 Thackeray took a degree of risk in presenting a character such as Sharp, says Michael Schmidt, but he remained within boundaries, and whilst he was satirical, he broke no taboos.Sharp, then, was a new phenomenon in Victorian fiction, which until "Vanity Fair" knew only of insipid heroines bound by convention or Smollett-esque grotesques.Amelia herself was one of the former, but Sharp was an original creation.