 Although Frances is an invented character, most of the other characters are, in fact, based on accounts of real people from Anderson's extensive primary research.She created Frances to give voice to her own narrative commentary.Anderson once playfully likened the Moreton Bay social climate to Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford; Susan Sheridan notes that the likeness is particularly true of the discord between the elegant gentility of the middle-class, and the cruelty of the penal colony.