Vanity Fair

There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out.

Becky Sharp's picaresque ascent interwoven with Amelia's passive suffering and Dobbin's devotion — Battle of Waterloo as national pivot — in a puppet-show structure with no single hero, so plot scores 92.

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.

Becky the anti-heroine, Rawdon, Amelia, Dobbin, Jos, and Lord Steyne form Thackeray's primary gallery; the puppet metaphor names each type before Ch.I, so cast scores 94.

Let us skip over the interval in the history of her downward progress. She was not worse now than she had been in the days of her prosperity—only a little down on her luck.

Long (67 chapters) but episodic — the puppet-master narrator skips intervals — Brussels and Waterloo accelerate mid-book while the final third dilates on Becky's fall, so pace scores 88.

As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place.

Thackeray's ironic narrator — 'Before the Curtain,' 'Vanitas Vanitatum,' direct address to the reader — established the intrusive Victorian commentator; less dense than Dickens but equally influential, so prose scores 90.

Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business.

Regency England from Chiswick academy to Brussels ballrooms to continental gaming tables — a complete social panorama where everyone barters affection for advantage; Waterloo maps private ambition onto national history, so world scores 92.

"For Becky Sharp," answered Jemima, trembling very much, and blushing over her withered face and neck, as she turned her back on her sister. "For Becky Sharp: she's going too."

The 'Before the Curtain' prologue and Ch.I's fat coach arriving at Miss Pinkerton's gate announce puppet-show metaphysics before introducing the anti-heroine, so hook scores 90.

He is proud to think that his Puppets have given satisfaction to the very best company in this empire. The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to be uncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire.

A novel without a hero: the anti-heroine as protagonist, the narrator as puppet-master, satire as structural principle — 'Vanity Fair' named the fair itself; virtually every subsequent social satire owes Thackeray a debt, so innov scores 92.

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?—come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

The puppets put away — Becky diminished but surviving, Dobbin finally rewarded with Amelia — closure is ironic rather than just; 'Which of us is happy?' refuses easy moral accounting, so ending scores 88.