Vanity Fair

Rebecca - a woman despised and rejected because she has no money or high breeding.  She then uses her physical and emotional features to win her way up and out of her low situation.  Starting as a governess, she works her way through society.
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"And now, being received as a member of the amiable family whose portraits we have sketched in the foregoing pages, it became naturally Rebecca's duty to make herself, as she said, agreeable to her benefactors, and to gain their confidence to the utmost of her power.  Who could not admire this quality of gratitude in an unprotected orphan; and if there entered some degree of selfishness into her calculations, who can say but that her prudence was perfectly justifiable" (86)

Women in this novel are graded based on their wealth and class.  Becky exemplifies the harassment and critique given to women of lower classes who want to advance.  She works her way up through the class-system (as exemplified in much of the literature of the time) and ends up on top.  This novel is written by a man and uses his perspective of a woman, climbing the social ladder and leaving her unwanted life behind. Similar to Lady Audley’s Secret this story has intrigue and crime.