I think your description of Pauline's parents as "basically good" is quite pertinent.
One thing that just struck me about Honora's reaction sort of relates to the class divide. Compared with the Hulmes (glamorous mother, educated father in a very upper middle class university job, Juliet - even if it was due to illness - has been sent all over the world to improve her health) Honora and Herbert's family life is really mundane, and I think Honora seems conscious of that. They obviously aren't well-off, they have to take in lodgers to make ends meet (which probably means the children are sharing bedrooms so the lodgers get a room, even if they too are sharing) - not things the Hulmes have to worry about.
I think perhaps what Honora is worried about is that, by escaping into this fantasy world, Pauline is going to forget the practical side of life. It's a while since I watched the film but I recall her being worried that her daughter wouldn't get her school certificate, which would give her a recognised basic qualification and might have enabled her to get some kind of scholarship into a college or university (or perhaps just a better paying school leavers' level job). I'm not quite sure how the New Zealand university system worked back then, but - assuming Pauline was bright enough to get into university - I can't see how her parents could have afforded to fund that, unless she had a scholarship.
I also recall from some background reading that Honora and Herbert met when she was very young, so perhaps she went straight from school to common-law marriage to pregnancy (in whichever order) to a life of housework and the day-to-day struggle to make ends meet, and simply wanted more for her daughter than that.
In some ways, I have a lot of sympathy for Honora. When you look at the four parents in the story, she is pretty much at the bottom of the list in terms of social position. Herbert's got a manual job, Juliet's mother is this semi-socialite stay-at-home wife who has no need to work and Dr. Hulme is right at the top, with his qualifications and his academic job. So maybe Honora is stuck between wanting more for her daughter and feeling socially inferior to Juliet's parents?
"If we go on like this, you're going to turn into an Alsatian again."
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