and that it was from her that Parker learnt "the rules of the game". To Eva M. Dadlez, Sharp is a character to be admired, particularly for her intelligence — which is more acute than any of the other characters (aside from Dobbin, who sees through her) — her overcoming a difficult childhood, and ultimately "her talent to survive disasters". She notes that Sharp looks better when the general unprincipled foolishness of the rest of the cast is taken into account. Thackeray's character made a strong impression on contemporaries. Elizabeth Browning's protagonist of Aurora Leigh (1856), Marian Erle, is a similar character to Sharp. In 1872 The Spectator reviewed Anthony Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds and made an unfavourable comparison between Trollope's main female lead, Lady Eustace, and Becky Sharp. The reviewer wrote how "we had supposed that in Lady Eustace we were to have Mr Trollope's equivalent for Thackeray's Becky Sharp, but we hardly think that we have got it; or if we have, Mr Trollope's equivalent for Thackeray's Becky Sharp is but a poor one." Henry James called Sharp an "epic governess" of literature. In 1848, writing in The Spectator, R. S. Rintoul wrote In the 21st century, Sharp's character has been used in diverse ways. For example, it has been the subject of a book on business ethics, and a work of fiction by Sarra Manning transposes her life and adventures onto a contemporary woman. Real-life models Oscar Wilde said that he asked a female friend of Thackeray's whether Sharp had any real-life basis. She said that although the character was strictly fictional, her general character had been suggested to Thackeray by a governess in Kensington Square, who was a lady's companion to a wealthy but irascible elderly woman. In an unpublished 1911 essay, novelist Charles Reade used the accepted image of Sharp to illustrate Madame du Barry's assertion that the most foolish woman can trick a man, by using against him the education that he has paid for. Says Reade, had she known of Thackeray's creation, du Barry would have asserted "the wisest of the sex is a Becky Sharp". It has in turn been suggested that du Barry was a direct model for Thackeray's Sharp, with both women being "careless beauties cursed with ambition beyond reason, who venture into activities beyond morals". Another possible model for Sharp from the same era suggested Andrew Lang, maybe Jeanne