am greatly indebted to all the professors who taught me various
courses during my four-year study at Foreign Languages College of Shanghai Normal
University. What impresses me most is their preciseness in scientific research, their
devotion to English education and their kindness to us students.
In particular, I should extend my heartfelt thanks to Professor Tan Weiguo, who
has provided me with patient guidance and constructive suggestions. Moreover, his
fine qualities have exerted great influence on me.
Also, my sincere thanks go to many of my good friends and classmates for their
comments and support. Many friends of mine shared their wonderful ideas with me,
and offered timely help to me. Daisy Zhao, my bosom friend, also showed great
concern for my thesis quality. Lily Sheng, a life-long friend, obtained some reference
books in Britain and made them available to me.
Finally, it is a great pleasure for me to express my gratitude to my dear parents,
to whom I owe all my achievements, for their greatest love and unreserved support.
4
Abstract
Vanity Fair, whose subtitle is known as A Novel Without A Hero, and which was
published between 1847 and 1848, gives a satirical picture of a worldly society. The
events of the novel happened during the Napoleonic wars, but William Makepeace
Thackeray, the author of the novel, intended to represent his own times. It follows the
fortunes of two sharply contrasted characters, Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley.
This masterpiece represents Thackeray’s philosophy of life. The author describes
the world around him, as he sees it, extenuating nothing, but assuredly, depicting
some human ugliness. He sees clearly enough the seamy side of society: its littleness,
its meanness, its selfishness, its baseness, its false religionism, its secret impurities —
in a word which sums all up — its worldliness.
Vanity Fair is full of strategic schemes of satire, such as constant sarcastic
commentaries, caricatures and satiric ending to represent its themes. Satire makes
accounts and descriptions vivid, euphemistic and profound in meaning, thus deriving
satirical targets of the novel. All seem to be the targets of satire, including gentlemen
and ladies, main characters and minor ones, forming a distorted value system and
constituting a struggle for survival.
Vanity Fair is a portrait of a variety of vanity and corruption, focusing upon
descriptions of a chaotic upper society and a chaotic middle class in the 19th century.
It is also a miniature of numerous declining societies, full of rumor, deception,
hypocrisy as well as life’s ups and downs. Satire is an efficient scheme used to reveal
the characteristics of the communities and human minds, which is euphemistic as well
as forceful.
Key words:
satire, satirical scheme, contrast, illusion and reality, satirical target,
satirical theme
5
摘
要
1847~1848 年出版的《名利场》副标题为“一部没有主角的小说”，揭示了
世俗间具有讽刺意味的画面。故事发生在拿破仑战争时代，但作者意图揭露的是
他生活的年代。小说的情节围绕两个性格等各方面形成鲜明对比的女主角—蓓基
•夏普与艾米利亚•赛特利展开。
这一杰作展现了萨克雷的人生哲学。他真实地刻画了周围的世界，并未贬低
任何事物，切实描绘出了人性的某些丑陋面。他清晰地看到了社会的阴暗面：渺
小、吝啬、自私、卑劣、伪宗教主义与道貌岸然；一言以蔽之，他看透了世俗化
的社会。
《名利场》运用许多讽刺的手法来揭示主题，如讽刺尖锐的实况评论，讽刺
漫画和具有讽刺意味的结局等。讽刺手法使叙述更加生动委婉且意味深长，如此
衍生出小说中的讽刺对象。故事中似乎所有的事物都沦为讽刺的对象，从男人到
女人，从主要人物到次要人物都无可幸免，这样就刻画出了一个扭曲的价值体系
和每个人为了生存而勾心斗角的局面。
《名利场》是各种虚名与腐败的写照，侧重描写了 19 世纪混沌的上流社会
与中产阶级。它也是无数没落社会的缩影，充满了谎言、欺骗、虚伪以及人世的
浮沉。讽刺手法是揭示社会与人性特点的一种有效途径，既含蓄又有力。
关键词： 讽刺； 讽刺手法； 对比； 幻想与现实；讽刺对象； 讽刺主题
6
Chapter I
Introduction
Vanity Fair written by William Makepeace Thackeray is generally recognized
as his masterpiece, through which he established his important position in the history
of English literature. In the novel, Thakeray profoundly exposes the social evils and
reality of the times through realism and satire. Numerous surveys attempt to make
some explorations of its elements of realism and satire that contribute much to its
great success.
Thackeray utilizes satire to make criticisms of the life of the bourgeoisie and
aristocracy, which is sharp, penetrating and unique. His Vanity Fair fully embodies his
viewpoint that a novel should reflect nature and reality, and transmit the real situation
and true feelings.
The style of Victorian fiction is realism, with representatives of Charles Dickens
and William Makepeace Thackeray. “They experiment while still applying some
conventions of the 18th century novel, in the comic and garrulous vein. Thus, in the
1830s, 40s and 50s, the novels of success concocted social panorama, witty
conversation and satire as in Thackeray’s ambitious Vanity Fair” (Ioana Zirra, 2003:
210).
Cruikshank, Thackeray, and the Victorian Eclipse of Satire Frank Palmeri
Popular and critical understandings have often contrasted the eighteenth century as
the golden age of satire in Britain with the nineteenth century as the age of the
realistic novel, in which satire plays at most a fugitive and subordinate role. Satire
occupies a prominent position by the late 1820s, providing evidence of a turn toward
comedy that is noticeable in works such as Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers
(1836-37).
Later narrative satire continued to play a role through the thirties that can
be seen in Thomas Love Peacock's Crotchet Castle (1831), Thomas Carlyle's
Sartor Resartus (1833-34), and--in a very late example--William Makepeace
Thackeray's The Snobs of England (1846-47). Strong visual satire also persisted
well into the twenties. Many contemporary works implied sharp criticism of the
British social system and narrative and visual satire thus persisted as
possibilities for the expression of sustained cultural and political critique with
representations of social issues and political leaders were comic, typically good
natured and decent (Frank Palmeri, 2004: 753).
Many earlier writers utilize satire to expose ugliness of their contemporary
time. Satire makes description vivid and euphemistic, with deep meaning. In the
following argumentation the connotation and function of satire are presented first.
