52 anything, even her family, to achieve her goal. Therefore, it can be concluded that
Becky is both materialistic and a social climber. She does everything it takes to get her ambition; to be rich and to elevate her social status.
From the discussion of Becky’s characteristics, Thackeray wants to show his satires toward the British Society. Through Rebecca Sharp characteristics, it
can be seen that the society at that time is a materialist and social climber. First, he satirizes British society as a materialistic society through Becky’s characters.
Her cunning, selfishness, and her ambition tell that she only finds her bliss in pursuing and getting wealth. The society also gives impact in influencing her
character. She has suffered discrimination because of poverty since she was a girl. She is not happy as a poor person, so she determines to be as wealthy as possible.
Another satire that Thackeray tries to reveal is that through money, people can get many friends. He uses Becky’s hypocrisy as well as the Crawleys’ to show his
satires. Those show that society at that time is materialistic. The second satire that Thackeray wants his readers know is his satire on the importance of social status
among the British society at that era. As a girl from low class society, Becky determines to elevate her social status whatever it takes. Thackeray satirizes
Becky’s marriage. She only marries Rawdon because of her goal to elevate her social status. By marrying Rawdon, who is a noble man from a respected family,
Becky’s social status automatically increases. Thackeray also uses direct satire by directly commenting the system of marriage in British society. He shows that both
parents and daughters are willing to do anything to get a fine respected husband. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
53 He also satirizes Sir Pitt to show the importance of ascribed status than achieved
status.
5.2. Suggestions
This part is divided into two parts, the first is the suggestion for future researchers, and the second is the suggestion for teaching implementation.
5.2.1. The Suggestion to Future Researchers
Vanity Fair is an interesting novel that has many other aspects that are worth to analyze. This novel has many interesting characters. There are many
minor characters that influence Becky’s character. This can be another subject to analyze. Besides Rebecca Sharp, Thackeray tells the story through another main
character, Amelia Sedley. Amelia provides the readers with the story of her never- ending love. Her struggle to keep her love makes her life suffer. The meaning of
love for Amelia is also worth to analyze. Thackeray constantly compares the story between the two. It is interesting to know the importance of telling the story
between them from Thackeray’s point of view. Since this study uses the sociocultural-historical approach, the future researchers may use the psychological
aspects to explore the characters in Vanity Fair.
5.2.2. Suggestion for Teaching Learning Activities
There are many topics that can be used in Vanity Fair for teaching. For example, the role of a mother that Becky shows. Becky shows that as a mother she
54 does not care much about her family. She also tends to be more powerful than her
husband. This can be an interesting topic to discuss in the classroom; therefore, excerpts of Vanity Fair are chosen to teach speaking.
The Implementation in Teaching Speaking
One of the obstacles to encourage the students to speak is the large size of the class. Therefore, group discussion provides many opportunities for the
students to speak in the target language because the discussion is conducted in small group and the teacher does not take significant role in the proceeding. There
are many activities that can be implemented in speaking class, such as dialogue, discussions, story telling, interview, role-play, presentation, and even debate. The
following activity is discussing about the group discussion. There are three stages in the implementation of group discussion in class, pre-discussion, discussions,
and post-discussion. In pre-discussion, the students are divided into groups. Identifying and organizing the topic are also done in this stage. In the discussion
stage, the students discuss their topic while partner groups observe and give feedback. In the Post-discussion, the students are concluded their discussion and
report it in front of the class. Green and Lam 226-31. This kind of activity also provides the students with opportunities to improve their critical thinking and also
their speaking proficiency. These following suggestions can be used as an example of the procedure
in teaching learning activities. The meeting will be conducted in 100 minutes. 1. Students are already given the selected literary text for discussion in
previous meeting before the class. Chapter 36 and 37 in Vanity Fair is PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
55 chosen because it shows how Becky handles her family. They are asked to
read the text and comprehend it before the class. 2. In class, the students are divided into groups of four. Each group members
should be as homogeneous as possible both in their speaking ability and their personality, considering that the students consist of extrovert and
introvert. Their speaking ability and their willingness to speak are various. This gives the chance for students to speak evenly in the group.
3. The teacher introduces the topics from the reading by asking questions. Each group has to identify and organize the topic by using brainstorming
and mind-mapping techniques. 4. They start to discuss about the topic among group members using the
target language. Each group member should contribute the discussion. They may use certain terms that the teacher gives. Each member of the
group must present his or her pros and cons about the chosen topic. Along the discussion, the teacher should monitor the proceeding of each group’s
discussion. The teacher may use the teacher’ guide to evaluate the students’ performance in each group.
5. After all group members have a chance to speak, they conclude the discussion. One of the group member reports it in front of the class so that
other groups may give their opinion and suggestions on the report. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
