Abstract
On Adam Smith’s account in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, humanity is a soft, feminine virtue that flourishes at times of peace. It is a natural extension of the sentiment of sympathy and the actions it inspires require little self-command. Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair feels little sympathy even for the people she, as a woman, should care about most: her child and her husband. She is an unnatural woman not only because she lacks the appropriate tender sentiments but also because she excels in the typically masculine virtue of self-command. Becky uses her self-command to act in accordance with the decrees of Smith’s impartial spectator but only if and when actual spectators are present; she feels no remorse about her lack of sympathy for her child, her husband, or anyone else. Her successes rouse the envy of other women who, like Becky, desire status and superiority over others. Lady Jane, Becky’s sister-in-law, is one of the few people in VF who experiences sympathy and acts on it, befriending Becky’s husband and son. It is no coincidence that Lady Jane, a true, sympathetic woman, is the ultimate cause of Becky’s downfall. According to Smith, industrious knaves like Becky are “naturally” rewarded with success in business even if they are morally condemned by their peers. How, then, are we to evaluate Becky if we regard her in what Smith would call an “impartial light”?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
And a good thing, too, since she dies young.
- 2.
In Vanity Fair, Mrs. Bute is keenly aware of how society regards poverty and starves herself and her daughters so that they may save money to spend on outward appearances. The narrator comments: “I know no sort of lying which is more frequent in Vanity Fair than this, and it may be remarked how people who practise it take credit to themselves for their hypocrisy, and fancy that they are exceedingly virtuous and praiseworthy, because they are able to deceive the world with regard to the extent of their means” (VF 499).
- 3.
See Chap. 4.
- 4.
The narrator himself, however, appears to more often share in Becky’s scorn than in the men’s admiration. Judith Law Fisher observes: “She purifies men by her very weakness … but her total vulnerability makes the Manager of the Performance impatient, even derisive at times” (Fisher 1985, 408).
- 5.
Micael M. Clarke observes: “The most important reason for Amelia’s hero worship, however, is Dobbin’s insistence on the triple fiction that George had loved Amelia, that he had been a good and faithful husband, and that Amelia is too pure and innocent to know otherwise. These fictions satisfy Dobbin’s need to idealize Amelia as an angelic, nonsexual being. To admit to an erotic component in her nature or in their relationship would render her unworthy of his love” (Clarke 1995, 109).
- 6.
The narrator does not comment on the significance of Becky’s identification with Clytemnestra, presumably because the reader can form her own opinion of Becky’s frighteningly admirable performance of this part. As Maria Dibattista points out, it is a significant and dark twist on Becky’s often “comic” rise to power. “The scandalous identification of Becky… with the heroic figure of the most majestic female dissembler in the chronicles of myth and history marks the culmination of Becky’s career in the world of vanity” (Dibattista 1980, 827).
- 7.
See Introduction, “Devil, actress, manager.”
- 8.
Some kinds of affections are more natural than others: Piety to one’s parents is looked at as too ostentatious and “the ostentatious sorrow of widows has, for a like reason, been suspected of insincerity” (TMS 169).
References
Armstrong, Nancy. 1990. Desire and domestic fiction: A political history of the novel. Cary: Oxford University Press.
Brontë, Charlotte. 2016. Jane Eyre. Kindle Edition. New York: W.W. Norton.
Clarke, Micael M. 1995. Thackeray and women. Dekalb: Northern Illinois UP.
Dibattista, Maria. 1980. The Triumph of Clytemnestra: The Charades in Vanity Fair. PMLA 95 (5): 827–837.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. 1980. The Madwoman in the attic: The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Fisher, Judith Law. 1985. Siren and Artist: Contradiction in Thackeray's Aesthetic Ideal. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 39 (4): 392–419.
Griswold, Charles. 1999. Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Adam. 1981. An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. In Vol. 2 of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
———. 1982a. The theory of moral sentiments. In Vol. 1 of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
———. 1982b. Lectures on Jurisprudence. In Vol. 5 of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael, and P.G. Stein. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Thackeray, William Makepeace. 1983. In Vanity fair: A novel without a hero, ed. John Sutherland. New York: Oxford UP.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Slegers, R. (2018). An Industrious Knave Becomes Respectable. In: Adam Smith’s Moral Sentiments in Vanity Fair. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 49. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98731-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98731-6_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98730-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98731-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)