Then panorama of the satire in Vanity Fair is indicated to present an overall
impression, derivating strategic schemes and targets of satire.
7
Ⅱ
Brief Discussion of Satire
2.1 Definition of satire
Satire in the literary field means a literary work, which exposes and ridicules
human vices or folly. Historically perceived as tending toward didacticism, it is
usually intended as a moral criticism directed against the injustice of social
wrongs. It may be written with witty jocularity or with anger and bitterness
(Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia(应写明编者的姓氏), 2003: 203).
Satire can also be defined as a technique used in the performing arts, fiction,
journalism, and occasionally in poetry and the graphic arts. Although satire is usually
witty, and often very funny, the primary purpose of satire is not primarily humor but
criticism of an individual or a group in a witty manner (Wikipedia, 2005: 128). Parody,
burlesque, exaggeration and double entendre are all devices frequently used in
satirical speech and writing (ibid. 2003: 203).
2.2 Function of Satire
Satire is applied to expose the vices and follies that the author hates and that are
expounded with imperfect tenderness. Satire usually has a very definite target, which
may be a person or group of people, an idea or attitude, an institution or a social
practice. In any case the target is held up to a ridicule which is often quite merciless,
and sometimes very angry????; ideally in the hope of shaming it into reform. A very
common, almost defining feature of satire is a strong vein of irony or sarcasm, in fact
satirical writing or drama very often professes to approve values that are the diametric
opposite of what the writer actually wishes to promote.
Historically the function of satire is to present the criticism of the emperors
and corrupted social system and so on in veiled ironical terms, mocking social
misbehaviors or making serious and even frightening commentaries on some
social issues taking place throughout Europe and United States (Bierce, 1993:
97).
2.3 Examples of satire
Numerous satiric masterpieces emerged in the world literary arena, such as
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver's Travels (1726), a classic children's adventure story, it is
actually a biting work of political and social satire by an Anglican priest, historian,
and political commentator. Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift parodied popular
travelogues of his day in creating this story of a sea-loving physician's travels to
imaginary foreign lands. In the book the author ridicules academics, scientists, and
Enlightenment thinkers who value rationalism above all else, and finally, he targets
the human condition itself.
A great American satirist was Mark Twain. For example, his novel Huckleberry
Finn is set in the ante-bellum south, in a world where the moral values Twain wishes
to promote are completely turned on their heads. His hero, Huck, a rather simple but
8
good-hearted lad, is ashamed of the “sinful temptation” that leads him to help a
runaway slave. (Wikipedia).
Satire has become the widely used scheme to disclose the reality, both in the
West and in the East. "Ugliness of Officialdom" is a Chinese satire to expose the
corruption of the feudal bureaucratic officialdom and the darkness, sketching a broad
picture of the social life.
Ⅲ Panorama of Satire in Vanity Fair
3.1 Overall evaluation of satire in Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair, A Novel without A Hero, published in 1847-8, gives a satirical
picture of a worldly society. The story happened during the Napoleonic wars, but
William Makepeace Thackeray, the author of the novel, intended to represent his own
times. It follows the fortunes of two sharply contrasted characters, Becky Sharp and
Amelia Sedley. Becky uses her charm, wit, feminine wiles and even immoral means
in an effort to climb the social ladder of early 19th century London, which is in a
sharp contrast to her friend, Amelia, a tender and innocent girl, who keeps her long
year affection to a dawdling playboy.
Thackeray was unrivalled in his power of representing all types of
characters on which it was possible for him to direct his satire. He introduces us
into his novel with a metaphor of the fair. A metaphor, it seems, is intended to
embody Thackeray's perception both of the novel and of the world it depicts
(Virginia Woolf, 1935: 27).
This masterpiece represents Thackeray’s philosophy of life. He drew the
world around him, as he saw it, extenuating nothing, but assuredly, depicting
some human ugliness. He saw clearly enough the seamy side of society: its
littleness, its meanness, its selfishness, its baseness, its false religionism, its secret
impurities—in a word which sums all up, its worldliness. (这一段话与摘要雷
同！！！！！)
“The reality Vanity Fair reveals is the ugliness in a capitalist society. Thackeray
said describing the reality must expose much unpleasant facts” (The Works of
William Makepeace Thackeray, 1995: 93). Thackeray made clear, both in his role
as the narrator of Vanity Fair and in his private correspondence about the book, that
he meant it to be not just entertaining, but instructive. Like all satire, Vanity Fair has
an objective and a moral.
“Vanity Fair is the work of a mind, at once accomplished and subtle, which has
enjoyed opportunities of observing many and varied circles of the society. . . his
genteel characters... have a reality about them... They are drawn from actual life, not
from books or fancy; and they are presented by means of brief, decisive yet always
most discriminative touches” (John Forster???(In an inserted note, only the
surname of the writer appears!!!), 1848). Charlotte Bronte, whose admiration for
his genius was boundless, called him “the legitimate high priest of Truth”.
3.2 Brief introduction to the author — A satirical moralist
William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the chief literary figures in the
9
Victorian Era, and his individuality has had a marked influence on the work of
his successors there can be no manner of doubt. As a painter of manners, as a
satirist, a critic, a stylist, he takes a very high rank, and the qualities that
enabled him to excel in these various capacities constitute a great writer of
fiction (James Oliphant, 1997: 56).
Thackeray, whose satiric novels are often regarded as the great upper-class
counterpart to Dickens's panoramic depiction of lower-class Victorian society.
Following Jane Austen and Charles Dickens in drawing his material from
contemporary life, Thackeray helped to widen the range by dealing with new phases
of society. Following the same writers, but reaching a higher success, he touched the
limits of realism in dialogue. He came to see himself as a Satirical-Moralist, with a
responsibility both to amuse and to teach. He aimed not only to expose the false
values and practices of society and its institutions and to portray the selfish, callous
behavior of individuals, but also to affirm the value of truth, justice, and kindness.
This double aim is reflected in his description of himself as satiric and kind: "under
the mask satirical there walks about a sentimental gentleman who means not unkindly
to any mortal person."
