Frederica and her Guardians Or, The Perils of Orphanhood

Margaret Murray RobertsonProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
429K words
Chapters
43

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Portrait GalleryOrphan's FateGuardianshipFamily BondsGrowing UpAdversity GrowthMoral DilemmaHeartwarming NarrativeFemale PerspectiveYouth Reading

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Frederica and her Guardians; Or, The Perils of Orphanhood by Margaret M. RobertsonAuthor: Robertson, Margaret M. (Margaret Murray), 1821-1897,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Dec 3, 2011

Editor's review

This is a strongly plotted domestic coming-of-age novel by Margaret M. Robertson, centered on the orphan Frederica and her life with her guardians after losing both parents. Its value lies not in dramatic adventure but in its nuanced portrayal of how a child rebuilds a sense of security after familial rupture and seeks balance between adult rules and her own stubbornness. The author excels at advancing relationships through everyday dialogue and small conflicts; the guardians are not idealized figures but people with flaws and goodwill, which keeps the story from simple moral binaries. For readers familiar with nineteenth-century English juvenile fiction, the book offers a window onto period family ethics, educational views, and narratives of female development. It suits slow, chapter-by-chapter reading on quiet evenings, and can serve as a supplementary text in English literature courses for discussing the evolution of the orphan figure in English fiction. As a public-domain ebook, the text has no modern annotations, so first-time readers may need some background knowledge of the era.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the first five chapters to clarify the relationships, then proceed chapter by chapter, briefly noting Frederica's emotional shifts after each.
  2. When encountering unfamiliar period language, don't look up every word; first grasp the tone of dialogue and characters' attitudes, then fill in background later.
  3. Read alongside other orphan novels of the same kind, noting how guardian figures shape the protagonist's choices.
  4. After finishing, write a short essay outlining the difference between the two modes of guardianship in the book: "protection" and "restriction".

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners to read directly? Not really for zero-beginner or elementary learners. This is a nineteenth-century English text with long sentences and everyday language that differs from today's English, and the public-domain ebook has no annotations. It is best attempted by readers with intermediate or higher English reading ability who can accept slow reading, or read with a dictionary and background materials.
What is the core conflict of the story? The core conflict centers on the relationship between the orphan Frederica and her guardians. After losing both parents, she must adapt to new household rules, while the guardians each have their own personalities and limitations; the two sides continually clash over discipline, trust, and emotional expression. Through everyday events, the story shows how she seeks understanding within constraints and gradually builds a new sense of belonging.
Why is it recommended to pay attention to the guardian figures? The guardians in the book are not idealized protectors but ordinary people with shortcomings and troubles of their own. This approach makes guardianship not merely an act of charity but an interweaving of responsibility, patience, and power. Readers can observe how nineteenth-century domestic-ethics narratives shape adult figures, and how children make their voices heard within them.

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About the author

Margaret Murray Robertson Author · Scottish-Canadian · 1821–1897

Margaret Murray Robertson (1821–1897) was a Scottish-born Canadian teacher and novelist, born in Stewartfield, Scotland, and died in Montreal. She taught at Sherbrooke College and devoted herself to writing after 1866, leaving eleven works, including Christie Redfern's Troubles, Shenac's Work at Home, Stephen Grattan's Faith: A Canadian Story, and Eunice. Her novels mostly centre on family, faith, and growth, often portraying orphans and young women facing moral trials; the plots are plain and didactic, coloured by the sentimentality and piety of nineteenth-century Canadian English-language literature. Public information is limited, and details of her life and the circulation of her works remain to be further studied.