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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Vanity Fair, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Greed and Ambition
Vanity
Social Class and Character
Gender
Inheritance and Family Life
Summary
Analysis
The narrator describes an estate sale of a London man whose fortune changed recently. At the auction, Rawdon and Becky are in a good mood and bid on a picture of a man on an elephant. Soon the two of them get into a bidding war over a piano and have to give up. It turns out the man they’ve been bidding against is Dobbin.
The estate sale puts Rawdon and Becky into direct competition with Dobbin, without either of them realizing the identity of their opponent. The scene provides a microcosm of the values for these characters, where Rawdon and Becky are simply bidding on the piano on a whim to raise the cost for their competitor. Dobbin, meanwhile, has a very specific and selfless plan for how to use the piano, though the novel doesn’t reveal this plan just yet.
Themes
The estate sale is not due to a death but because Mr. Sedley is bankrupt, and his family has to move to a smaller home. Jos gives some money to his parents to support them but mostly stays away from home and continues to live a hedonistic lifestyle.
An estate sale can mean that the owner of the house has either died or moved. Although Mr. Sedley is still alive, this chapter perhaps plays on the grim associations of estate sales, likening his sudden change of fortune to a type of social death.
Themes
Rawdon and Becky continue to live comfortably, and their marriage still hasn’t been published in the local paper. Mrs. Bute, however, begins spreading the news. Rawdon mostly lives on credit, and he has many debts. Becky and Rawdon talk about what a shame it is that the Sedleys went bankrupt.
Ironically, just as Becky and Rawdon are pitying the Sedleys for going bankrupt, they themselves are racking up substantial debts. Some characters in the novel like Becky and Rawdon seem to have a knack for racking up debts without facing the consequences, although the rest of the novel explores how sometimes these debts can unexpectedly come back to haunt them.
Themes
Literary Devices
