> Her parents were well educated but lacked money.
I do not understand this because because the more we go back in history, the more likely only rich people have access to education (well, with miraculous exceptions such as Michael Faraday)
Yeah, this is what makes Northern Europe kinda special. Literacy became fairly widespread after the printing press. Even people who couldn't afford to send their children to school were educating them at home. There were various subpopulations (not socio-economic classes) in Northern Europe that were basically entirely literate by the 1600s. Like the Puritans, who were mostly middle class (which is to say: one minor calamity away from financial ruin). And by the 1800s basically all but the poorest Northern Europeans were literate.
It was very common in the 1800s for children of well-off parents to get educated, but then not be well-off themselves (for any number of reasons, including moving to "New World").