Every one remembers the chapters and their place in the book. Becky,
resolutely shaking off old difficulties for the moment, installs
herself with 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.
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