Vanity Fair: Dramatic Irony 6 key examples

While Dobbin's impassioned defense of Amelia to her father-in-law may come as a surprise to Osborne himself, the reader is well aware that Dobbin is in love with Amelia—and that defending Amelia, and otherwise supporting her best interests, is the only way he can express this love.

In a novel full of dysfunctional families, the dynamic between Osborne, George, and Amelia is particularly tense. Osborne wields his ability to disinherit both his son and daughter-in-law like a weapon, and his preoccupation with family legacy—which is to say, family money—is a major example of Vanity Fair's thematic exploration of the convoluted intersection between greed, family, and social class.

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.

Yet again, Becky proves her facility for manipulation. In this case, she casts herself as a metaphorical mouse who, perhaps because of its size, speed, or cunning, might be able to offer some service to Sir Pitt's lion. There is a gendered component to this comparison, in which Sir Pitt plays the role of the large fierce predator and Becky plays the small, skittish prey, but there's also a certain amount of dramatic irony at play, since the reader has, by now, seen the ways in which Becky can use her traditionally "feminine" qualities to be a vicious, ruthless opponent to all who get in her way—if anything, she is the lion in the situation.

Lord Steyne's support for Becky hinges on the hyperbolic assertion that she is "spotless" and "irreproachable" and apparently perfect—a fountain of dramatic irony for the reader, who is well aware of Becky's duplicitous and manipulative behavior, of which London society is only beginning to grow suspicious. Steyne then issues a metaphorical comparison between his house and a "Temple of Virtue" over which he has absolute power, like some sort of despotic priest. Steyne's insistence on his virtue—and the supposed virtues of his consort—only serves to underscore his deep vanity.

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.

With the help of a narrator who is by no means impartial, the reader can never take Becky's words at face value. She is a master manipulator, and her nest of lies—to which the reader is privy, when the narrator deems it appropriate—is ever-expanding in service of her unending quest for wealth and social status. In this passage, the reader is well aware of Becky's self-serving, borderline adulterous relationship with Lord Steyne, but the reader can only watch as she begins to sway Sir Pitt over to her side.