Though Thackeray set his novel a generation earlier, he was actually writing
about his own society (he even used contemporary clothing in his illustrations for the
novel). Thackeray saw how capitalism and imperialism with their emphasis on wealth,
material goods, and ostentation had corrupted society and how the inherited social
order and institutions, including the aristocracy, the church, the military, and the
foreign service, regarded only family, rank, power, and appearance. These values
morally crippled and emotionally bankrupted every social class from servants through
the middle classes to the aristocracy. High and low, individuals were selfish and
incapable of loving.
Until the publication of Vanity Fair, Thackeray was known as a humorous writer;
he wrote regularly for Punch. Thackeray regarded humor as doing more than making
readers laugh, "the best humor is that which contains most humanity, that which is
flavored throughout with tenderness and kindness. “He was compelled to write the
truth about what he saw and how he understood what he saw: No writer was better
gifted than Thackeray for this kind of satire because no faculty is more proper to
satire than reflection. Reflection is concentrated attention, and concentrated attention
increases a hundred-fold the force and duration of emotions. He, who is immersed in
the contemplation of a vice, feels a hatred of vice, and the intensity of his hatred is
measured by the intensity of his contemplation” (Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, 1917:
158)
The author is in possession of the motives, species, results, as a naturalist is of his
classifications being sure of his judgment, and has matured it. In this case the most
natural weapon is serious irony.
3.3 A novel without a hero
“There is no hero in “Vanity Fair” and its subtitle is “A Novel without a Hero”,
which is the original title. There are two explanations for this subtitle: one point
10
deems that no hero is due to no character becomes the central role” (D．Cecil,
1934:66); when the novel was published in the journal “Punch” with the sub-title of
"A Sketch of British Society", which also demonstrates this point. “Another point
believes that it has no “heroic character". A hero is a supereminent figure who has
aptitude to change social environment while the roles in the novel are all the common
people suffering from the environment and the time” (Anthony Trollope, 1983: 91).
The two points are not contradictory and can be unified. “Thackeray did not take
an excellent heroic protagonist. He mentions in the first chapter that the book is
written on vulgar trivial matter. If a reader only admires the great heroic deeds, he’d
better give up this novel as early as possible” (Harry Furniss, 1911: 6117).
“Thackeray believed that the ideals and noble sentiments belong to the field of poetry
and tragedy while a realistic fiction should reflect the truth and true feelings” (N．Frye,
1967: 33). He is determined to write a group of ordinary people in the tide of the
times, such as bankrupt Mr. Sedley, wealthy Mr. Osborne and George Osborne, who
died in the last ditch, etc. Even Rebecca Sharp, although she refused to yield to the
environment, she still did not overcome her environment. Their bitter suffering is not
a tragedy but a mockery of life.
Vanity Fair is said by its author to be a novel without a hero, which is
undoubtedly a truth. Furthermore, although there are two heroines, Rebecca
Sharp and Amelia Sedley, who are called the puppets by Thackeray, they do
not make up for this omission, since one is without a heart, and the other
without a head (Robin Gilmour, 1982: 26).
It is so satiric that the whole novel which lack a hero, the purpose of which is to
represent the reality which is at once the charm and misery here. Thackeray’s
contemporaries testify to how deeply Vanity Fair struck its first readers as a new kind
of fiction remarkable for its fidelity to actual experience.
When Thackeray hit on Vanity Fair as his title (replacing the original “The Novel
Without a Hero”), he found an image and focus that turned his satiric sketches into an
integrated vision of English society. The image comes from John Bunyan’s allegory,
The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). “Bunyan’s fair mirrors Thackeray’s world where
money is the prime motive for action and relationship. Both Bunyan and Thackeray
use the word “vanity” in its biblical sense, drawing on Ecclesiastes and its
well-known statement: Vanity of vanities, Saith the Preacher; all is vanity” (Robin
Gilmour, 1982: 28). The Latin root, vanus, meaning “empty” helps to locate
Thackeray’s use of the word and to remind us of its link to ideas of insubstantiality
and nothingness.
Generally speaking, fictions always boast their alluring figures, however, Vanity
Fair not only has no hero and even the positive characters are rare. “The characters in
the novel all bear much defect. Thackeray regarded Dobbin as a fool, Amelia selfish.
He said that he did not intend to write a perfect or near perfect person. Everyone apart
from Dobbin is ugly and vicious in the soul. A traditional novel ends with satisfactory
fairness: a kind person has a good reward while a villain suffers what he deserves.
Thackeray thought it was unreasonable. Success is similar to winning the lottery by
coincidence or chance” (Harry Furniss, 1911: 272). The moderate, kind, smart people
11
are often impoverished and unsuccessful while the selfish, stupid, sinister people are
always free from problems.
IV Strategic schemes of satire in Vanity Fair
4.1 Constant commentaries
“In the Preface or Pendennis Thackeray defines a novel as a sort of confidential
talk between writer and reader” (Robin Filmour, 1982: 34). He made satiric
commentaries with his voice of puzzling as well as intrusive, playing now the fool,
now the preacher, now the man of the world, now the man of sentiment.
Thackeray’s narrator is distinguished by his conversational, personal tone.
The informal style of the novel puts us in a more private, familiar world where
the narrator can respond to his characters and to his hypothetical reader in a
more casual and intimate fashion. The narrator’s fallible commentary
provokes our own response to the characters. By responding, we endow them
with a life resembling that of real people and turn their world into one “that
has somehow overlapped with our own. (Robin Filmour, 1982: 35)
This overlapping is also managed more directly by the frequent breaking of
dramatic illusion when the narrator moves out of the fictional world into the world of
the reader. For example, after introducing the rich Miss Crawley, he proceeds to
generalize: “What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker’s!” To
ensure recognition of the relevance of this irony to actuality, he involves the reader,
creating an elaborate hypothesis about “your” life: “your wife” and “your little girls”
work busily to please the wealthy relative. “You yourself, dear sir, forget to go to
sleep after dinner… Is it so, or is it not so? I appeal to the middle classes.”
