Vanity Fair Chapters VII–XI Summary & Analysis

Chapters VII–XI

Summary: CHAPTER VII: Crawley of Queen’s Crawley

Becky’s employer is Sir Pitt Crawley, descended from a long line of Crawleys, a member of Parliament, and a baronet. Sir Pitt has two grown sons as well as two young daughters from his second wife, Lady Crawley. Becky will be the daughters’ governess. Arriving at the gloomy Crawley townhouse, Becky is ushered inside by an old man in dirty clothing. She is surprised to learn this is Sir Pitt. They eat a meager meal around the fire. Through conversation, Becky learns that the frugal Sir Pitt is in London for one of his many lawsuits. The next morning they rise early and hail a carriage to Queen’s Crawley.

Summary: CHAPTER VIII: Private and Confidential

In a letter to Amelia, Becky writes about her first night at Sir Pitt’s London house and the ride to Queen’s Crawley. After switching to Sir Pitt’s carriage close to the estate, they arrive at a large, rundown house. Becky sees her apartment and schoolroom and meets her charges. Before dinner, the household gathers in the drawing room. Becky meets Lady Crawley and Sir Pitt’s eldest son, Mr. Pitt Crawley. Dinner is a dismal affair of mutton. Afterward, the daughters play cards, Lady Crawley knits, and Sir Pitt drinks elsewhere. Then Pitt comes in, and the girls take turns reading a sermon out loud. After gathering for prayers, the household retires. Sir Pitt tells Becky that candles must be put out by 11 for frugality’s sake. The narrator closes out the chapter, explaining that while Becky seems funny right now, he will tell a story of great villainy.

Summary: CHAPTER IX: Family Portraits

After the death of his first wife, Sir Pitt married the beautiful daughter of a tradesman. Lady Crawley, now too high class for former friends but too low class for aristocrats, is isolated. With her looks fading, her husband ignores her, and her daughters show her little affection. Her only friend is Pitt, a proper, pious gentleman who wants to refine the estate. Pitt worked as his grandfather’s secretary and a foreign diplomat. Since his return home, he has dabbled in religious instruction while awaiting his father’s seat in Parliament. Sir Pitt wants the money from the seat himself, however, since Queen’s Crawley is always in debt. He has failed to earn money in his endeavors and is unable to get capable people to work for him. Sir Pitt has an unmarried wealthy sister, Miss Crawley, who intends to split her money between Rawdon Crawley, his second son, and Bute’s family at the Rectory.

Summary: CHAPTER X: Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends

Within a year, Becky has made many friends at the Pitt estate. Being clever, she figures out how to get along with everyone who can advance her position. Becky lets the girls dictate their own learning. Rose, the oldest, reads many inappropriate books, while Violet runs wild. With Pitt, Becky is respectful and obedient, asking his help with French passages in books, and he believes she comes from a good family. To Sir Pitt, she becomes indispensable, playing backgammon, serving as his secretary, advising him on the grounds, and helping manage the estate. The household also includes Rawdon Crawley, who doesn’t get along with his brother Pitt. Rawdon is the favorite of their rich aunt Miss Crawley, who is herself unorthodox. Rawdon was expelled from Cambridge, but Miss Crawley bought him a military office.

Summary: CHAPTER XI: Arcadian Simplicity

Sir Pitt’s brother, the Reverend Bute Crawley, inhabits the Rectory with his family. Bute is well-liked and enjoys an active social life. His wife, Mrs. Bute Crawley, writes his sermons and takes care of the home. Bute is in debt and looks forward to inheriting money from his sister. Mrs. Bute keeps tabs on Crawley Hall through the servants. When she learns that Becky has become integral to the estate, she worries that the governess has designs on Sir Pitt. Mrs. Bute writes to Miss Pinkerton and learns that Becky comes from disreputable parents.

Becky writes to Amelia about Miss Crawley’s annual visit. Sir Pitt and Bute, who dislike one another, compete to please Miss Crawley and inherit her 70,000 pounds. Sir Pitt holds parties and dinners, inviting other aristocratic families. The dinner table also includes Captain Rawdon Crawley and Becky, both of whom Miss Crawley favors. The two households mingle often, giving Becky and Crawley a chance to flirt with one another.

