Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Vanity Fair is the masterpiece of William Makepeace Thackeray who is one of the greatest representatives of the critical realistic writers in the nineteenth century. By making an analysis of the brave, ambitious and indomitable Becky, who is bold in fighting against the society, the thesis aims to show her dissatisfaction with the discrimination from the society, her positive activities in struggling against the oppression of hierarchy and the control of the patriarchal society. All her life shows that she owns the spirit of aggressive and the awareness of female independence.

Key words: Becky Sharp; fight; patriarchy

摘要：《名利场》是英国19世纪批判现实主义作家萨克雷的代表作。本文旨在通过分析贝基•夏普勇敢、有抱负，坚忍不拔，敢于反抗社会等方面的形象来展现她不满足自己受歧视的地位，积极采取行动反抗阶级压迫和男权社会的控制，她奋斗的一生体现了进取的精神和女性独立意识的萌芽。

关键词：贝基.夏普；反抗；父权制

1. Introduction
. Vanity Fair is the masterpiece of William Makepeace Thackeray who is one of the greatest representatives of the critical realistic writers in the nineteenth century. The title of the novel is taken from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Vanity Fair has drawn its material from the life of a money-oriented and status-conscious society of the 19th century England. “The sub-title of the book, ‘A Novel Without a Hero,’ emphasizes the fact that the writer’s intention was not portray individuals, but the bourgeois and aristocratic society as a whole”(Liu, 1997:305). The main plot centers on the story of two women ----Amelia Sedley, a simple but kind girl and Becky Sharp, a crafty and resourceful girl. Becky is an orphan and tries to make her way into the upper society. She is a classic example of those who grub money by all means.
When Vanity Fair was published in 1847—1848, Thackeray’s contemporary reviewers and novelists appreciated the brilliance of the novel. John Forster, an English biographer, historian, critic, and journalist wrote, “Vanity Fair is the work of a mind, at once accomplished and subtle, which has enjoyed opportunities of observing many and varied circles of society.His genteel characters have a reality about them.They are drawn from actual life, not from books and fancy; and they are presented by means of brief, decisive, yet always most discriminative, touches. It never is necessary to have recourse to supplementary reflections and associations, to make amends for dimness and indistinctness in the portraiture”. George Henry Lewes, one of the most versatile men of letters in the Victorian era, wrote, Vanity Fair is Thackeray’s “greatest effort and his greatest success”. Charlotte Bronte, whose admiration for Thackeray’s genius was measureless, called him the