摘要:

维多利亚时期处于消费主义的萌芽阶段，人们对商品的奢侈消费之风逐渐兴起并开始盛行，主要局限于上层贵族与逐渐成为社会中坚力量的中产阶级。此外，当时的消费主义呈现符号消费与炫耀式消费的特征。同时,在父权社会中被视为审美客体的女性也呈现出消费品的属性。
     《名利场》是萨克雷最具代表性的作品，在这部作品中，萨克雷以现实主义的写作手法，对当时上流社会盛行的消费主义文化及其对当时女性的影响进行了描写。尤其描写了消费主义对两位女主人公夏泼和爱米莉亚的影响。本文主要分析消费主义对夏泼和爱米莉亚的社会地位、自我价值和婚姻状况的影响。

关键词：维多利亚时期；消费主义；女性；《名利场》

Abstract:

 Consumerism is in an embryonic stage in Victorian period. The atmosphere of consuming luxury springs up and prevails which is confined to aristocrats and bourgeoisie who increasingly becomes the dominant class by taking over the political power. What’s more, the consumerism culture presents characteristics like symbol consumption and conspicuous consumption. Meanwhile, women have the property of aesthetic object in Victorian period.
 Vanity Fair is one of Thackeray’s most representative works. Thackeray displays the influences of consumerism culture to women in Victorian period, especially the influences on the two heroines in Vanity Fair: Rebecca (Becky) Sharp and Amelia Sedley. This paper focuses on studying women’s social status, self-value and marriage exerted by consumerism in Victorian period.

Key words: Victorian period; consumerism; female; Vanity Fair

1. Introduction
1.1Vanity Fair and its author
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), is an outstanding novelist and journalist in Victorian period. Like Charles Dickens, he is also a representative of critical realist in 19th century England who criticized the Victorian society satirically. His life is filled with setbacks for he experienced many failures. However, he never gives up and puts his experiences to his books. He was born in Caleuttain1811.His father’s name is Richmond Thackeray, who served in the East India Company as a common collector. Unfortunately, when Thackeray was three, his father died, and then he was sent back to rejoined with his mother who was in England in1817. At six, he was sent to England where he went to school and then studied at Cambridge. About in 1834 Thackeray went to Paris and took up the study of art. He had early shown talent as a caricaturist. He loved drawing and dreamed of becoming an artist, which had something to do with his fine hand at characterization and description in his works, especially in his masterpiece Vanity Fair. (Shumin Tao, 2010). He once said, ”I have no brain above my eye; and I describe what I see”. Marx and Engels once gave their remarks on Thackeray, Dickens and Jane Eyre in their masterpiece on literature, ” The outstanding modern British novelists reveal more politics and social truth than the professional politicians, pundits and moralists do in their excellent works”.