Alongside her occupation, Thackeray uses her mother’s nationality to imply a familial depravity. In England and France, lower-class female performers were constantly tarnished with accusations of prostitution. Her father was a drunken artist, and her mother was a French opera girl. Thackeray situates Becky in the French world of prostitution, performance, and debauchery.
When we first meet Rebecca Sharp, her lower-class origins appear detrimental to her future social and financial successes. Required to submit to rigid censorship and abide to regulations of dominant bourgeois ideology, his allusive narrative is highly suggestive of Becky’s venal sexuality.ĭegenerative Origins: An Opera Girl and a Drunkard However, this ambiguity may be attributed to Thackeray’s status as an English author. Despite the above, Becky never explicitly fulfils the physical requisites of the courtesan role. As ‘the English language had no way of describing courtesans beyond half-hearted ’, analysis will be based on French definitions. By manipulating her physical beauty and behaviour, Becky’s conduct aligns her to the stereotypical, courtesan. Her attentions, compliments, and embraces can be procured by money, gifts, and invitations to high society events. You can follow Hollie on Twitter or contact her at Vanity Fair, Thackeray presents Becky’s sexuality as a purchasable commodity. Her research interests include infection, dress, and prostitution in nineteenth-century France and England. Her interdisciplinary thesis is titled ‘Dressing the Self: Infectious Performance and the Nineteenth-Century Prostitute’. Hollie Geary-Jones is a first year PhD Candidate and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Chester. Re-Reading Performative Behaviour in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848): Why Rebecca Sharp is an English Courtesan
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