Vanity Fair and it's trailblazing femme fatale

Finished reading Vanity Fair about a month ago, and Rebecca (Becky) Sharp — what a character! These days, we heap praise on Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl for introducing us to Amy, a femme fatale who, for once, isn’t vanquished or humiliated. Yet, nearly two centuries earlier, William Makepeace Thackeray had already done something quite similar with his own Rebecca. Becky, unquestionably, inhabits the role of the femme fatale within the narrative — a point Thackeray underscores by deliberately comparing her to mythological women infamous for leading men to ruin, such as Clytemnestra, Circe, and the emphatically man-eating sirens.

Becky’s fate, however, is shaped by Thackeray’s vision for the novel. At it's core, Vanity Fair is a satire; it doesn’t seek to punish Becky as a cautionary example, but to expose the shallow nature of Victorian society — where someone like Becky can thrive. And thrive she does, though not without personal cost. She alienates everyone around her, a fact she occasionally reflects on with fleeting regret. Still, she emerges triumphant, even after committing her most shocking act — the one that solidifies her shift from anti-heroine to outright villain.

What truly sets Becky apart within the trope, though, is how Vanity Fair subverts expectations through it's structure. Just as she secures her position in British high society, her carefully constructed world begins to crumble. Her husband, Rawdon, uncovers her infidelities, abandons her, and takes with him the money she had been accumulating throughout the book. Becky vanishes, her reputation destroyed, and, for a while, the focus shifts to Amelia Sedley, her foil and co-protagonist, leading readers to believe Becky’s story is over. After all, that’s how tales about women like Becky typically conclude. That is, until Amelia’s path crosses with Rebecca’s once more, and we learn what she’s been up to during her time offstage. Slowly but surely, through her emotional manipulation of Amelia and her cajolery of Jos, Becky works her way back into society. By the end, her image is somewhat restored, and her financial situation surpasses what it had been before her downfall, having also outlived every man who ever took interest in her in the process.

Thus, we raise a toast to this trailblazing femme fatale, a woman whose resourcefulness and unwavering ability to adapt transcend the literary landscape where such characters are usually subdued. While some may laud her resilience in bettering her standing in life, others will undoubtedly condemn her as a perilous figure driven by self-interest. In either case, her legacy endures, as relevant today as at the book's release, exposing, through her triumphs and failures, the flawed nature of human existence.