Characteristically, the narrator himself is not immune: “Ah, gracious powers! I wish
you would send me an old aunt.” (ch. 9) Moments like these break down the barrier
between fiction and life, asserting a parallel between the narrative and our own lives.
Fiction is no longer another reality but a way back to this one, provoking
self-confrontation.
Vanity Fair is oddly straightforward in its fusing of technique and theme. In a
novel about the vanity of the world all wear the fool’s garb of motley shown on the
original cover: narrator, characters and reader.
“Thackeray’s narrator is more dramatically conceived and helps to make the
commentary itself dramatic, and the reader in his turn needs to be alert to the
narrator’s changing tones and attitude” (Ina Ferris, 1983: 12). The author also
remarked his heroines as “puppets” – “The famous little Becky Puppet”, “the Amelia
Doll”.
The preface shows that Thackeray’s characteristic skepticism is not only
turned in, as it were, to his fictional world, but outwards to his reader as well.
Part of the purpose of the “Novel without a Hero” is to probe and question the
habitual assumptions the reader brings with him to reading a novel, sometimes
to the extent of deliberately discomposing his normal confidence in the author.
(Ina Ferris, 1983: 12)
The narrator's commentary serves other purposes. It bridges past and present.
12
Without Thackeray's own voice, the melancholy and the compassion of his attitude to
Vanity Fair might escape us. It is needed merely as relief from a spectacle that might
otherwise be unbearably painful and not only morally painful, but mentally
impoverished. The characters, the best as well as the worst, are almost without ideas;
the intellectual atmosphere of the novel is provided by the commentary.
By presenting the narrator's comments and reactions as well as the characters'
feelings and reactions, Thackeray gives the novel a richer, more complex, and subtle
texture. Juliet McMaster, a famous British writer, believes that the narrator's
commentary, which she calls alternately inane, snug, cloying, or cynical, forces the
reader to react, thereby giving the characters a kind of life and making them feel like
autonomous beings.
4.2 Caricatures
Thackeray not only wrote but also illustrated his novel, the only major
Victorian novelist to do so. Vanity Fair is illustrated profusely with full-page
engravings, smaller dropped-in woodcuts, and pictorial capitals. The author
used the drawings skillfully and sarcastically to supplement, interpret, and
sometimes add to the text. (Robin Filmour, 1982: 25)
The author intended his illustrations to be an integral part of the novel. The first
letter of every chapter is incorporated into a drawing; almost every chapter includes a
full-page drawing with an inscription at the bottom and one or more drawings of
various sizes. The drawings supplement or complement the text in various ways.
The caricatures are applied as a scheme to satirize the figures. Joseph is a typical
instance; he is lazy, fat, stupid and love fads, drinking and eating, ridiculed repeatedly
in the novel.
For example, the meaning of the initial drawing for Chapter 4 is obvious; Becky
is angling for a fat fish, Joseph. There is irony in the fact that Joseph, who
distinguishes himself by how much he eats and drinks, is himself in danger of being
caught and eaten by Becky. Continuing the fish metaphor, Mr. Sedley tells his wife,
"But mark my words, the first woman who fishes for him, hooks him" (p. 43). Besides
flattering Joseph with references to his knowledge of foods, Becky lures Joseph by
knitting a green purse, the purse symbolizing money and the green perhaps suggesting
Becky's envy of the Sedley's affluence; she shyly implies that she is making it for him.
Though Becky is in a natural setting in the drawing, the buildings in the background
maintain Thackeray’s emphasis on the society.
Each monthly number of Vanity Fair carried as its subtitle “Pen and Pencil
Sketches of English Society”, advertising the parallel attractions of the
illustrations and perhaps attempting to capitalize on Thackeray’s already
established reputation as an illustrator of his own work. (Robin Filmour, 1982:
55)
The author actually satirizes all the characters in the novel, calling them puppets
and the whole fiction as a puppetry as the final drawing show:
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has
his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?--come, children, let us shut up the box and
13
the puppets, for our play is played out. (p. 67)
And the caricature draws two children are looking at the puppets in their box,
showing that the whole story is just a satiric puppetry. The pursuit of vanities are
vainly, fortune and status futile and meaningless.
For another example, the caricature in the Chapter 18 is of his kind: it shows a
tall clown bowing with wary mockery to the little strutting figure of Napoleon, while
soldiers can be seen through the “O” of “Our”. This meeting of the clown and the man
of destiny catches well the posture of mocking subservience adopted by Thackeray’s
comic muse, when his “surprised story” finds itself “hanging on to the skirts of
history”. (Ch. 18) A more subtle use of Napoleon can be seen in the caricature in
Chapter 64, where Becky dressed as Napoleon looks out over the Channel to England.
Here Thackeray completes the comic parallel between the social climber and the
“Corsican upstart” which has run throughout the novel. Becky began her social
“campaign” shortly before Napoleon made his return to France, and like him she ends
up in exile after her defeat. In her case Boulogne, the favorite haven in Victorian times
for bankrupts and other exiles from English respectability (hence the title “A
Vagabond Chapter”)
4.3 Satirical ending
The actual ending bears no resemblance to conventional happy endings. The
novel bears a satirical ending. Dobbin no longer loves Amelia, and she knows it.
There is no poetic justice, i.e., the virtuous are rewarded and the wicked are punished.
The resilient Becky has wormed her way back into respectable English society,
presumably she may have murdered Joseph for the money. The novel at last concludes
with a pessimistic statement that may be applied to almost all, if not all the characters:
"Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum!" which of us is happy in the world? Which of us has his
desire? or, having it, is satisfied?" (page 822).
We can see the endings of the main characters as follows. Dobbin gets his
desired Amelia after acknowledging that she is not worth his devotion and that he
wasted his life. Amelia's desire to marry Dobbin is fulfilled, but her desire arises far
too late, for she has worn out his love for her.
Becky may have regained her respectability again, but will her Bohemian nature,
with its need for excitement and risk, satisfied with a long with a staid conventional
life.
With the last sentence of the novel, Thackeray reduces his characters to puppets,
artifacts which are controlled by the puppet master or the narrator as stage manager.
