Starting Out as a Nineteenth-Century Factory Girl

I transmigrated to early nineteenth-century London, starting out in the St. Giles slums as a ragged female pickpocket.

At the time, the only jobs available to working-class women were maid or factory worker, paying 6 to 12 pounds a year for 14 to 16 hours of work a day.

A prostitute could earn several pounds in one go, and many girls took that path, only to be exploited by pimps.

Even those with respectable jobs sometimes had to resort to it to support themselves.

I scavenge and resell rubbish, find work as a bookbinder's assistant, write letters for people, buy and sell flowers, try my hand at writing, buy a secondhand outfit, and knock on shop doors to ask if they're hiring.

I'll get my own millinery shop, then slowly build a life for myself.

One step at a time. I'll find my own way eventually.

Note: The female lead majored in minority languages, studying both French and German, and speaks English very well.

Her golden finger is that she's incredibly strong and can protect herself. She has black hair and blue eyes, is painfully thin at the start, and has an ugly appearance buff.

Back then, even a little good looks could easily get a woman assaulted.

The female lead starts out living by scavenging, and her life is miserable.

She has no parents, and at one point sells the corpse of a female companion she rescued.

(The woman asked her to. London medical schools were short of cadavers for dissection at the time, and one body could fetch 20 to 50 pounds.)

I haven't decided on the male lead yet. Perhaps a lawyer or a doctor, someone from the middle class.

The female lead's dream is like the one Woolf described: an income of 500 pounds a year and a room of her own where she can write.

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Theme: Succeed through your own efforts