William Makepeace Thackeray is an English novelist.

He is chiefly known
for his work "Vanity Fair". In this novel the author portrays "an upper-class
Regency world" situated in the first half of the nineteenth century.

"Vanity Fair" appeared in the book form in 1848 and received the subtitle
"A Novel without a Hero". The writer decided to describe real people, not romantic
heroes or other fictional characters. He is concerned with the importance of
realistic representation in his novel, as appears from the following excerpt from a
letter of his, "The Art of Novels is to represent Nature: to convey as strongly as
possible the sentiments of reality "[1]. This explains why William doesn't portray
fantastic heroes, but depicts characters with human imperfections and favors none
of them.
The characters of Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley serve as the basic
principles for the analysis of the society in "Vanity Fair". Through them, the
reader is introduced to many other characters belonging to this immoral world[2].
These two women are the opposites; Rebecca is clever and cunning, she is "a
fallen woman"[1], whereas Amelia is naïve and sensitive. They represent two
contrasting ways of being vain, "The difference between Amelia and Becky is not
that between a good woman and a bad woman but that between a selfishly good
one and a selfishly bad"[1].

On the one hand, more sympathy is manifested to Rebecca Sharp.She is

characterized as" the product of the hypocritical and vain society"[1] . On the
other hand, the narrator formulates a very negative view on Becky ; she is
presented as one of the most selfish figures in this novel. The same with Amelia.
Within the first few pages, she is a “dear little creature … so guileless and good-
natured a person” [1].However, description is followed by the phrase, “As she is
not a heroine” , destroying any heroic image of this woman.

Besides, Becky seeks friends to serve her own ends. She is a mercantile
person," greedy and dishonest and will stop at nothing when it comes to getting
what she wants. She dreams of glamorous parties and enough money to have every
vanity she wants. Becky’s dreams do not include a family life or being a simple,
obedient housewife"[1].

Therefore, Becky serves as the ultimate example of the corrupted individual

because of being" a wild, roving nature, inherited from father and mother, who
were both Bohemians, by taste and circumstance …"[1] .

Being a puppet in the Vanity Fair, Becky succeeds in establishing herself at

the cost of the lives of two men and the alienation of all her friends and family .
1
 The flaws of the society are condemned through the surnames of the
characters, for example :

Crawley from the verb "to crawl" which means "to move along the ground
on your hands and knees", Sharp from the adjective "sharp"-having an edge that
can cut. These proper names demonstrate the main features of the characters.

To conclude:

The meaning of the subtitle "A Novel without a Hero" is as follows:

1. The novel contains real (with their drawbacks) characters rather

than ideal ones.
2. All characters of the novel are snobs.
3. Becky or Amelia could be a protagonist. A lot of attention is paid
to them in the novel. But due to the sundry blemishes neither
Becky nor Amelia deserve to get the role of a hero. In such a way
William Thackeray reflects the reality in which no ideal person
exists. Everybody has a skeleton in the closet.
4. In the novel there are no positive protagonists:

“Amelia is all heart - she has no brain; Becky is all brain - she lacks a
heart"[1].

5. There are no heroes in the novel in a traditional meaning of the

word.
6. The subtitle imparts an ironic meaning to the whole novel.
7. This novel is a metaphor of a journey through the first part of the
nineteenth century full of snobs.
8. There a few heroes in the novel: Rawdon Crawley, Peggy O'Dowd,
but their heroic deeds are in the background.

References:
1. http://www.literaturepage.com/read/vanity-fair.html
2. http://www.anagiovinazzo.com/reading-the-repertoire/vanityfair