A Respectable Occupation: - University of Hertfordshire Research ...

even the wealthiest to overnight destitution.‖ 28 Perkins also makes this
point, saying that as they had a permanent job or an amount of capital to
provide some security against debt and poverty, they were better situated
than the working class. But this security could easily be dissipated by the
loss of a job, the death of the husband or sickness in the family. 29
The Constraints faced by Daughters and their Families
Although a family within the middle class lived comfortably, their
disposable income was not unlimited and a father faced a dilemma in how it
was to be applied to the education of his children. It was an accepted
standpoint that a son would, in due course, be required to provide for and
support a wife and family. In order to do this, he would need an appropriate
occupation and income. Achieving such an occupation would require an
education paid for by his father. 30 In turn fathers relied on marriage to
provide for the long term financial security of their daughters. Tosh agrees
with this view, saying that a father‘s ambition was to find an ―honourable
and rewarding‖ occupation for his sons by training them to take over his
business or to place them in a suitable apprenticeship. But in the majority
of cases, he relied on finding a good marriage to provide for his daughters. 31
Nonetheless, fathers were aware that it was always possible that their
28 Hughes, The Victorian Governess, p. 27.
29 Perkins, The Rise of Professional Society, p. 95.
30 Reader, Professional Men, p. 123.
31 Tosh, A Man’s Place, p. 115.
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