Growing up poor in London, Becky Sharp (Witherpoon) defies her poverty-stricken background and ascen...
Growing up poor in London, Becky Sharp (Witherpoon) defies her poverty-stricken background and ascends the social ladder alongside her best friend, Amelia.
The British Empire flower; exotic India color English imagination. Becky Sharp, the orphaned daughter of a painter and a singer, leaves a home for girls to be a governess, armed with pluck, a keen wit, good looks, fluent French, and an eye for social advancement. Society tries its best to keep her from climbing. An episodic narrative follows her for 20 year, through marriage, Napoleonic war, a child, loyalty to a school friend, the vicissitudes of the family whose daughter she intructed, and attention from a bored marquess who collected her father's paintings. Honesty temper her schemes. No aristocrat she, nor bourgeois, just spirited, intelligent, and irrepressible.
