Vanity Fair is the enduring masterpiece of William Thackeray, with its enigmatic and fascinating subtitle: a novel without a hero. It might as well be interpreted as thus: a novel without a hero, yet with all heroines.Thackeray, from his man's perspective, presents a full-scale picture of the female sex then. This thesis is mainly focused on the analysis of Amelia, who towers in the middle of the picture, and is established as the yardstick of woman beauty in a patriarchal society, against which other female characters are roughly measured.