25 Vanity Fair told about the story of two best friends. Becky Sharp, the
penniless orphaned of an artist and a French opera dancer, and Amelia Sedley, the sheltered child of a city Merchant. The two have been educated at Miss
Pinkerton’s academy. Becky having failed to attract Amelia’s brother, Jos Sedley, became a governess to the children of Sir Pitt Crawley. She becomes a favorite of
Miss Crawley, Sir Pitt’s rich spinster sister. When Becky confessed that she had married with Rawdon Crawley, Sir Pitt’s youngest son, the young couple abruptly
fell from favor with Miss Crawley. They had to live without Miss Crawley’s financial help and dependent on Becky’s wits.
Meanwhile, Amelia’s father had lost all his money and her engagement with George Osborne had been broken off by George’s father, John Osborne. John
did not want his son to marry a poor woman from lower class. However, the two were married without the permission of John Osborne.
Amelia and Becky accompanied their husband to Belgium for war. Becky and Rawdon are apart after Rawdon discovered his wife with Lord Steyne. Becky
led an increasingly disreputable life on the continental. Rawdon who had become a governor of Coventry Island, died of fever Adapted from The Concise Oxford
Companion to English Literature 669.
3.2. Approach of the Study
As mentioned in Chapter II, there are five approaches that Rohrberger and Woods offer. Among them, the one to be applied in this study was the
sociocultural-historical approach. The main concern of this approach was the attitude and the action of society in which a work was created. A product of art
26 was also a product of a society. This product also revealed the social issues and it
would “lead to an ethical judgment concerning the truth of an author’s statements” Rohrberger and Woods 10. This approach was used because I would like to
study the sociocultural-historical aspect of the story as the reflection of the society in the Victorian era, the time when Vanity Fair took place. It helped me to relate
the perception of the characters in the novel with the society at that time. Therefore, the appropriate approach for this study was the sociocultural-historical
approach.
3.3. Method of the Study
In gathering the data, library research was used. A Library research was selected since most of the data were found in the library. The references were
particularly on the used approach, the literary theories, criticisms on the novel, and the information about review on British society of the early Victorian Era.
There were two kinds of sources that were used in this study. They were primary source and secondary sources. The primary source was the novel itself,
William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, published by Everyman and edited by Pat Rogers in London 1997.
The secondary sources included the books, articles of related theories, reviews on the British society in the early Victorian Era, and the criticisms on the
novel and the author. Some of the main sources that were used are Stanton’s Introduction to Fiction, Henkle’s Reading the Novel, Wellek and Warren’s
Theory of Literature, Langlard’s Society in the Novel, Holman and Harmon’s A Handbook to Literature, and Forster’s Aspect of the Novels, Rohrberger and
