IntroductionBecky Sharp, also called Rebecca, is the central figure and the most vivid character in Vanity Fair. The one great thing about Vanity Fair is that no one is a real good person or a real bad person. There is no definition about what is a good person or bad person. Different readers can hold different opinions about the characters in this novel.Most reviews of Rebecca‟s character express the traditional opinion: Rebecca is shrewd and unscrupulous as a speculator. According to this paper, Rebecca can be considered as a path-breaker: She is a wise woman, and is skilled in communication, and has a genius of dealing with all kinds of person. Dissatisfied by her prospective life as a governess, Becky Sharp intends to escape her low birth and scale the ranks of English society by some necessary means. Finally she succeeds in thrusting into the high-rank society.Vanity Fair is the best novel by Thackeray. Thackeray describes a portrait ranging from the servants to the highest levels of fashionable society in Vanity Fair. This novel is a story of two young women‟s life experiences. The story is about how their lives converge, diverge and run parallel to each other. This story traces their marriages, the change of their social and financial status, the different circles in which they move, and their different characters. It mainly describes the highly intelligent but lower class woman. In the novel Rebecca tries many kinds of tactics to establish herself in respectable English society, even though she is despised by noble ladies. The narrator's opinion toward characters in this novel is ambiguous. Thackeray subtitles Vanity Fair─ “A novel without a hero” and he uses the novel to show that there are no heroes or heroines.Becky Sharp is the most charmin g and beautiful woman “in the fame and fortune field “. In order to enter the upper circles of society, she pursues money and power and even has a strong desire of materials in order to live a luxury life, she does not hesitate to exhaust own intelligence and ability, she resorts to all means to curry favor with powerful people, four sides fawns on. She has brought a huge pain for the people who live around her. However, from the time with her social position and the bitter experience, she is a victim with no doubt. But simultaneously we may also see that she is not only very active but also has a strong vitality in life. Moreover in the special social environment, although she is in a weak situation, she is not pessimisticto her life, she is a determined person. She is seeking the way to attack society by individual ability. She not only maintained the feminine self-esteem but also used the ingenious utilization in fame and fortune field to follow the rule, she has kept the explicit goal and never says give up; she has controlled the society by the special way, ended in a success. She is also the feminism pioneer. This article will carry on the analysis from the pro and con aspects to portray the characteristics and demonstrate feminine situation and society's original appearance in the Victoria time.ChapterⅠ. Becky Sharp as a SpeculatorIn most reader‟s eyes, Rebecca is a merciless social climber. She abandons her child, whom she hates, and has destroyed Rawdon.She wins over Mr. Sedley by laughing at his jokes with a cordiality and perseverance which not a little pleases and softens that good-natured gentleman. Miss Sharp‟s show of the deepest sympathy in the raspberry-jam preserving endears Mrs. Blenkinsop.She appears humble and pure, and is quiet and much interested in a man‟s interests. Down the stairs then they went ─Joseph very red and blushing, Rebecca very modest and holding her green eyes downwards. She was dressed in white, with bare shoulders as white as snow─the picture of gentle unprotected innocence, and humble virgin simplicity. “I must be very quiet,”thought Rebecca, “and very much interested about India”.①She appears cool and uninterested. She makes others call her first when she communicates with others. Even though three days pass until Joseph makes a second visit, Rebecca never mentions his name. This action shows her feigned respect for Mrs. Sedley and prevents the household from discovering her plans. When Joseph finally has the courage to visit, the ingenious woman does not miss the chance. She uses one of Amelia‟s drawings as a pretext to pretend grieving. Her performance gets the sympathy and favor of Mrs. Sedley, and an extended stay at the Sedley‟s. She also wins over his family and friends along with the household help.At the beginning of the fourth chapter, the writer narrates Rebecca‟s con quest of both “the Servant's Hall” and “the Drawing Room”. She conquers Joseph‟s mother by showing affection and loyalty to Amelia. One day Amelia had a headache and couldnot go upon some party of pleasure to which the two young people (Amelia and Rebecca) were invited, nothing would induce her friend to go without her. “What! You have shown the poor orphan what happiness and love are for the first time in her life ─quit you? Never!”and the green eyes looked up to heaven and filled with tears, and Mrs. Sedley could not but own that her daughter's friend had a charming kind heart of her own.