Activities

1. read as far as line 22 and consider all the various actions performed by Captain Crawley before going off to battle. What feeling\s can you infer from his behaviour?
2. go on reading as far as line 34. consider what Rebecca does and what she seems worried about. How would you describe her on the basis of her behaviour?
3. read the passage to the end. Is your impression of Rebecca’s character confirmed? Substantiate from the text
4. which method of characterization does Thackeray use in the passage? How free is the reader to form opinions in the characters? What attitude does the narrator have towards Rebecca and her world?

1. Captain Crawley feels good sentiments for Rebecca. Before leaving he thought about her future and the possibility of a future without him (“under his wife (or it might be his widow’s)”). He broke the coldness with her when “he took her up from the ground, and held her in his arm for a minute, tight pressed against his strong-beating heart”. The reader can suppose he loved her.
2. “she waved him from the window, and stood there for a moment looking out after he was gone”. She is not related to him in a sentiment relation way, after he had been gone she looked for her appearance and her raiment dressing a pink (a cheerful colour) raiment. She is cold (“unavailing sentimentality”), rational and calculating and this is clear in the passage.
3. my idea of Rebecca’s character is confirmed in the end of the story. She follow her principles of coldness and calculating in doing profits (“she passed the morning disposing, ordering, looking out, and locking up her properties in the most agreeable manner” “I will go and get the draft cashed”).
4. Thackeray describes the facts without comment them but from the point of view of an omniscient narrator. The reader is not free to form opinions in the characters because all the elements that the narrator quotes are insert in the way of describe her worst behaviour part. The narrator doesn’t approve Rebecca behaviour but he does not condemn it explicitly in the text. Rebecca’s behaviour is Victorian age people worst behaviour model. The narrator considers it a bad model but he doesn’t offer a way to change it or the possibility that he will change.