 Both Joseph Conrad's Mr Vladmir in "The Secret Agent", and in a comic rather than serious setting, Trollope's Mr Slope in "Barchester Towers", play similar roles.In a modern sense what made her dangerous to contemporary eyes was her ambition; women did not, in nineteenth-century England, climb the social ladder—at least, not in an obvious manner.That Sharp survives, and at times, thrives, despite her moral ambiguity indicates that Thackeray believed society was no longer able to cure wrongdoing.