hrj

Well, we don't actually see how far she gets at the end; we can discuss this when we get to it, but there are both real and perceived disavantages of class, and while I don't acquit Hodgson-Burnett of falling into the trap of confusing the two, it is clear in That Lass of Lowrie's and The Lost Prince that when she depicts class mobility in England she is painfully aware it is a lengthy process (life-long, actually, and probably affecting the next generations), including elements of intellectual and social education, because class markers are so ingrained. And I don't see that as unrealistic; we are, after all, in the same world and at roughly the same period (or a little earlier) than Pygmalion which examines the same issues from a much more obviously left-wing perspective.