Of Becky's rise and fall, Thackeray says it has all happened before and will again. But he admits there are advantages in Vanity Fair: "What well-constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes roast beef?" It is vanity but one should enjoy it. Thackeray says Becky's brief triumph should be enjoyed because it is brief. "Glory like this is said to be fugitive."
Becky, at the height of her ambition, plays the part of Clytemnestra, a symbolic choice, for she has been having an affair with Lord Steyne, even as Clytemnestra had with Aegisthus. Becky would sacrifice Rawdon as quickly as Clytemnestra did Agamemnon. The role of the nightingale contrasts to that of murderess. Thackeray has again shown both the dark and the light of human nature, for Becky fills both roles.
Thackeray describes the portals of society as being guarded by "grooms of the chamber with flaming silver forks with which they prong all those who have not the right of the entrée . . . the honest newspaper-fellow who sits in the hall . . . dies after a little time. He can't survive the glare of fashion long. It scorches him up, as the presence of Jupiter in full dress wasted that poor imprudent Semele — a giddy moth of a creature who ruined herself by venturing out of her natural atmosphere." Semele, a mortal beloved of Jupiter, was induced by Juno, Jupiter's wife, to ask Jupiter to approach her as he did Juno — with full majesty. The splendor burned Semele up. Thackeray is suggesting that Becky is in the same position.
Thackeray comments on society: ". . . all the delights of life, I say, — would go to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles, and avoid those whom they dislike and abuse."
