Vanity Fair: Allusions 9 key examples

In the first part of the novel, Christian finds himself in Vanity Fair, the site of a never-ending fair run by Beelzebub—either a powerful demon or an incarnation of the devil himself, according to Christian theology, who is often associated with the sins of pride and gluttony. Sure enough, in this fair, every indulgence that a human could hope to consume or experience is for sale.

This is the context in which Thackeray situates his novel, and throughout the book he periodically reminds the reader that his characters are going through their respective motions within the confines of this Vanity Fair. By invoking Bunyan's allegory, Thackeray channels Bunyan's thematic exploration of greed and vanity into his own moralizing work—and emphasizes the extent to which he finds such sins on display within English society.

Thackeray symbolizes the disinheritance in Osborne's act of striking out George's name from the family tree in his family Bible. Osborne's Bible is an old, beautiful book, and Thackeray makes special mention of its frontispiece: an allusion to the biblical story about the binding of Isaac, which comes from the Book of Genesis, in which God tests the patriarch Abraham's loyalty by asking him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham agrees to go through with the horrific task, and it is only in the final moments before killing Isaac that God determines Abraham has passed the test—thereby allowing Abraham to spare his son. 

Thackeray has already introduced Osborne as a character of considerable vanity, and there is no doubt that he identifies himself with this biblical patriarch. Osborne's treatment of George is a spiteful version of the binding of Isaac—he is prepared to sacrifice his son (or at least his son's inheritance) not out of loyalty to any god but out of a perverted sense of loyalty to his own family legacy. It is an ultimate testament to Osborne's greed that he would cast his conceited preservation of his family's social status in such biblical proportions.

As James struggles to make a favorable impression at the party, his character emerges as a brutal satire of a posh Oxford man posturing sophistication and masculinity: James inflects his speech with the mannerisms of a cocky upper-class dialect, referring to his cousin repeatedly as "old boy" and stringing together a series of nonsensical classical allusions that underscores his elite education even as it affirms his state of intoxication. "In vino veritas" is Latin for "In wine, there is truth," and Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo are all Greco-Roman gods, but there isn't much to be said about these remarks—they simply underscore that, in wine, James has revealed his lack of personality.

As the man who defeated Napoleon, the French have good reason to dismiss the Duke of Wellington as a lucky, rather than a brilliant, general—for the sake of French morale, at the very least. In much the same way, Crawley's opponents can't quite understand how he has such success at the card table. 

Thackeray attempts to connect his narrative with the historical context of the Napoleonic wars throughout the novel, but, as is the case here, that connection can be heavy-handed to the point of silliness. On the one hand, this simile gives Rawdon a slice of Wellington's own historical grandeur, but on the other, it serves to make Rawdon's attempts to stay financially afloat feel all the more pathetic. 

This double allusion affirms the considerable power that servants hold over their masters: a Janissary was a legendary soldier in the Ottoman sultan's infantry, said to carry strings to strangle enemies of the sultan, while the Vehmgericht was a semi-secret court in medieval Germany that dealt out death sentences to convicted criminals. By comparing a butler waiting "behind your chair" to a Janissary and the institution of the servants' hall to the Vehmgericht, Thackeray emphasizes the devastating role that servants can play in destroying the reputation of even the most prominent families. There is considerable situational irony in Becky's predicament: her household staff is at once a sign of the social class she has worked so hard to attain and a possible source of her downfall.

This passage contains a string of allusions to various famous artists—Anthony van Dyke, Joshua Reynolds, and Thomas Lawrence were famous painters in the 17th and 18th centuries—and one Italian neoclassical sculptor, Antonio Canova, for whom Lady Bareacres had apparently modeled. These trappings of great wealth, the narrator is quick to share with the reader, has now been entirely lost by the Bareacres in their age and misfortune, and Lady Bareacres no longer bears any resemblance to her marble counterpart. 

This passage reflects the narrator's fascination with tracing the shift and disintegration of England's great fortunes. He appears to take great delight in recounting how people fall out of money—and out of society—based on the whims of their family and the cruelties of inheritance law. One of the primary sources of humor in Vanity Fair is the narrator's playful eagerness to get caught up in his own vain preoccupations even in the midst of skewering the vanity of his subjects. 

The muses are a time-honored device of Greek literature. Ancient Greek poetry, particularly epic poems, traditionally begin with an invocation to the muses not dissimilar from the narrator's playful invocation in this passage: according to Greek mythology, the muses are the goddesses of creative inspiration for everything from music to astronomy. By praying to the muses at the beginning of a work of literature, authors could ensure their work's quality would reflect such divine inspiration. 

Throughout Vanity Fair, the degree to which the narrator has control over the story remains unclear. At some moments, the narrator whisks the reader from vignette to vignette according to his whims, but in other moments, like the one above, he defers to the powers that be—the forces of literary convention. In this case, Thackeray is having a bit of fun with the constraints of this convention and the unreliable narrator as a literary device. The reader is already familiar with how wealth and vanity fascinate the narrator: while he would prefer to continue soaring amongst the heights of English society, the Muse (which is to say, Thackeray) drags him—and the reader—back down to earth. 

In this truncated version of Oresteia, Becky plays the part of Clytemnestra—a figure from Greek mythology who falls in love with Aegisthus while her husband, the legendary Greek king Agamemnon, is away to fight the Trojan War. To be with Aegisthus, and to avenge her daughter, Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon sacrifices in the war effort, Clytemnestra ultimately kills her husband.

By casting Becky as Clytemnestra in this sequence, Thackeray not-so-subtly hints at the disastrous events of the next few chapters. Like Clytemnestra, Becky will cause the death of her husband as a result of an illicit affair: through her seductive manipulation of Lord Steyne, Becky secures Rawdon, her husband, a government post in a far-off colony—where he promptly dies of disease.

As could be expected, given this context, Becky plays the part of Clytemnestra with aplomb:

Rebecca performed her part so well, and with such ghastly truth, that the spectators were all dumb, until, with a burst, all the lamps of the hall blazed out again, when everybody began to shout applause. ‘Brava! brava!’ old Steyne’s strident voice was heard roaring over all the rest. ‘By —, she’d do it too,’ he said between his teeth. The performers were called by the whole house, which sounded with cries of ‘Manager! Clytemnestra!’

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The "ghastly truth" of Becky's performance is more real than the audience can suspect: Becky barely has to act to play her role, and merely taps into her sinister nature that she has, thus far, managed to hide from English society. She cannot keep up appearances indefinitely, however—while Steyne's effusive praise for Becky makes sense in the context of her performance, he won't be able to mask his impropriety for much longer.

Clytemnestra's is an archetypal example of female power in Greek literature—in the face of an impossibly cruel world, she takes her life into her own hands and escapes the restrictions of her identity as Agamemnon's wife. Likewise, although Becky's manipulation causes no shortage of harm over the course of Vanity Fair, it is also the source of her agency—her ability to rise above the restrictions of her gender role in 19th-century England.

In Greek myth, the siren is a monster with the appearance of a beautiful woman who lures sailors into the water to kill them. By describing Becky as a siren, the narrator is also congratulating himself for disguising her worst qualities so effectively. It is only now that he reveals her true monstrosity. 

In addition to confirming the narrator's untrustworthiness—has he been toying with the reader?—this passage produces another powerful, gendered image of Becky's character. The trope of feminine beauty disguising monstrosity is present throughout literature, from Ancient Greece through to today, and connects to a longstanding stereotype of female characters as inherently, or inevitably, deceitful.