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Chapter 20
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
Mr. Osborne decides to encourage George to pursue Miss Swartz, emphasizing how she’d be a better match than Amelia. Mr. Osborne and George’s sisters are convinced George won’t be able to refuse Miss Swartz. But George has been enjoying courting Amelia again, and he doesn’t like the fancy lifestyle of the “mahogany” Miss Swartz.
Unlike Mr. Sedley, who encouraged Jos to make marrying a white woman his top priority, Mr. Osborne is so focused on wealth that he’d rather have George marry the rich mixed-race Miss Swartz than the poor white Amelia. This hints at the larger conflict between Mr. Osborne and Mr. Sedley, where Mr. Sedley places a greater emphasis on reputation, while Mr. Osborne is more narrowly focused on money.
Themes
Mr. Osborne tries to force George to meet with Miss Swartz by inviting her to dinner, but George resists. Meanwhile, Miss Swartz herself knows nothing of Mr. Osborne’s plans, but she’s flattered by the nice things that he and George’s sisters, Jane Osborne and Maria, all say to her. Eventually, George grudgingly agrees to be there when she comes over for dinner.
While Miss Swartz does not necessarily get an especially negative portrayal herself in the story, Mr. Osborne’s insistence on her seems to suggest that he values material wealth so much that he can’t see that the virtues of Amelia are even greater. The fact that Miss Swartz only exists to tempt George into making a bad decision suggests that, at the very least, Thackery was not particularly interested in questioning the white supremacist racial prejudices of his time and arguably even reinforces them.
Themes
When Miss Swartz comes over, she starts playing music and happens to notice Amelia’s name on a piece of sheet music that Amelia used to always play. Jane Osborne and Maria say not to speak of Amelia—that in fact Mr. Osborne forbids it—but George tells them all he'll talk about Amelia if he likes. As he starts, however, Mr. Osborne himself walks into the room, interrupting George. When George collects himself again, he tells Miss Swartz that he’s been engaged to Amelia since childhood.
Once again, Miss Swartz is not much of a character herself—the real conflict here is between Mr. Osborne and George, where Mr. Osborne would clearly prefer for his son to marry the wealthy but relatively unfamiliar Miss Swartz, instead of sticking with Amelia, who is no longer wealthy but who has been kind to George since they were both children.
Themes
Mr. Osborne turns purple and angrily berates George for mentioning Amelia in front of Miss Swartz. George says that as a gentleman and a Captain in the British Army, he can make his own decisions. Mr. Osborne insists that he won’t tolerate any low-status marriages in the family, but George replies that he won’t marry “that mulatto woman,” whom he calls a “Hottentot Venus.” George storms out, and an hour later, he tells Dobbin that he’ll marry Amelia tomorrow.
George speaks harshly of Miss Swartz—“Hottentot” was the British word that referred to the Khoekhoe people of South Africa, and it eventually became a generalized racial slur for nonwhite people. George is clearly a morally dubious character, and it’s possible his racism (which seems particularly out of proportion given how little Miss Swartz has actually said or done in this chapter) is meant to be yet another flaw like his gambling or his alcoholism. Still, this chapter seems to portray George as being in the right and Mr. Osborne as being greedy, suggesting that even if Thackeray is satirizing George’s racism, he doesn’t necessarily judge it as harshly as a modern reader might.
Themes
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