Ordinarily such a puppet image would undercut our sense of the characters' reality,
but it strengthens the effect. Thackeray deliberately satirizes different levels or kinds
of reality that the characters, like puppets, are created.
4.4 Themes
The author aims to satirize the following themes:
First, vanity. Vanity, which takes a variety of forms, is a major motivation of
individuals and characterizes society. We cam refer to the following definitions of
14
vanity from the dictionary: "Vain and unprofitable conduct or employment of time";
"The quality of being foolish or of holding erroneous opinions"; "The quality of being
personally vain; high opinion of oneself; self-conceit and desire for admiration."
Another meaning of vanity could possibly be the vanity mirror; this meaning relates
to the use of mirrors in the text and the drawings.
Second, society's values. Individuals and society are driven by the worship of
wealth, rank, power, and class and are corrupted by them. Consequences of this
worship are the perversion of love, friendship, and hospitality and the inability to
love.
Third, selfishness. Everyone is selfish in varying degrees. As little Georgy
ironically writes in an essay. “An undue love of Self leads to the most monstrous
crime and occasions the greatest misfortunes both in States and Families” (page 698).
The selfishness of characters like Becky, Joseph Sedley, and Lord Steyne is obvious;
however, even apparently selfless characters like Amelia, Dobbin, and Lady Jane are
selfish.
4.5 Contrasts and coexistence of contradictions
The author arranges the coexistence and contrast of the contradictions to achieve
satiric effects.
4.5.1 Contrast of two heroines
Thackeray’s irony invites the reader to find his interest not in identification with
the destiny of a single protagonist but in the parallels and contrasts between two
characters whose natures seem morally opposed. “Becky is active where Amelia is
passive, knowing where she is naïve, witty and articulate where she relies on dumb
feeling. The difference between them could even be described in some such large
general terms as an opposition between worldliness and unworldliness” (Ina Ferris,
1983: 16).
The reader becomes involved in a continual process of comparison which starts
to loosen the hard edge of the initial antithesis; unconventional insights emerge. We
quickly realize that Becky’s irreverence has a certain moral validity as a response to
the snobbish, money-worshipping society portrayed in Vanity Fair, and that her
wordly acumen is a source of laughter and satire. Amelia’s maidenly devotion to
George suddenly looks blind and foolish, but we are soon aware that herunworldliness
is not as straightforward as it seemed at first, that it is made possible by the cushion of
wealth and conceals selfishness and sentimentality too.
Through Becky Sharp Thackeray explores the public, social possibilities
of Vanity Fair, through Amelia Sedley he investigates its private, individual
possibilities. Where Becky belongs to the world of picaresque with its
emphasis on success, Amelia belongs to the world of romance where feeling is
the primary value. Becky’s way of life ends in “bankruptcy,” but Amelia’s
alternative is hardly more satisfying. Under scrutiny, the way of romance turns
out to be as disappointing as most things in Vanity Fair. (Robin Filmour, 1982:
39)
While Becky has been playing high society games, the widowed Amelia
15
has been living in obscurity with her bankrupt parents. (Robin Filmour, 1982:
30)
And the running parallel and contrast between Amelia and Becky provides
the narrative backbone of Vanity Fair, but the same principle of pairing and
contrast between characters is at work elsewhere, amplifying and enriching
the baldness of the original opposition between worldliness and unworldliness,
and adding further dimensions to the theme of vanity in the novel. (Ina Ferris,
1983: 16)
4.5.2 Satire and sentiment
It is characteristic of Thackeray that the moment in the novel when “Satire and
Sentiment” are brought into effective partnership, and those contrasts of irony and
feeling balanced. It offers the poignant spectacle of privacy invaded, of indifferent
fingers “poking into the feathers, shampooing the mattresses, and clapping the
wardrobe drawers to and fro” (Ina Ferris, 1983: 16)
For example, the Sedley auction is the pivotal scene in the fifth monthly number,
and one might note the skilful way in which it not only combines “Satire and
Sentiment” in itself, but effects a bridge between these different tones in the two
halves of the number.
4.5.3 Fashion and War
The increasing momentum of to the battle of Waterloo, taking place offstage, is
Thackeray’s most brilliant and important narrative refusal in Vanity Fair. Although the
battle itself is given only a short paragraph in the text, its presence seems to bulk large
in our experience of the novel. Waterloo is a decisive event in the lives of the
principal characters and in the life of their society. In Thackeray’s handling Waterloo
is an event within Vanity Fair itself, for he continually emphasizes the concurrence of
the military and the fashionable campaigns by bringing Becky to the “perpetual
military festival” at Brussels, “where all the Vanity Fair booths were laid out with the
most tempting liveliness and splendor”. (ch. 28), and making it the scene of her social
triumph. “It is this interplay between fashion and war, coming to a splendid climax in
the escape from Brussels of the fat dandy Joseph Sedley, which keeps Waterloo within
the comic, satiric mode of the novel while allowing its more serious implications to
emerge through force of contrast” (Ina Ferris, 1983: 26)
The chances of war sharpen the appetite for acquisition in Vanity Fair. From a
character we may have pigeon-holed as entirely worldly, he is Rawdon Clawly, when
out of love of Becky he prepares a list of all his fashionable belongings –
dressing-case, fur-lined cloak, chain and ticket, dueling-pistols – and leaves them
behind for her to sell if need be, going off to battle in his oldest and savviest uniform
and epaulets, leaving the newest behind, under his wife’s guardianship. (ch. 30)
The renunciation of fashion which Rawdon makes willingly is forced on Joseph
Sedley by rumor and panic. Joseph is the novel’s chief narcissist, displaying in a gross
but harmless and comic form the tendency to look in mirrors and adorn one’s person
whom he shares with a more subtle narcissist like George Osborne. The “stout
16
civilian”, as he is many times called, appears in Brussels dressed as a military dandy
in his braided frockcoat, foraging cap and moustaches described in chapter 32 (one
relishes the brilliance of Thackeray’s comic substitution here, making Joseph’s
experience of the war function in ironic counterpoint to that of the real soldiers
offstage).
