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

Here we have three young women who came from slightly different
sectors of middle class society, all of whom benefited from the advancement
in education open to girls in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Contrary to popular opinion held at the beginning of the century, each of
them clearly demonstrated that girls were equally capable of profiting from
the sort of education, which enabled all of them to achieve professional
status. As an unintended result of their education, Gertrude and Clara and
perhaps Mildred marked themselves out as being unusual and by so doing
perhaps damaged their marriage prospects.
As we have seen in the cases of Gertrude, Clara and Mildred, times
were changing. There were fathers who, lacking confidence in their ability
to provide for their daughters as long-term spinsters, permitted or even
encouraged them to enter a profession to secure their future. 99 No doubt
there were also some young women whose fathers could have afforded to
keep them at home, but the daughters saw employment as a means of
establishing their identity and gaining independence away from the
restrictions of life at home. 100
However, in the early decades of the nineteenth century there was
one further overruling constraint that limited young women‘s options; the
work they engaged in had to be respectable. The safeguarding of a
daughter‘s respectability was of great importance among middle class
families because it had a fundamental bearing on her marriage prospects. A
girl who stayed at home under the supervision of her mother was safe in
99 Tosh, A Man’s Place, p. 152.
100 Levine, Victorian Feminism, p. 82.
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