“Her father was a country gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don’t know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew.” “Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?” said I. “Not on any account,” returned Herbert; “but a public-house may keep a gentleman.”
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Dickens highlights the absurdities of Victorian England’s social class system in this conversation with Herbert and Pip. It was acceptable for a gentleman to work, so long as it was not manual work like being a baker or selling beer in his own pub. Miss Havisham’s father was considered upper class because he owned a brewery where he had people at his command to make the beer and reap the profits for him. Dickens is satirizing ridiculous social conventions whereby brewing was respectable and genteel, but baking was not.