②Struggling in the Vanity Fair night and day, Rebecca has little time to be a wife or a mother. When her son is born, the working mother places him out at nurse in a village in the neighborhood of Paris, where little Rawdon passes the first months of his life, not unhappily, with a numerous family of foster-brothers in wooden shoes.When Becky Sharp is entering the fame and fortune field, she shows up her independence by her family, then in the novel ending, she also is an independent female in the economy and politics completely; She finally succeeded. The writer also uses the a ppreciation way of writing style to write. “She not only has large properties, but "her warm-hearted on religious profession, go to the church frequently, and followed by several allendants. In all big charity name lists, always can meet her name.”i At the charity bazaar meeting, she always has the share she is a successful women. At last Becky Sharp is alone, it does not predicate that her struggle is nothing and valueless, but it symbolizes her independence and the revolt success. Because at that time marriage in England originally was not based on love. The female in the family nearly was the slave, then she worked to get rid of the name of a slave, and live an independent life, and she has a position in the upper class society, how could we say that she was the loser and did not obtain anything. Becky Sharp becomes a beautiful star in the upper circles of society, socializes all day long in the aristocrat society's debauchery, Lord Steyne also prostrates himself under Becky Sharp pomegranate skirt. To thi s, Becky Sharp finally becomes the “the social butterfly” in the upper class of the society and arrives her life‟s highest peak. It can be said that, this moment the mainly body of desire has been satisfied, and get more and more closer to her ideal status of herself.ChapterⅡ. Becky Sharp as an Ambitious WomanBecky’s friend─Amelia’s goodness and purity helps to contrast with Becky’s ambition. Beckey ruthlessly takes advantage of many people’s generosity.First, she makes her plan for Joseph Sedley, the unattractive but rich old brother of her best friend, Amelia. She reveals her true nature. When she and Amelia get to Russell Square from Chiswick, Rebecca throws Miss Jemima's gift out of the carriage, wishes to see Miss Pinkerton‟s dead body floating in the river, pledges a llegiance to the Napoleon Bonaparte, and advocates revenge. Once she learns that Joseph is in bachelorhood, she suddenly changes her behavior obviously. Even Amelia notices it. Amelia‟s r eaction teaches Becky an important lesson. “I think you must have had enough of them at Chiswick,”said Amelia rather wondering at the sudden tenderness on her friend's part ─indeed in later days Miss Sharp would never have committed herself so far as to advance opinions the untruth of which would have been so easily detected. But we must remember that she is but nineteen as yet ─unused to the art of deceiving, poor innocent creature! And making her own experience in her own person.③Rebecca could use her tactics wonderfully, but George and Amelia‟s presence prevents Joseph from proposing to Rebecca twice in one night. If Mr. and Mrs. Osbourne hadn‟t returned from the drawing room, Joseph would have finished “one of the most eloquent speeches possible.”Like skaters, Becky Sharp learns how to skate on life‟s surfaces rel atively early. She charms tradesman into the granting of one meal more and keeps her father‟s creditors away from their house. When she becomes a prisoner in Chiswick, her hobby turns into professional action. She is skilled in social intercourse. Her natural beauty and charm, the social and educational knowledge she learns from Chiswick, and the experience she receives from “her little misadventure with Joseph Sedley” make her a skilled woman. She is so dedicated to her intension, so hungry for glory that she never gives up skating.Next, when at the Crawley‟s, she begins her program. And now being received as a member of the amiable family . . ., it became naturally Rebecca‟s duty to make herself, as she said, agreeable to her benefactors, and to gain their confidence to the utmost of her power. . .④So she wisely determines to render her position with the Queen‟s Crawley family comfortable and secure, and to this end resolves to make friends of every one around her who could at all interfere with her comf ort. As she does in the Sedley‟s household, she captivates everyone in and anyone near Queen‟s Crawley. She carries favor with the ugly and uncouth landowner, Sir Pitt Crawley, and his rich aunt, Miss Crawley.She arranges properly for her pupils, and meet s Mr. Crawley‟s favor with the activities properly. With the young girls whose applause she thoroughly gained, her method is simple. She dose not give too much learning.She also expresses admiration of his speech and interest in Sir Pitt Crawley‟s malt pamphlets. Rebecca earns his fondness by becoming his industrious secretary. When she learns that Rawdon, a dandy of the Crawley family, who is Miss Crawley‟s favorite nephew, and will inherit from his wealthy aunt, she tries to charm him. Becky is attracted to Rawdon and is more flexible than Rawdon. But because she appears to overreach herself, she takes the false activity. She marries Rawdon secretly and makes Sir Pitt and Miss Crawley angry at their marriage. Once again, Becky is forced to concoct a new scheme to create wealth and advance her social status. She forces herself into higher and higher social circles, using her sexuality and quick wit to beat men. Time and time again she wins over the