Abstract

William Makepeace Thackeray is a major representative novelist of critical realism in the 19th-century England. Vanity Fair has been considered as his masterpiece. It vividly emerges the society of London in the Victorian Age through the sharp contrast of two women characters--- Amelia Sedley and Rebecca Sharp.
This paper will focus on the comparison of the two heroines on three main respects: their background and education; their attitudes toward love and sons; their attitudes to difficulties and fate. At last, the author draws the conclusion that their tragedy ending are dependent on the society. Meanwhile, the paper also points out how women make a living.

Key Words:  Vanity Fair  Rebecca Sharp  Amelia Sedley  Comparison

摘要

威廉·梅克皮斯·萨克雷是英国19世纪批判现实主义代表作家之一，小说《名利场》被公认为他的代表作，同时也是一部经典的世界名著。这篇小说围绕“名利”二字展开，通过讲述两位女主人公——利蓓加·夏普和艾米利亚·赛特笠形成鲜明对比的命运来生动地描绘了维多利亚时代的英国社会。
本篇论文将从三个主要方面来对两位女主人公进行对比分析：她们的成长环境和教育背景，她们对待家庭的态度以及她们面对困难和命运的态度。本文最后得出结论，两位女性为当时社会女性的代表，其悲剧的命运结局是由整个当时的社会环境所决定的。同时本文也就女性该以何种方式生存发表自己的见解。

关键词: 《名利场》；利蓓加·夏普；艾米利亚·赛特笠；对比

1.1 Introduction to Thackeray’s Life
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), a major representative novelist of critical realism in the 19th century England. Max ever praised :“His work are very profound. His description of the general mood and human feelings of the bourgeois society is sharp and penetrating”(Dodds, 1941:37). He was born in 1811, in Calcutta, India, in the family of an English official. His father, Richmond Thackeray, held the high rank of secretary to the board of revenue in the British East India Company. His mother, Anne Becher, the second daughter of a prominent family, was also a secretary for the East India Company. His mother was a beautiful lady, whose family is also prominent. After his father’s death, he was sent back to England to a succession of preparatory schools which he hated, and then to a public school at the Charterhouse, where he was made even more miserable by bullying and flogging. Then he married Isabella, an Irish girl, who sings very well. She was the model for Amelia in Vanity Fair. After the birth of the third child, Mrs. Thackeray’s mind was affected and sent to Paris, but she didn’t recover after thirty years.