Emily Morris

Emily is not middle class - she's high class. She's born into a wealthy family of trade guildsmen and she has both brothers and sisters that are taking up the family business.
She has been brought up to be prim and proper but her status made it difficult for her to make any friends.
Other nobility proved to often have a stick up their asses whilst the poor kids would either look on in jealousy, disregard her or use her as a means of freeloading.
Initially she might've fallen into that trap but upon being tricked a few times she's wisened to it.
This ties into how she's difficult to fool and an ability to discern peoples' motivations.

However the story doesn't really end there. Her family has servants, obviously,
and she's very much taken to one or two of them, either lower class or middle class folks, all of whom have their own stories to tell.
This starts to concern her as she realizes the world is a harsher place outside the bubble she's been brought up in.
Alongside that she has access to the family library where she can enjoy a plethora of detective novels and crime books,
learning about just how harsh of a place it really is.

All the while her parents are trying to raise her into their trade but once she's wisened to her true yearning in life,
she tries to dissuade them from their set in ways as she believes she can infact benefit the world with her growing knowledge and curiosities.
They are however strongly against it as they believe there is no money to be earned and, worst of all,
maybe they themselves are conducting some shady business and there is a growing fear that their daughter,
given just how long they've neglected her in favor of just leaving her to her own devices, has grown.

Now Emily poses a legitimate threat to their business and while they'd never admit it, they refuse to fund her education.
As such, she has taken it upon herself, after learning from one of the maids, that someone, Sir Harris,
is hiring and he doesn't have particularly stiff job requirements. Given she's become close friends with her servants,
it is likely that she's learned a thing or two from them and as such she asks them for help in making her a capable young woman.
They handily lend her their knowledge and as such she ventures off to earn her own keep,
in secret from her parents, adopting a different second name and working under Harris..