Analysis: Chapters VII–XI

This section of the novel focuses on the occupants and habits at Queen’s Crawley and allows Thackeray to hold up the wealthy, aristocratic class and its habits for ridicule. Not a single member of the Crawley clan, all of whom demonstrate various vices and vanities, escapes becoming an object of the narrator’s withering criticism. At Queen’s Crawley, Thackeray’s novel makes clear it wears the title of unapologetic satire.

Sir Pitt emerges as one of the most egregious characters, which befits his role as the highest-ranking aristocrat at Queen’s Crawley. While Becky had high hopes of leaving the ugly and base Sedleys behind and being with “gentlefolks,” her vision is shattered once she arrives at the Crawleys’ London house. Sir Pitt’s first appearance in the novel is as a dirty, barely literate man, hardly meeting Becky’s, or the readers’, ideal of an aristocrat. Though Sir Pitt holds an inherited seat in Parliament, ostensibly making him a leader of all of England, he is unable even to manage his estate and eventually comes to rely on advice from Becky, his children’s governess. Sir Pitt has been profoundly unsuccessful in every business endeavor he has ever tried. The paragraph in Chapter IX describing all the ways that Sir Pitt lost money that he could ill afford to lose demonstrates almost every mistake that could be made in business. Despite Sir Pitt’s failures and debt, he insists on making a show of his status, for example, switching from the cheap hired carriage he and Becky took from London to his own carriage shortly before they arrived home.

The extremes are not limited to Sir Pitt. His family members all have negative characteristics that are continually reinforced by other, often ridiculous aspects of their personalities. The younger Pitt Crawley is pompous and affected, insisting on using French names for meals even while he looks down upon his aunt, Miss Crawley, for having lived among the French. Rawdon Crawley generously gives money to the servants, but all of his own money comes from his wealthy aunt. The Reverend Bute Crawley, instead of being a man of God, has a penchant for liquor and a wife who writes his sermons. Miss Crawley espouses equality among the social classes while having Becky do her bidding. With the specific details provided about each of these characters, Thackeray exposes their self-deceptions and flaws.

Not a single character escapes Thackeray’s biting criticism. No one among the Crawley clan exhibits a modicum of virtue, not even the children. Money and status mean little when it comes to a person’s character. Indeed, the main goal of the inhabitants of the Crawley estate is to get money from the only member of the family with money. Bute and his wife scheme to win Miss Crawley’s inherited fortune, saying that they must make her promise to leave the money to their son. Then in the next sentence, they acknowledge that Sir Pitt has made numerous promises that have not been kept. Never does it occur to Bute and his wife that a promise is not binding. If others are scheming too—as readers know they are—a promise is worthless. All these details call into question England’s devotion to the class system that entrenches the aristocracy, whether or not its leading members have any abilities, intelligence, or even sense.

Becky thrives among this family in a way she never did or could in the Sedley household, which had the virtuous Amelia at its core. That’s because Becky fits right in with the Crawleys’ shallowness and venality. She knows how to flatter them to the utmost and make herself indispensable. Compare Becky’s position at the beginning of Chapter VII with it in Chapter XI. In Chapter VII, the compassionate reader might almost feel sorry for Becky for the situation in which she has found herself, when she is forced to stay the night in the hideous townhouse. By the end of Chapter XI, Becky is accepted at the family dinner table and is best chums with the woman whom everyone most wants to impress.

Another aspect of the novel that comes to the fore in this section is the significance of names. Becky Sharp’s name contains an obvious connotation. She fits two definitions of sharp: astute enough to figure out how to achieve her means and also not soft or nice. The names related to the aristocratic Crawleys, however, take ridicule to a new level. There are “Mungo Binkie” (Sir Pitt’s first father-in-law) and Sir Huddleston Fuddleston and Mr. Pitt Crawley’s assignment to be Attaché to the Legation at Pumpernickel.

The narrator does introduce a moment of seriousness in Chapter X when he addresses the reader directly to warn of Becky’s upcoming villainy and crime. In a sense, the narrator is asking the reader to be better than the Crawleys and not fall under Becky’s charms and clever words.

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