crowd and captivates the snobbish upper crest.She considers Rawdon as an upper servant more than a husband, orders him to run her errands and makes him leave whenever her audience arrives. In the midst of these intrigues and fine parties and wise and brilliant personages Rawdon feels himself more and more isolated every day. He is allowed to go to the club more, to dine abroad with bachelor friends, to come and go when he likes, without any questions being asked. Rawdon believes the superior intelligence of his wife justifies his servility.When she and Rawdon live without anything for a year, Rebecca copes with the creditors cleverly. It is she who starts the rumor that Rawdon has inherited from his aunt, and thereby gets out of Paris without paying any debts, since she has ordered a newly decorated apartment against her return. It is she who settles for a percentage of Rawdon‟s debts in England, so that he may return to London for a fresh start.Becky Sharp has the intense of self-respect; she does not endure in the female school, and always unceasingly provokes, revolts by a great show of her talents. But she changes the revolt way of fighting with what she did not agree after she left the school. Becky Sharp is the person beneficially interesting. Not only can she hold man's psychological weakness, she also can ask for the needs of the woman's favor. When being the tutor in the Crowe Lai‟s home, she was the hostess while the host was not home, she still did not lose the good manner to the hostess. And very quickly she conquered Miss Crowe who has the property of Lai. “Once she was the most headache person to Principal Pinkerton who is kindhearted, good temper. No matterwhat you did she is always not got angry. Anyone can‟t believe that good principal give the big benefits to Becky Sharp secretly.”ii Of course, Becky Sharp changes the ways of struggle in order to achieve her life…s goal, asks for old woman's favor to consolidate own status. Let her accept herself to become one of property successors. But in front of the benefit, with her deeply understanding to the society, she knows clearly about that Miss Crowe Lai takes her as a lower people or we may say she takes her as a servant, but for affluent property, she performs as gentle as she can and try to be a kind hearted person. She also can endure humiliation nothing can prevent her determination from being a member of the upper class.Chapter Ⅲ. Becky Sharp as a Path-breakerIn fact, Becky has one determination to carve out a place for herself in Vanity Fair. In the western society today, the top class enjoys great prosperity and all the priority that come with power and prestige. Their prestiges are all around us: VIP lounges, exclusive hotels, and luxurious mansions. The wealthy people looked down on the poor people. They even say they can get away from some crimes because they can afford the best lawyers who belong to the same clubs as they do. People on the top know that the engine drives those on the bottom to climb is envy. Common people envy all of these prosperities. Common people assume that material success will make them truly free and happy. And everybody else wants to join the upper class‟s ranks. So the actions of Rebecca are normal, they cannot be considered as speculation.She finally obtains the “happiness” she strives for since the beginning of her career. Becky feels as if she can bless the people out of the carriage windows, so elated is she in spirit, and so strong a sense has she of the dignified position which she has at last attained in life. The happiness ─the superior advantages of the young women round her give Rebecca inexpressible pangs of envy. Happiness to a seventeen-year old girl is the envy of other young women, material possessions, and the adoration of young boys. The boredom and dissatisfaction Rebecca feels at the acme of her career show that this definition of happiness falls short for an older woman. As Becky gains more of the externals which are the object of her conscious desires ─material luxury, status, the fashionable diversions of balls and suppers, even the appearance of respectability ─she becomes less and less satisfied.1. A woman of lower classBecky is born with no social status, but in a society that rank and wealth are valuable. She makes her way to the highest levels of society through her own resources, with determination, intelligence, hard work, and talent and resourceful mind. At the same time, she constantly makes use of others. Though some of her behaviors seem immorally, as the story progresses, many readers still feel her attraction.If you know that Rebecca has suffered humiliation at the hands of poverty, but still she has the lust for life and an amazing energy, you may tend to forgive her everything. Born into poverty with a modest pedigree, Sharp does not have much to hope for. She is raised and educated in an orphanage, and has an inordinate talent for music and language, like her mother who was a French Opera singer. Forced to create her own future, she does so by impressing every person whom she encounters, hoping that somehow she will wind up marrying into stature and wealth. Despite some of her actions, you still like her.2 .A woman of intelligenceIngenious Rebecca invents a glory ancestry for herself, and she act modesty, simplicity, gentleness, and good humor. She marries Rawdon secretly, and then survives somehow from an