BECKY'S INNOCENCE
Intelligent and outrageous, self-reliant and alone, resourceful and
courageous, meeting the world on its own terms and succeeding time and
again, refusing to be defeated–Becky engages us with her vitality and
aliveness and arouses our admiration for her resilience. An
unscrupulous trickster, a liar and a cheat, a schemer and a
manipulator,
a swindler, a hypocrite, a betraying wife and friend, a callous mother,
a gambler, and possibly a murderer–Becky has her dark side which we
(and Thackeray?) have to come to terms with. Who is Becky Sharp? How
finally are we to feel about her and to think about her? If our
feelings and our reason produce contradictory responses, how do we
reconcile them?
BECKY AND LORD STEYNE
Becky's innocence becomes a major issue in the novel when Rawdon
discovers her alone with Lord Steyne. A great deal of planning goes
into making Steyne's tete-a-tete with Becky possible; her son is placed
in a boarding school, Miss Briggs is sent to Steyne's country house,
and Rawdon is arrested for debt. Her indifference to his welfare
becomes clear to Rawdon when he receives her letter–beautiful in
appearance (pink paper, light green seal, highly scented), heartless
and superficial in content. Rawdon's suspicions of Becky are reawakened
and he is desperate to be released.
 His suspicions are confirmed when he finds Steyne and
Becky alone. Becky, frightened, cries, "I am innocent, Rawdon" (page
632, chapter LIII). Is it significant that the snake image appears at
this point, her
hands being covered with "serpents, and rings, and baubles"? Rawdon
strikes Steyne twice, throwing him to the ground. Becky sees her
husband in a new light: "She admired her husband, strong, brave, and
victorious" (page 633). Thackeray was enormously proud of this detail:
"When I wrote the sentence, I slapped my fist on the table, and said,
‘that is a touch of genius!'" Why does she have this response when all
her plans and her success are destroyed at the moment of achievement?
Does she perhaps get some satisfaction in seeing the powerful, wealthy
Steyne humiliated, in seeing the man who repeatedly sneered at her and
held the power to fulfill her social ambitions powerless? Or is
Thackeray being ironic?
Steyne vehemently denies her innocence; he has spent
thousands of pounds on her. Does this necessarily mean they have slept
together? Would Steyne have waited years and spent thousands of pounds
without some sexual return from Becky? Did he enjoy her company
enough, did she interest him enough and was she clever enough so that
he waited? If they have been lovers, why go to all the bother of
setting up this evening for them to be alone and to get her son and
Miss Briggs out of the house? Is Steyne's word about her guilt
necessarily accurate? He erroneously accuses Rawdon of being part of a
scheme to shake him down. And does Steyne live in a world and have a
view of life in which innocence is possible?
Even if she has not physically betrayed Rawdon, are
there other kinds of betrayal that she might be guilty of?
- Did she intend to sleep with Steyne? Would an
unfulfilled intention make her guilty? Christ taught that a man who
lusts in his heart after a woman is guilty of adultery. Does this moral
principle apply to Becky?
A similar question arises in her flirtation
with George at Brussels. In Brussels when Amelia accuses Becky of
trying to take
George away from her and of being a false friend, Becky protests, "I
have done my husband no wrong" (page 361, chapter XXXI). So far as
physical
infidelity goes, Becky is accurate; that she intends to run off with
George, who is poor and whom she holds in contempt, is unlikely. Is she
stringing him along so that Rawdon can fleece him gambling? Amelia
raises a different offense, betrayal of friendship, "Have you done me
no wrong, Rebecca? You did not succeed, but you tried. Ask your heart
if you did not" (page 361, ). Is Rebecca guilty of this offense? If so,
is it a serious moral and/or emotional offense?
- Has she betrayed Rawdon's trust and love? When he
discovers the money she has squirreled away in the desk Amelia gave her
in friendship (an irony?), he says, "You might have spared me a hundred
pounds, Becky, out of all this–I have always shared with you." (page
634, chapter XXXI)
- Rawdon refuses a reconciliation, "If she's not
guilty, Pitt, she's as bad as guilty, and I'll never see her
again–never" (page 661, chapter LV). How can Becky be not guilty but
"as bad as
guilty"? Is Rawdon judging morally or emotionally? Is Rawdon qualified
to cast moral stones at Becky, in view of his accepting the
governorship which Steyne got him because of Becky?
Thackeray leaves the question the question of her innocence open:
What had
happened? Was she guilty or not? She said not, but who could tell what
was truth which came from those lips, or if that corrupt heart was in
this case pure? All her lies and her schemes, all her selfishness and
her wiles, all her wit and genius had come to this bankruptcy. (page
635, chapter LIV)
Society's judgment of her guilt is unreliable, because it is not based
on the facts or concern for the truth but on rumor, a priori
assumptions, and corrupt values: "Was she guilty or not? We all know
how charitable the world is, and how the verdict for Vanity Fair goes
when there is a doubt" (pages 661-2, chapter LV). Is this passage
at least as much a comment on the corrupt values, the uncharitableness
of society as a discussion of Becky?
Should much meaning be attached to a comment Thackeray
dryly makes when Becky sees Steyne and other people she remembered from
"happier days, when she was not innocent but not found out" (page 772,
chapter LXIV).
BECKY'S INNOCENCE AND THE SERVANTS
Previous to Rawdon's confrontation with Steyne, the servants had judged
her guilty, "the awful kitchen inquisition which sits in judgment in
every house and knows everything" (page 527, chapter XLIV). Later
in this
passage, Thackeray explains that Lord Steyne's visits reassured the
servants and Raffles into giving Becky credit.
Are servants in a position to know what is happening in
a household? are they likely to know their employer's secrets? The
reliability of their knowledge is called into question. The narrator
warns employers, "If you are not guilty, have a care of appearances,
which are as ruinous as guilt" (page 528, chapter XLIV). Of Becky
specifically, he
comments that she was "guiltless very likely" (page 529, chapter XLIV).
|
