Previous
Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Vanity Fair, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Greed and Ambition
Vanity
Social Class and Character
Gender
Inheritance and Family Life
Summary
Analysis
The narrator announces it’s time to go back to London to check on Amelia. The narrator claims to find Amelia’s life interesting but allows that others might find women like her boring. George’s sisters (Jane Osborne and Maria), for example, don’t understand what George sees in Amelia, particularly since the two of them got engaged. Other young women tell George what a generous sacrifice he's making by getting engaged to Amelia. George’s sisters also talk about Dobbin, who is awkward when dancing and blushes all the time.
Amelia might have been a model student at Miss Pinkerton’s, but it turns out that her strict adherence to the rules actually makes her less interesting to many people out in the real world. This passage highlights the contradictory expectations placed on women seeking a husband during this time period, where they were expected to be simultaneously meek and obedient like Amelia but also gregarious and interesting like Becky.
Themes
Amelia’s life has little “incident” in it, and she spends a lot of her time waiting for George. One time, after George has been away for three days, Amelia goes directly to the Osborne house to see what’s happening. Jane Osborne and Maria find Amelia’s intrusion awkward and again wonder what George sees in her.
Amelia wants to follow the rules, and this passage makes it clear that the “rules” in her current situation involve making herself totally subservient to her future husband. While this might seem to make Amelia the ideal wife, in fact, Amelia’s by-the-book approach makes some like Jane and Maria question Amelia’s value.
Themes
Literary Devices
The Napoleonic Wars seem to have no effect whatsoever on what happens in the part of London where George and Amelia live. Amelia’s love for George helps her to grow up, and she becomes even more infatuated with him as time goes on. She is so in love with George that she neglects some of her female friends and doesn’t take confidantes. Meanwhile, Mr. Sedley and Mrs. Sedley don’t pay much attention to what Amelia does, and Jos is away.
The way that all the characters just ignore the Napoleonic wars shows how their lifestyle isolates them from the wider world. As later chapters reveal, however, this isolation only gives the characters a false sense of security, and in fact the Napoleonic Wars will end up having a large influence on the lives of all the characters, showing how even the upper classes can’t insulate themselves from the events of history.
Themes
