| Summary: | Vanity as a motive may be defined in three different ways within the works of Samuel Beckett. During his first period it is the exuberance of baroque Vanity that predominates in novels like Watt and Murphy. This paper focusses on the ‘gothic’ death of Murphy for instance. The second manner shows a more classsical idea of Vanity where sobriety and austerity prevail. A symbolic dimension is also present then. In Ill seen ill said the harmony that exists between the old woman and her environment is an impressive manifestation of this classical attitude. Finally, in the pieces of Beckett’s later period, as well as in certain poems, a kind of postromantic Vanity can be found, which in fact is not altogether absent from some earlier texts.
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