The interplay of fashion and war is brought to a splendid comic climax: the razor
that shaves off the dandy’s plumage stands in for the sabers that in a different kind of
novel would be seen clashing at Quatre Bras. And the implications of this scene reach
out beyond the comic subversion of military fiction to a larger symbolic meaning. Just
as Joseph loses his military-style frock-coat and expensive toilette items to Isidor,
escaping from Brussels in a “plain black coat” which makes him look like “a
flourishing, large parson of the Church of England”, so too does the battle of Waterloo
mark the beginning of the end of the quasi-aristocratic style of military dandyism as a
dominant force in the world of the novel. (Ina Ferris, 1983: 36)
4.5.4 Illusion and reality
It is impossible to distinguish between illusion and reality. Motivated by
self-interest, the characters practice hypocrisy, they misrepresent themselves both to
others and to themselves, and they lie. Some characters deliberately choose their
illusions or fantasies over the truth. Thus, every character deludes others and/or is
self-deluded.
The false portrayal of human nature and activities in novels, romance, and
literary conventions is distinguished from real life.
V
Satirical targets in Vanity Fair
The novel Vanity Fair is a satire and it has many satirical targets to represent the
Victorian novelist style, satirical realism. The satiric targets are shown as follows:
5.1 Gentleman
Thackeray rejects the older concept of a gentleman as a man of rank and leisure,
i.e., a member of the gentry or aristocracy. The true gentleman, as well as the true lady,
is recognized by moral character, being considerate, benevolent, and diligent. Amelia,
Lady Jane, and Dobbin are among the few real ladies and gentlemen in this novel.
A concern in Thackeray's writings, as in the writings of many other middle-class
Victorian novelists, is the question of what a gentleman is. The traditional concept of
a gentleman is a man of family and fortune who does not work; it is a class-based
concept which excluded most middle class men. Having in mind this definition,
Thackeray said that it took three generations to make a gentleman. The middle classes,
who were growing in number, wealth, and power, did not want to wait to be accepted
as gentlemen. To make the concept of the gentleman more inclusive, writers identified
character and moral values as the criteria for recognizing a gentleman. Thackeray uses
both concepts of the gentleman in Vanity Fair. He uses the older definition ironically
in connection with characters like Lord Steyne and Sir Pitt Crawley, the father; the
new definition is applied to the honorable–and honest–William Dobbin.
Fashionable society accepts Lord Steyne as indisputably a gentleman even
17
though his immoral lifestyle is notorious. Despite his open womanizing and other
vices, his "distinguished courtesy" toward his wife in public "caused the severest
critics to admit how perfect a gentleman he was, and to own that his Lordship's heart
at least was in the right place" (page 576). Appearance and status are what matter in
determining who is a gentleman, not character or virtue or the whole life of a man.
In private, where society cannot see or hear his treatment of his wife or other
female dependents, Steyne is heartless or ungentlemanly. He savagely abuses his wife,
Lady Steyne, and daughter-in-law, Lady Gaunt, verbally to force them to invite Becky
to their home. Moreover, "to see his wife and daughter suffering always put his
Lordship into a good humor" (page 757). To emphasize the irony, Thackeray uses
Steyne's title, "his lordship." When Lady Gaunt defies him to strike her, he replies, "I
am a gentleman, and never lay my hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindness"
(page 575). He is brutal in his advice to Becky, when she reveals that she has cheated
Miss Briggs out of her money and ruined her financially: “Ruined her? Then why
don't you turn her out?' the gentleman asked” (page 571). In both of these incidents,
the term "gentleman" is used ironically for satiric purpose; Steyne is simultaneously
and ironically, a sadistic brute and a perfect gentleman. This concept of the gentleman
contrasts with the newer one Thackeray espouses.
Thackeray explicitly identifies what the true gentleman is and who of his
characters is a true gentleman. On the one hand, his concept democratizes the concept
of the gentleman because a man of any class who has the requisite character and
integrity could be a gentleman. On the other hand, Thackeray sets such a high
standard for the gentleman that very few men actually fit his definition of a true
gentlemen, though there are many who regard themselves and are regarded as
gentlemen using the standards of Vanity Fair. Thackeray distinguishes between the
few true gentlemen and the more numerous group whose claim to being gentlemen is
based on externals, not ideals.
The new concept of the gentleman can degenerate into the recognition of
appearance, position, wealth, and a conformity to decorum. Sir Pitt Crawley, the son,
is the model of the prig who places money and advancement before generosity, honor,
and kindness. He is able to listen to Rawdon's request for help and sympathize with
him after Rawdon assures him he is not asking for money. On this occasion,
Thackeray describes Sir Pitt, ironically, as "a real old English gentleman, in a word–a
model of neatness and propriety" (page 636). He is wearing a starched cravat with his
dressing gown!
5.2
Lady
Redefining the gentleman requires redefining the lady, so that the lady, too, is no
longer a class-based concept. Like the gentleman, the lady must have character and be
virtuous, though the nature of her character and her specific virtues differ from those
of the gentleman.
The new concept of the lady, like that of the gentleman, can degenerate into the
recognition of appearance, position, wealth, and a conformity to decorum. As Amelia
exemplifies the new true lady, so Becky expresses the corrupted concept of a lady, a
18
concept whose criteria would be easier to meet and would undoubtedly be more
widely acceptable.
5.3
Main characters: Becky Sharp & Amelia Sedley
In fact, Thackeray is satirizing every character in the novel. The dominant class
in this novel, as in Thackeray's society, is the middle class, and the middle class is the
mercantile, capitalist society. The predominant middle class value is money, as
exemplified by Mr. Osborne. The consequences of this focus are spiritual and
intellectual emptiness, a twisted morality, and corrupted emotions, particularly the
inability to love and an incapacity for friendship.
Thackeray's presentation of his characters as a gradual “unfolding in a
continuously widening present”; the characters have the same weaknesses, vanities
and foibles throughout, the only change being “our knowledge of them.”
Becky Sharp
Thackeray is deliberately manipulating his “little Becky Puppet”. (p.p. 37,
William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, by Robin Filmour) Born with no
advantages, in a society that values rank and wealth, Becky makes her way to the
highest levels of society through her own resources, with determination, intelligence,
hard work, and talent. She is resourceful and bounces back from every reversal. At the
same time, her behavior and character are morally indefensible; she constantly
manipulates others, she lies, she cheats, she steals, she betrays Amelia, and perhaps
she even commits a murder.
