I had to read some Lacan in college, putatively a chunk that was especially influential on the continental philosophers we were studying.
Same. I am seeing a trend where rats who had to spend time with this stuff in college say, “No, please don’t go here it’s not worth it.” Then get promptly ignored.
The fundamental reason this stuff is not worth engaging with is because it’s a Rorschach. Using this stuff is a verbal performance. We can make analogies to Tarot cards but in the end we’re just cold reading our readers.
Lacan and his ilk aren’t some low hanging source of zero day mind hacks for rats. Down this road lies a quagmire, which is not worth the effort to traverse.
I’m not seeing that much here to rule out an alternative summary: get born into a rich, well-connected family.
Now, I’m not a historian, but iirc private tutoring was very common in the gentry/aristocracy 200 years back. So most of the UK examples might not say that much other than this person was default educated for class+era.
Virginia Woolf is an interesting case in point, as she herself wrote, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”