“Uncles are One Thing … [but] Aunts are Always Nasty!”1 Relational failures and the discourse of gender bias in foster family tales

Rosy may question the usefulness of the spinster aunt as transformative family parent, as discussed in the previous chapter, and so demonstrate the danger of outside influences and the frailty of the domestic ideal, but for Molesworth all should be perfectly restored prior to closure. However, while Brenda portrayed middleclass family life largely in keeping with the Victorian concept of the domestic ideal, her portraits of destitute Londoners depicted an altogether contrasting scenario. If woman's ideal sphere was domesticity, maternity, and family, as nineteenth-century ideology asserted, then a female author was obviously entirely qualified to proffer advice on familial matters, particularly to children. Indeed, women and their "charges" might be perceived as comprising transformative family units in which the female, as carer and nurturer, "adopted" those who were impoverished and attempted to instill the ideologies of the middle classes into her wayward, often dissolute "kin."