This passage, set in England in the early 1800s, focuses on Becky Sharp, a young woman of humble origins who has married a wealthy man.
from Vanity Fair
The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses, ponds, and gardens, the rooms of the old house where [Becky] had spent a couple
of years seven years ago, were all carefully revisited by her. She had been young there, or comparatively so, for she forgot the time when she
ever was young-but she remembered her thoughts and feelings seven years back, and contrasted them with those which she had at present,
now that she had seen the world and lived with great people, and raised herself far beyond her original humble station.
"I have passed beyond it, because I have brains," Becky thought, "and almost all the rest of the world are fools. I could not go back, and
consort with those people now, whom I used to meet in my father's studio. Lords come up to my door with stars and garters instead of poor
artists.... I have a gentleman for my husband, and an Earl's daughter for my sister in the very house where I was little better than a servant a
few years ago. But am I much better to do now in the world than I was when I was the poor painter's daughter, and wheedled the grocer round
the corner for sugar and tea? Suppose I had married Francis who was so fond of me-I couldn't have been much poorer than I am now. Heigho!
I wish I could exchange my position in society, and all my relations for a snug sum in the Three per Cent. Consols;" for so it was that Becky felt
the Vanity of human affairs, and it was in those securities that she would have liked to cast anchor.
At which point in the passage does Becky's tone change from contemptuous to regretful?
1. when she forgets "she ever was young"
O2. when she realizes "I could not go back"
3. when she notes "I was little better than a servant"
4. when she asks if she is "much better to do now in the world"