Becky becomes the vehicle of the satire, especially in the early part of the novel,
where she exposes and deflates the vanity of others. Despite her own fakery, she
retains the support of the reader because most of her conflicts involve despicable
characters and our indignation is directed toward them rather than toward Becky. Her
early victories offer a sense of release and justice, as in her skillful “routing” of
George Osborne who begins with a simple gesture. George “walked up to Rebecca
with a patronizing, easy swagger. He was going to be kind to her and protect her. He
would even shake hands with her, as a friend of Amelia’s; and saying “Ah, Miss Sharp!
How-dy-doo?” held out his left hand towards her, expecting that she would be quite
confounded at the honor. The next paragraph begins Becky’s rout. “Miss Sharp put
out her right fore-finger, and gave him a little nod, so cool and killing” that George is
completely taken aback. From this moment his discomfort only grows as Becky turns
the tables on George and proceeds to patronize him. (ch.14) In such scenes Becky is
an ally of the author, furthering his puncturing of vanity. (p.p. 38, William Makepeace
Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, by Robin Filmour)
But she is also a satiric target herself, taking her place alongside George,
Joseph, Miss Crawley, and the other citizens of Vanity Fair. She shares their
worldliness and narrow vision. Thackeray keeps firmly in sight her ruthless
self-centeredness, placing her early among the “Faithless, Hopeless,
Charityless” inhabitants of the Fair (ch. 8). As the novel progresses, Becky’s
destructiveness becomes increasingly apparent, summed up in the famous
19
mermaid image of Chapter 64. The image grows out of the narrator’s ironic
defense of himself before the squeamish “polite public” which recoils from a
frank description of “vice”. (Robin Filmour, 1982: 38)
This double function of Becky points to that complexity of role that has led to so
much critical controversy about her character and about Thackeray’s attitude to her.
Amelia Sedley
Amelia seems to be the conventional heroine, sweet, passive, self-sacrificing,
gentle, tender, and loving. And Thackeray calls her a heroine for many times, but he
contradicts himself at other times and says she is not a heroine (he also refers to
Becky as a heroine and not a heroine). In addition, he repeatedly calls Amelia “weak”
and “selfish”. Of Dobbin's faithful love and decades-long submission to her,
Thackeray mentioned that finally “he will find her not worth having”. Thackeray
wrote his mother that “My object is not to make a perfect character or anything like it.
Don't you see how odious all the people are in the book (with the exception of
Dobbin), all there lies a dark moral I hope. What I want is to make a set of people
living without God in the world (only that is a cant phrase) greedy pompous mean
perfectly self-satisfied for the most part and at ease about their superior virtue.”
5.4
Marriage
Using this technique of generalizing from the individual, the author exposes the
mercenary and impersonal basis of marriage in an acquisitive, money-oriented,
status-conscious society.
Becky's desperate attempt to lure Joseph into marriage gives Thackeray the
opportunity to discuss society's institutionalization of husband hunting, which “is
generally, and with becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas”
(page 32). He then lists the approved and conventional activities by which young
ladies find husbands. Amelia's idolatry of George is contrasted with Miss Maria
Osborne's feelings for her fiancé or, to be more accurate, for his financial and social
standing, which leads to a discussion of mercenary marriages in fashionable society
(pages 134-5).
We can take Maria’s example. Her fiancé, Frederick Bullock, Esq., is equally
mercenary and refuses to marry unless Maria's dowry is increased; he changes his
mind only after Mr. Osborne threatens to horsewhip him, Mr. Osborne removes his
money from the Bullock firm, and Frederick's father and the senior partners of
Bullock, Hulker, and Bullock urge him to go through with the marriage. The horrors
of marriages arranged for financial and family considerations are revealed by the
Steyne family's alliances (pages 555-60)
Marriage becomes a mercenary pursuit and calculated game for self-enrichment.
So Mrs. Bute “played for Bute and won him at Harrowgate” (ch. 11), while the
unhappy Lady Steyne is more brutally “sold” to Lord Steyne (ch. 47). In their pursuit
of social status and money the inhabitants of Vanity Fair create a distorted value
system. Love is equated with money, as in the statement that Miss Crawley “had a
balance at her banker’s which would have made her beloved anywhere” (ch. 9).
20
In a novel of domestic life, there are no happy marriages because of the egotism,
selfishness, folly, and false values of individuals and of society. Similarly, selfishness,
vanity, snobbery, and/or materialism affect every child-parent relationship.
In the early 19th century England, people regarded marriage as the simplest form
of gaining wealth. At this point, both men and women are trying to achieve this goal.
A lot of people married a title, or status rather than their own spouse. Thus marriage
seem to be the only way out of poor life or lower social background. It is not
infrequent in most societies.
5.5
Human as commodities
Regarding others as commodities or objects to be used for one's own ends is
widespread, almost universal, in this society. Miss Crawley uses Miss Briggs, Becky,
and her relatives to amuse herself and drops them without a pang when they no longer
suit her needs. In turn, she and her fortune are commodities which her relatives want
to secure for themselves. After a stroke incapacitates Sir Pitt and his son takes control
of the estate, Sir Pitt becomes a worthless object and is kept out of sight.
Things, possessions are more important than people. Ironically, people's
possessions outlast them or their wealth, as shown by the numerous auctions resulting
from bankruptcy or death.
As a mother Becky, who expresses neither love nor interest in her son, becomes
an object for him. He admires her appearance and her possessions: “She came like a
vivified figure out of the Magasin des Modes–blandly smiling in the most beautiful
new clothes and little gloves and boots. Wonderful scarves, laces, and jewels glittered
about her... She was an unearthly being in his eyes, superior to his father–to all the
world: to be worshipped and admired at a distance” (p.p. 449). There follows a list of
things in her room which define her for little Rawdon.
