after signing much of his wealth to Becky, giving her an income. She returns to England and lives as a demi-mondaine. Her former associates refuse to have anything to do with her. Character For much of the book, due to her lower-class origins, Sharp is not treated as a social equal to her associates, who are at least middle if not upper class. She is "notoriously immoral" — indeed, according to one commentator, she is the "embodiment of moral transgression"—with a "ruthless determination ... but unfailing good temper". Her energy repeatedly creates a "whirlwind" around her. Sharp "manages to cheat, steal and lie without getting caught by the agents of social, moral and economic order who pursue her", which she does by creating for herself a new set of circumstances each time. This makes her "dangerous", in contemporary eyes, says Montz, and Sharp plays many such discrete roles throughout the book. However, each time she reinvents herself in order to overcome the next adversity, her previous reputation always catches up with her. Jennifer Hedgecock has commented that: Origins, appearance and personality Born in Soho, Becky Sharp is the daughter of an impoverished English artist and a French "opera girl" — possibly a prostitute — and is thus half-French herself. To the English in the novel, her English ancestry is invisible; to them, she is wholly a Frenchwoman. She appears to have loved her father: Thackeray tells how, as a girl, she would sit with him "and [hear] the talk of many of his wild companions — often but ill-suited for a girl to hear", and when he dies Sharp misses both his companionship and the freedom that she had living with him. Sharp is a "flamboyant coquette" with bright green eyes. She is waif-like and attractive although not necessarily beautiful. A picara, she has talents for, and enjoyment of, acting, and is an excellent mimic. She has been described as "ever-adaptable" with a will to live and a vitality. However, she is also a duplicitous trickster, — "an outlaw, female insubordination personified", says Marion Meade — with an aggressive streak in her, who, however, never loses her femininity. She also has, says the Narrator, "wit, cleverness and flippancy", and a gift for "fun and mimicry". Sharp is, says Harold Bloom, "famously a bad woman, selfish and endlessly designing, rarely bothered by a concern for truth, morals, or the good of