Some excellent thoughts there. The locket is Jet (they lived close enough to Whitby and there was quite a bit of jet in my nanna’s house - it’s very shiny on the outside and stiff as can be to open up. I can’t get the picture out unfortunately and there’s nothing on the other side space.
I naturally thought she was sitting - my thought was it was a wedding pic and that’s what I’ve seen before with husband’s proprietorial hand on shoulder. The hair kinda threw me because Ive not often see it down in pictures but it looks like she had an unmanageable amount of it so it may have been her pride and joy. My other thought was that this would have been in a coal mining Durham village where maybe the niceties of style in society didn’t apply but otoh it looks like she was well dolled up for the occasion, whatever it was.