her husband in the heart of the world she means to
conquer; she all but succeeds, she just fails. Her campaign and its
untimely end are to be pictured; it is an interlude to be filled with
stir and glitter, with the sense of the passage of a certain time,
above all with intimations of insecurity and precarious fortune; and
it is to lead (this it must do) to a scene of final and decisive
climax. Such is the effect to be drawn from the matter that Thackeray
has stored up--the whole hierarchy of the Crawleys, Steyne, Gaunt
House, always with Becky in the midst and to the fore. Up to a point
it is precisely the kind of juncture in which Thackeray's art
delights. There is abundance of vivid stuff, and the picture to be
made of it is highly functional in the book. It is not merely a
preparation for a story to follow; it is itself the story, a most
important part of it. The chapters representing Becky's manner of life
in Curzon Street make the hinge of her career; she approaches her
turning-point at the beginning of them, she is past it at the end.
Functional, therefore, they are to the last degree; but up to the very
climax, or the verge of it, there is no need for a set scene of
dramatic particularity. An impression is to be created, growing and
growing; and it can well be created in the loose panoramic style which
is Thackeray's paramount arm. A general view, once more, a summary of
Becky's course of action, a long look at her conditions, a
participation in her gathering difficulties--that is the nature and
the task of these chapters, that is what Thackeray proceeds to give
us.

He sets about it with a beautiful ease of assurance. From his height
he looks forth, takes in the effect with his sweeping vision,
possesses himself of the gradation of its tone; then, stooping nearer,
he seizes the detail that renders it. But the sense of the broad
survey is first in his thought. When he reflects upon Becky's life in
London and all that came of her attempt to establish herself there, he
is soon assailed by a score of definite recollections, tell-tale
incidents, scraps of talk that show how things were going with her;
but these, it would seem, arise by the way, they spring up in his mind
as he reviews the past. They illustrate what he has to say, and he
takes advantage of them. He brushes past them, however, without much
delaying or particularizing; a hint, a moment, a glance suffices for
the contribution that some event or colloq