Every kind of vanity

becky sharpe In 19^th century England William Makepeace Thackeray wrote his brilliant novel Vanity Fair (which some of you may know better as a movie starring Reese Witherspoon). Thackeray was an insightful writer, whose view of society was sympathetic yet not idealising. Thackeray knew that without exception we are all subject to weaknesses and that our society is one of hypocrisy and opportunism.

It may be more than one hundred years later but little has changed. If only Miley Cyrus or her parents had read Vanity Fair the novel instead of the magazine, they may not have been so surprised by recent events that have scandalised poor Miley.

Like Becky Sharpe, the anti-heroine of Vanity Fair, Miley Cyrus has been characterised and maligned as a young opportunist. Though no doubt easily manipulated at the barely conscious age of fifteen, and certainly ignorant of all the consequences, she will in the end make good mileage from her recent troubles. As time goes on, will the weaknesses that her ambition exposes be her undoing, or like Becky Sharpe, will she be a survivor? It just may depend on whether her ambition waxes or wanes, and on the lifespan of her ambition. Will her ambition become a thing of itself and strive on irrespective of success or failure.

In Vanity Fair, Thackeray doesn’t put Becky Sharpe forward as a cautionary tale, or suggest that society can or should change for the better. His outlook is not self-deluding, he knows the relationship between cause and effect and the reason that the Becky Sharpes of this world exist. Any flaws within one person exist within us all. In Thackeray's world there are the good and the bad but this does not determine their fate. Becky Sharpe knows she must make her own fate. This is Thackeray's message, and perhaps one that Miley Cyrus should now reflect on. Like Becky Sharpe she appears to be thrown into the adult world all too early, experiencing all too soon life's existential truths.

Becky Sharpe, beautiful, clever and intuitively adept at managing her mistakes and turning them into her triumphs, has at least one attribute over Miley Cryus – she is fictional, and Thackeray gave her a happy ending…of sorts.