unfortunate event, and comes across Joseph in European, who is finally able to ease his passage out of this world to the extent that he leaves half his money to her in his will.Rebecca is a gifted woman. She is fond of music, piano and singing. She can sketch, talk French like a native, dance, act and mimic. Not only her physical charm but also her wit has attracted Lord Steyne. Even when he realizes she is outwitting him, he also loves her. The more money she gets out of him, the more amused he is, until the day when Rawdon comes across the two of them. Her character as path breaking is her outstanding characteristic. And she enjoys the battle. In a letter to Amelia, after Becky has gone to Queen‟s Crawley, she says, “At least I shall be amongst gentle folks—and not with vulgar city people.” This joke refers to both the Sedleys and the Osbornes because George has blocked her marriage with Joseph Sedley. S he continues, “You might lodge all the people in Russell Square in the house,I think, and have space to spare.” ⑤She also has a good sense of humor. Though Rebecca would have liked to choke old Sedley after the chili prank, she swallows her mortification as well as she has the abominable curry before it instead. This wins her points with Mr. Sedley and providesher a chance to use against Joseph later.Amelia‟s bad-luck and suffering also make a sharp contrast with Becky‟s ability to drift through life injury and the effects of her flexible actions . She is glittery of beauty, wit, and determination. Unwilling to live in the present moment in the class in which she is born, Becky wants to explore her future. Nine years later, Becky Sharp has just graduated from Miss Pinkerton‟s Academy and is going to the home of her best friend Amelia Sedley before taking a job as a governess. When the snobbish headmaster of the Academy asks Becky whether she is ready to leave, she responds in fluent French, “Every slave wants to escape if he can, you stupid cow.” The mistress doesn‟t understand, and then Becky throws the gift of a dictionary out the window of the coach. Amelia Sedley is shocked at this unconventional behavior. At a party, Becky meets Amelia‟s fiancé, Georg e Osborne, a dashing and self-absorbed soldier. She immediately sees through him and realizes that he is not the right man for her friend. Meanwhile, she flirts with Joseph, Amelia‟s brother, a civil servant in India, who gives her a precious bird. However, George warns him not to marry Becky, pointing out she was not well born and will never fit in with the other wives at the club. Amelia‟s mother has an even lower impression of Becky: “I had thought her only a social climber. I see now she is a mountainee r.” Becky, however, is a very confident young woman, not easily discouraged. Although she has been employed to teach Pitt Crawley‟s children, she has bigger plans in that place. Rawdon Crawley, Pitt‟s handsome son who is a soldier, is quite attracted by Be cky and sees that she is different from other women he has known. She also makes good impression to Aunt Matilda who appreciates her wit. She tells Becky, “Oh, my dear girl, with a decent position, you could put the world on a leash,” then invites her to l ive with her in London. But Becky‟s rising hopes about attaining social status fails when Aunt Matilda turns against her after she marries Rawdon, whose chief source of income is gambling. Like many person today who earnest desire to be part of the top class, Becky is determined to break through the barriers and achieve the status and the position of high society. There she discovers a far different world than she imagined.These words are the writer‟s comments about the early days of Becky‟s marriage and t he writer‟s attitude toward her successful efforts in pleasing Rawdon and hiding her opinion of his abilities. The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don’t know how much they hide from us; how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential; how often those frank smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm ─I don’t mean in your merecoquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide the dullness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call this pretty treachery truth. A good housewife is of necessity a humbug; and Cornelia's husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar was ─only in a different way .⑥3 .A woman of conscienceShe isn‟t merciless. On the contrary, Rebecca has been the one wh o jolts Amelia into recognition that George, her first love, is not worthy. It is she who brings Amelia to her senses, and who realizes that the one true gentleman in the whole of Vanity Fair is Dobbin. After eavesdropping on William‟s talk with Amelia, Be cky says to herself: “What a noble heart that man has, and how shamefully that woman plays with it . . . if I could have had such a husband as that—a man with a heart and brains too! I would not have minded his large feet . . .”Rebecca determines to help William's cause with Amelia. For once she acts unselfishly. When she has destroyed the memory of George for Amelia, she comforts and kisses her, a "rare mark of sympathy with Mrs. Becky." Rebecca also protects Amelia from the two ruffian friends who follow Rebecca and are intent on exploiting Amelia.The Bareacres family snub Amelia even as they accept her hospitality, and it is Becky who repays them, first by selling her horses at