the community." E. M. Forster describes Sharp as being "on the make"; for example, when she first sees Amelia's brother Jos, who is a revenue collector for the East India Company in Calcutta, she immediately asks Amelia whether he is very rich, because, "they say all Indian Nabobs are enormously rich". She is obsessed by money; unlike Amelia, who thinks that £2,000 () will last her a lifetime, Sharp thinks that nothing less than £5,000 () a year would be sufficient. Sharp's selfishness is even more highlighted when her husband is preparing to leave on the Waterloo campaign; she is more concerned that he has protected her income in case he is killed than over the risk to his life. Her subsequent attempt at appearing sorrowful at his departure is unrealistic to both her husband and the reader. The only time she cries for real is when she learns she could have married Sir Pitt Crawley, rather than, as she did, his son, whose fortunes were far less prosperous. "Her financial gains are always achieved through the exploitation of the affections of others", wrote Ulrich Knoepflmacher; Sharp understood, very early on, that sentiment is a profitable commodity and one to be used and disposed of when circumstances demanded it. Sharp knows what an English lady should look like, and her impersonation is impeccable: "dressed in white, with bare shoulders as white as snow—the picture of youth, unprotected innocence and humble virgin simplicity". She understands the power that a fashionable appearance brings; "and revels in it", says Montz; thus she deliberately stages tableaux and parlour games in order to take centre stage, and as an excuse to dress even more flamboyantly. Her English companions consider her obsession with fashionable clothes the product of her French blood. Clothes, though, for Sharp, are an essential tool; they enable her to blend in with her upper-class associates. Sharp's "desire for fashion and worldliness" is in tune with the snobbish affectations—which she emulates—and hypocrisies of English society, which she identifies immediately. She is, however, sufficiently socially adaptable as to be able to blend in with the Bohemians she later meets in Germany. Career Educated at Miss Pinkerton's Academy, Sharp was an orphan. With no parents to guide her, either towards a good marriage or a career, she set out on her own to take what she could get from life. Her opening scene has her