Vanity Fair depicts the hedonistic lives of the upper classes of wealthy England in the 1800s. Against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, the protagonist Becky Sharp wages a war of her own. She comes from a poor background, but she has grown up in close proximity to the rich and powerful. She has seen the luxuries and indulgences that the elite are afforded by their wealth, and she is determined to elevate herself into their class position. Becky never considers herself to be a part of this social elite; she is consistently aware of her outsider status. Nevertheless, she ascends into British high society through sheer force of will. She marries herself into a wealthy family, lies to her creditors, and charms wealthy men with the rugged determination of a soldier on the front lines. Becky identifies a fundamental unfairness in her world and dedicates her life to breaking into this social elite. She refuses to be a member of the meek and pliant underclass, so she does whatever she must to become as wealthy and as powerful as her former classmates.

Amelia Sedley functions as a thematic counterpoint to Becky with regard to class war. Amelia’s biography is an inverse of Becky’s life story: She was born into a wealthy family but, over the course of her early adult life, the family is ruined, and she is forced to experience poverty and struggle. While Becky’s life is about ruthlessly ascending into the world of the rich and powerful, Amelia’s struggles depict the expectations of British society, in which she accepts her fate with a stoic sweetness. Amelia attended the same school as Becky. In Miss Pinkerton’s academy, the class structure of society was pressed upon the girls from an early age. They were taught that the divide between the rich and the poor is a natural, venerable fact of life. The systems of etiquette and behavior that the schoolgirls were taught became a process of internalization, in which girls like Amelia never learned to see the world in any other way. While Becky was radicalized into a position of individual class war, Amelia’s meek acceptance is an inverse form of ideology. Amelia is a victim of the broader class war but she is so invested in the immutable class structure of British society that she cannot imagine a different world. Her pathetic acceptance of her poverty is the mirror image of Becky’s determined refusal to follow the rules.

The individualistic nature of Becky’s class war is her downfall. Becky has no class-based solidarity; she does not see herself as an ally of other marginalized people. She scorns such people for lacking the strength to lift themselves up as she has done. Becky wages an individualistic war for her own betterment, attacking society not to dismantle it, but to place herself at the top. As such, she has no way of achieving a lasting victory. The spite and bitterness which fueled her rise mean that, once she has reached the highest heights and received the King’s blessing, there is nowhere left to go. Becky is an iconoclastic without an ideology, a warrior without an army. She fights her class war while ironically considering herself separate from the idea of social class. As such, her critique becomes as hollow and as unsatisfying as the class structure she criticizes. She is ultimately beholden to the same class structure which has shaped her life. Whether inside or outside the ruling elite, Becky—just like Amelia—is fundamentally incapable of imagining the world any other way.

Amid the hollow decadence of Vanity Fair, the characters pursue a sincere quest to find love. Unfortunately for the characters, this pursuit often conflicts with their sense of duty. Though most of the marriages in society are arranged by parents with a cynical interest in increasing their station, several characters stand out for their sincere affection and even love for their partner. The marriage between Amelia and George begins as one of the arranged marriages before the collapse of the Sedley family fortune complicates matters. John Osborne tells his son that he should not marry Amelia, even though he promised to do so many years before. George defies his father and marries Amelia, providing her with the romantic boon that she has sought her entire life. Amelia is so enraptured by this show of love and affection that she remains fiercely loyal to George for many years after his death. Her love for her dead husband manifests as a sense of duty, as she publicly grieves for many years and denies herself the opportunity to love again. Amelia is beholden to her sense of duty based on a complicated interpretation of a husband’s love.

The irony of Amelia’s dedication is that George’s declarations of love and duty are not sincere. He understands that he must do his duty eventually, as he was promised to her many years ago. In the meantime, however, he wishes to sew his “wild oats” (135), as Dobbin phrases his friend’s sexual desires. Only when George’s father explicitly tells him not to marry Amelia due to her family’s decline in fortunes does George feel the need to fulfill his duty. As such, his proposal and his elopement are less conditioned on a sincere love for Amelia as they are meant to be a rebuke of his father. George only wants what he is told that he cannot have; as soon as he has Amelia, as soon as they are married, he loses interest in her affection and begins to plot an affair with Becky. Just before he dies on the battlefield (satisfying his duty to his country), he writes to Becky and suggests that they run away together. He dies before the affair can be carried out, leaving Amelia with a false impression of the sincerity of her husband’s love. Her duty to him—one of the few examples of sincere affection in the novel—is built on a foundation of lies and misinterpretations. George did his duty and proclaimed his love for Amelia, but only for reasons that she was never able to comprehend.

Whereas George is only half-interested in Amelia, Dobbin is devoted to her. He is deeply in love with his best friend’s wife, but he cannot act upon this love due to a sense of duty to his friend. Even after George’s death, Dobbin hides his affection for many years. He knows that George did not truly love Amelia and he knows that George needed to be cajoled into doing his duty, as Dobbin was the man who cajoled him. Despite this, Dobbin sacrifices many years of genuine love out of duty to his friend. He even withholds the truth about George, even after he proclaims his love for Amelia and she reaffirms her duty to her dead husband. Ironically, the stalemate is broken by the character least beholden to love or duty. Becky is the ultimate cynic, who never loves anyone other than herself and never feels a sense of duty to anyone but herself. Despite this, she recognizes the absurd tension between love and duty in the lives of her acquaintances. She shows Amelia the note that George wrote to her, revealing the truth about George. This untangles the situation, allowing Amelia and Dobbin to express their love for one another free from the demands of duty. Dobbin and Amelia are both too beholden to their sense of duty to affirm their love for each other; they ironically depend on someone who rejects the demands of love and duty to resolve the deadlock in their lives.