Representations of the Upper-Class Victorian Father in Ellen Pickering's The Fright

The Fright by Ellen Pickering deals with parental roles within a wide range of foster families of early Victorian upper classes and with parent-child relationships these roles imply. Special attention is drawn to the paternal figure as it is depicted in the characters of Mr Bradley and Mr Rolleston, and to the relationships they develop with Grace, whom they foster one after another. Mr Bradley is a kind and loving foster parent to Grace, but his physical and psychological absence and lack of domestic authority allow his wife and children to mistreat her. In contrast, Mr Rolleston is described as a sovereign father who is always present, being actively and directly involved with his foster daughter, but whose parental involvement derives from self-oriented reasons, making his fatherhood swing from stern coldness to affection. The contention is that the portrayals of Mr Bradley‘s and Mr Rolleston‘s fatherhood depart from the socio-historical prototype of early Victorian wealthy fathers, who were often absent from their households, but nonetheless ruled them with undisputed power. By comparing the literary representations of the upper-class English father to the typical historical construct, this article aims at proving, through the deviation existing between these two, that the realism of the Victorian novel does not consist in rendering characters and their actions in consistency with socio-historical templates