5.6 Dark side of human nature
Thackeray once wrote to Robert Bell: “The novel is to indicate, in cheerful terms,
that we are for the most part an abominably foolish and selfish people “desperately
wicked and all eager after vanities” (Edgar F. Harden, 1994: 423). So we can see that
the whole novel is full of dark side of human nature. “The Victorian imagery of heavy
or stifling air captures the indefinable way in which Vanity Fair generates the
profound and vague dissatisfaction with life to which Thackeray refers here. Life in
Vanity Fair is soiled” (Robin Filmour, 1982: 27)
Thackeray again and again points out that the folly, social climbing, hypocrisy,
cruelty, avarice, loveless-ness, and selfishness exhibited by individual characters have
their origin and counterpart in society as a whole. These values are learned early, as
the anecdote of the three children happily playing, until told that the sister of one of
them had a penny. All three ran to ingratiate themselves with the penny-holder and
followed her, “marching with great dignity,” toward a lollipop stall (page 263).
5.7 Distorted value system
To show the connection between the individual's values and behavior and
21
society's, Thackeray often generalizes from a particular situation or individual's action
to the behavior and value of societies. He universalizes the greedy fawning of the
Crawleys over Miss Crawley's £70,000 into a common behavior in society: “What a
dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's! How tenderly we look at her
faults if she is a relative” (page 104).
Vanity Fair satirizes the snobbery and social climbing of a time when the
influx of new wealth from industrialization and the rise of stockjobbing was
loosening the old class barriers and providing opportunities for parvenus like
Becky. On this level Vanity Fair is best read in conjunction with Thackeray’s
Book of Snobs, published almost concurrently in Punch as The Snobs of
England. (Ina Ferris, 1983: 27)
John Bunyan’s idea of vanity clearly appeal to Thackeray with his early and
continuing interest in shams, fakes, illusions, and with his melancholy sense of
life. For all its seriousness and incisiveness in exposing cultural values, Vanity
Fair is a comic masterpiece exhibiting comedy’s joy in the sheer vitality and
resilience of life. (Robin Filmour, 1982: 28)
We can take Becky Sharp for example. One of Becky's weaknesses is the desire
to be respectable and accepted into "the best" or fashionable society. As a token
gesture toward the rules governing a lady's behavior, she hires, but does not pay, Miss
Briggs to be her companion. She achieves her goal of respectability after she is
presented to King George IV at court. This presentation vouches for her social status
and, of course, her character, so that some of "the best" foreigners and "the best
English people too" visited her. The emptiness of her achievement soon manifests
itself; "Her success excited, exalted, and then bored her" (page 597). It shows that
fashionable society is snobbish and hypocritical in addition to being uninteresting.
5.8
Gossip and rumor
Gossip is central to Vanity Fair and to its theme of unreality. The narrator
relies on gossips like Tom Eaves for information and reports constantly what
“the world” said of so and so. Moreover, his own style with its intimate tone,
hints, unfinished sentences, and trailing speculations mimics the manner of
gossip. (Robin Filmour, 1982: 33)
“All these works to underline the elusive and insubstantial language of tumor
becomes a moving force and therefore a reality” (Robin Filmour, 1982: 33). In this
way Becky and Rawdon can “live well on nothing a year” for several years solely on
the basis of reputation and rumor. Mrs. Bute Crawley exhibits a similar reliance on the
power of suggestion when she dressed her daughters so well for the marriage market
that “it began almost to be belicved that the four sisters had had fortunes left them by
their aunt”. (ch. 39) The narrator calls this behavior “lying”, and in Vanity Fair lies
dominate. Its very language becomes deceptive, for this world has “no particular
objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper
name” (ch.64).
Reality is hidden or ignored as the creation of false appearance becomes the
norm and the central “fact” of existence. So Becky’s “happier days” are not days of
22
innocence but days “when she was not innocent, but not found out” (ch. 64).
Ⅵ Achievements through satire in Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair boasts an important status in the history of English literature. Many
details of the truth and the scheme of satire portray a specific aspect of the society and
an era of fragmentation. “At that time only the French Stendhal and Balzac used this
kind of writing, he is still a grassroots writer in the history of the British novel”
(McGraw － Hill, 1955: 162). To describe the truth, Vanity Fair breaks the
conventional writing of fiction. This novel can be said to open a new position in the
history of the development of British realism novels.
Thackeray is good at narrating interesting and lively stories by satire full of
humor and tactful dialogues. He wrote lighthearted and not strenuous, even in the not
very brilliant part of the novel, readers can also go very fluent reading, feeling it
attractive.
Vanity Fair is a portrait of a variety of vanities and corruption, indicating a
chaotic upper and middle class of the 19th century. It is also a miniature of
numerous declining societies, full of rumor, deception, hypocrisy as well as
human’s struggle in the society. Satire is an efficient scheme to represent the
characteristics of the communities and human minds, which is euphemistic as
well as forceful. (与摘要雷同！！！)
This novel is masterpiece of satire, whose schemes and artistic effects are worth
further study.
进一步修改意见
小王：
你写论文下了一定的功夫。但是问题还有不少，必须好好进一步修改。
1．
目录做了修改，务必按照目录修改。
2．
第一章必须为前言，前言起码包括你写的论题的有关文献综述，论文要点以及
结构。
3．
夹注不规范，夹注中只写明作者姓氏，出版年代：页码。不必说明文章或书的
标题。
4．
5．
6．
7．
8．
在论文中的关键词后面打括号，说明其汉语对应词。
文章中的所有大小标题应与目录保持一致。
论文还有明显的语法错误，须仔细改正，特别注意时态的运用。
书名总是采用斜体。如 Vanity Fair 总是用斜体！！
！
引文，不论是直接的引文还是间接的引文，最后的句点总是在夹注之后。
23
9．
10．
11．
12．
13．
参考文献不规范，必须使之规范化。
结尾应归纳论文要点和你自己的观点，文章的意义和局限性，并指
出今后进一步研究的方面。
论文摘要、前言和结尾都应指出要点，但必须采用不同的表达方式。
努力细心修改，然后再把论文传给我看看。
多读几遍，一边修改，一边熟悉论文，做好答辩的准备。
谭老师
24
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f)
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