but also is ultimately a fantasy about being rescued from the proletariat by a bourgeois man, and given respectable status.

I suspect this mythology combined with the idea of the slut (something proletarian women are stigmatized as being) being the kind of woman you don’t marry, allows bourgeois men sexual access to proletarian women but precludes the possibility of social mobility through marriage.

IDK just a thought.

They also often serve as morality tales about the importance of maintaining the performance of respectability and propriety, but also often disseminate certain elements of proletarian culture and morality.