How are Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp contrasted in Vanity Fair?

In William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, the characters of Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp are contrasted through their social origins, temperaments, and life paths.

• Amelia Sedley: She is depicted as wellborn, passive, and characterized by an effete sentimentality. Her journey is defined by her devotion to others, including her marriage to George Osborne and her eventual union with Captain William Dobbin.123
• Becky Sharp: The daughter of a poor drawing master, she is an ambitious, energetic, and scheming adventuress. She is essentially amoral and provocative, serving as the central figure around whom the novel’s social maneuvers revolve as she fights to ascend the social hierarchy.23

Thackeray presents these women with dispassionate sympathy, noting that their contrast is not a simple binary of moral good versus evil. Instead, both characters reflect the author’s exploration of human ambition, vanity, and the ambivalence of human motives within a society he describes as largely foolish and selfish.3