CHAPTER 2

• - STORYLINE

Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley are two students who have just left the college where they have studied for five years. Miss Sharp has thrown her French Dixtionary from the window of the carriage. Now she is free and she has not to bear the insults and outrages from Miss Pinkerton, the schoolmaster. Miss Sharp's friend, Miss Sedley, has a completely different way of thinking and she disapproves Miss Sharp's reaction. Miss Sharp, whose name is Rebecca, tells her she doesn't care about the consequences of her act because she has left school forever and nobody could punish her anymore.

• - SETTING

He story is set on the carriage where the two students have got on after they had left school.

• - CHARACTERS

Miss Rebecca Sharp and Miss Amelia Sedley are two students. Their characters are completely opposite. While Miss Sedley is conformist, humble and gentle, Miss Sharp is an opportunist and she's already thinking about a new reality, she is impulsive, disrespectful and implacable.

Miss Pinkerton, the schoolmaster, is described as a severe, ignorant and nasty woman by Miss Sharp.

• - NARRATOR

The narrator is a third person omniscient and intrusive narrator. Thackeray uses an intrusive narrator who steps into the text to better create a dialogue with the reader. The reader is not free to form his own opinions but he is directed by the narrator.

• - MESSAGE

Thackeray wants to criticize such opportunist people also if he is aware that they are often more successful in life. Moreover, through this extract, the novelist shows a realistic situation in education during the Victorian Age underlining the authoritarian attitude of the schoolmasters.

CHAPTER 30

• - STORYLINE

Captain Crawley has to leave his house and his wife Rebecca to join the British army. He worries about leaving enough money and properties to guarantee his wife's benefit.

While the Captain is clearly worried , frightened and distressed, Rebecca hasn't such feelings about his husband's departure. After he has gone away, she spent all the morning disposing, ordering and looking out what the Captain had left to her.

• - SETTING

The story is predominantly set in the Captain's house.

• - CHARACTERS

The two protagonists are Captain Crawley and his wife Rebecca. While the Captain is a man whose feelings of affection and altruism are pure, Rebecca is a very calculating person and is a hypocrite woman, attached to material properties. The characterization is given through irony and exaggeration.

• - NARRATOR

The narrator is a third person omniscient and intrusive narrator.

• - MESSAGE

The message is a criticism of the hypocrite society of the time made by people without feelings, by social climbers and men attached only to money, obtained with cunning and lies.