a high price, then by slanging Lady Bareacres about the diamonds sewn into her clothes, and finally by remarking on the episode, innocently, at a ball where everyone present knows the event.When Rebecca lives fairly well, she does charity for the rest of her life. She is not severely punished by Thackeray. Sometimes Becky seems not have love, but she is still surviving. This, according to Thackeray, is realism.Becky does not appear to have any sense that what she does is wrong, she doesn‟t intend to hurt people and sometimes destroys their lives as she climbs to social respectability. Perhaps her marriage to Rawdon is a love match after all, and not part of her grand plans. And they appear to be happy together for several years, successfully live on nothing a year through Rawdon‟s hustling at cards and their mutual willingness to run up huge debts and escape from hotels without paying. Their happiness is briefly interrupted by the Battle of Waterloo, but finally Becky decides to try again with the Crawley family when Sir Pitt dies. As usual, she succeeds in her plan and she with Rawdon run off again. So Becky attempts to charmthe unattractive but posts Lord Steyne. She doesn‟t hurry to get him out of debtor‟s tangle when one of his creditors finally catches up with him, perhaps she is really making a program for Rawdon, a governorship in the West Indies, a secret until the time is right. Maybe it is a sensible precaution to hide money from her gambling husband.4. A woman of self-respectRebecca follows the philosophy: “to get on, and be respected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair”. Her rejection of the dictionary from Miss Jemima is understandable, because she has suffered humiliation at the hands of poverty, and holds nobleman in abomination.And we see that she is excited with the knocking down of Lord Steyne. We understand that it gives her a satisfaction to see Steyne lays low. Steyne ─this is the man who has treated her as a toy. She needn’t to sell herself.These words mentioned above also show her Self-respection: The Bareacres family snub Amelia even as they accept her hospitality, and it is Becky who repays them, first by selling her horses at an high price, then by slanging Lady Bareacres about the diamonds sewn into her clothes, and finally by remarking on the episode, innocently, at a ball where everyone present knows the event.Becky has much more appeal than Amelia for most readers. The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to be uncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire; the Amelia Doll, though it has had a smaller circle of admirers, has yet been carved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist... ⑦At the end of the book Rebecca has the money necessary to live in Vanity Fair. She appears to be respectable. Finally Becky succeeds in establishing herself in Vanity Fair. She conquers rigid social class lines so that eventually she is able to mingle with the English aristocracy.ConclusionThis paper discusses the most important hero of Vanity Fair─Rebecca as a speculator, as an ambitious woman and as a path-breaker. Because no one in this novel is a real good person or a real bad person, Becky Sharp can be considered as the champion path-br eaker of William Makepeace Thackeray‟s Vanity Fair. Becky, a lower class woman, is born with no social status, but in a society that rank and wealth are valuable. So she has to make her way to the highest levels of society through her intelligence, her ambition and self-respection.Becky Sharp or Rebecca, and her method she makes use of people in her efforts to try hard in the world and acquire the vanities─those luxuries that the people in the novel find so essential. Thackeray sets his novel in an age just of his own, which witnesses the birth of the industrial revolution, and new class of rich individual, the industrialist to compete for power with the old class and the country landowner. Or the writer wanted to counterpoint the pursuit of money with the pursuit of glory on the battlefield.The novel Vanity Fair describes Becky‟s path to wealth and prestige. She has innate talents, and wins much acclaim throughout her career. All these makings of her construct her character as a successful path-breaker instead of a speculator.Notes1. Thackeray, William. Vanity Fair[Z].Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching andResearch Press, Oxford University Press, 1994:292. Thackeray, William. Vanity Fair[Z].Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching andResearch Press, Oxford University Press, 1994:343. Thackeray, William. Vanity Fai r [Z].Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching andResearch Press, Oxford University Press, 1994:344. Thackeray, William. Vanity Fai r [Z].Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching andResearch Press, Oxford University Press, 1994:955. Thackeray, William. Vanity Fair[Z].Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching andResearch Press, Oxford University Press, 1994:1416. Thackeray, William. Vanity Fair[Z].Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching andResearch Press, Oxford University Press, 1994:2087. Thackeray, William. Vanity Fair[Z].Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching andResearch Press, Oxford University Press, 1994:106Bibliography[1]Thackeray, William. 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