Shared Family Quirks in Literature.
By Author:
- Jane Austen liked this trope:
- Emma: Mr. Woodhouse and his older daughter Isabella, Mrs. John Knightley, are both of fragile constitution and very anxious, yet very kind-hearted. They are very particular about their (and everybody else's) health and they couldn't do without their family doctors. They also deeply love their family and they respect their old friends and acquaintances. Oh, and both Mr. Woodhouse and Mrs. John Knightley are very fond of gruel which often serves as their Comfort Food.
- Pride and Prejudice:
- Both Mr. Bennet and his daughter Elizabeth love making fun of silly people.
- Lydia and to a lesser extent Kitty take after their mother: they are loud, silly, and generally embarrassing.
- Sense and Sensibility:
- Mrs. Dashwood and her younger daughter Marianne are both very romantic and have deep feelings (that especially Marianne exaggerates), to the point that it's rather self-harming.
- Fanny Dashwood is envious, greedy, and mean. Her mother, Mrs. Ferrars, is even more so, yet they are both sure they are perfectly lovely. Quite the evil variant of the trope.
- Mrs. Jennings and her daughter Charlotte's behaviour would fall into this category as well. They both loved fun, however, it was sometimes very inappropriate.
By Title:
- In Acid Row, it's said that the Patterson men tend to all like going off to fight, while the Patterson women like to stay home and have lots of babies (whether they're fathered by their husbands or not). Gaynor's great-great uncle died in World War One and her great-grandmother went on to have ten kids, Gaynor and Melanie are both stay at home mothers with children fathered by different men (Gaynor has five kids, Melanie will have three when her baby is born), and Melanie's fourteen year old brother Colin is frequently in trouble for his antics, but also stands by his sister when she tries to stop further violence.
- Angela Nicely: Mrs. Charmers and her daughter Tiffany are both braggarts, with the former often boasting about the latter and the latter often boasting about herself.
- The Australian children's book Barebum Billy ends with Billy Bottom and his wife Millie having a baby boy, who inherits his father's fondness for running around naked.
- In the Nero Wolfe novella Before I Die, the client, Dazy Perrit, has a daughter, but he has kept her existence and identity a secret to protect her from his enemies. He hires Wolfe to — among other things — break her of a habit she has of shrugging just like her mother did, which he fears has already or will have revealed her parentage.
- In The Bluest Eye, Pecola has a habit of scratching her ankle with her toe, which she seemingly inherited from her mother. This is what triggers her father into raping her.
- In A Brother's Price, the grandmothers of the Whistler clan were spies. While this certainly influenced how the grandchildren were brought up, the kids also share an enthusiasm for the work and promptly report to Jerin what their newly-arrived guests have in their luggage. Jerin chides them for going through their guest's things (and is told not to worry, because "they won't be able to tell"), but is later seen happily playing "break the code" with his sisters. The society at large considers this trope an obvious truth. With one family telling Eldest Whistler that they would have adopted a spare Whistler kid (as the Whistlers are disciplined and hard-working), but the only kids up for adoption were from "bad" families.
- Captain Underpants: Kipper Krupp is revealed to share his uncle Benny's "B-b-b-bubba-bobba-hob-hobba-hobba-wah-wah" phrase when he gets far too distressed to even speak coherently.
- In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the Heffley family has, as Greg puts it, "a lot of brains, but a lot of dummies as well". Frank is a Bumbling Dad, Rodrick can't spell "door", and Uncle Gary broke his collarbone sawing a branch he was on, but on the other hand, Manny can learn Spanish in three days (at age three) and Cousin Benjy can read chapter books at age two.
- In Doctor Sleep, Abra has a way of wiping her lips with one hand that readers of The Shining will find familiar. Turns out she gets it from maternal grandfather Jack Torrance, who died long before she was born.
- Comes up a lot in short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, such as "William Wilson" and "The Fall of the House of Usher".
- In The Famous Five, George has a frown exactly like her father's.
- In The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes, Carl Bottomwell is a Cloudcuckoolander and at the end of the story, his sister Beatrice starts acting goofy as well.
- Harry Potter:
- Harry and his father have the same Patronus (a stag). They are also both avid Quidditch players, though Harry joins the team before learning that and the two play different positions.
- At one point, Ron uses the old-fashioned term "scarlet woman" and, when Hermione laughs, mutters that that's what his mother usually calls people like that.
- During an argument with Fred and George, their sister Ginny strikes a pose so much like Mrs. Weasley that Harry is surprised that the twins aren't cowed by it.
- Fred and George are both pranksters.
- Ron's ears have a tendency to go red when he's angry, which is apparently something of a family trait — in Chamber of Secrets, there's a scene where Percy gets into an argument with Harry and Ron (who are disguised as Crabbe and Goyle via polyjuice potion) and when he angrily storms away, the narration notes that "the back of his neck was as red as Ron's ears".
- Aberforth Dumbledore claims his brother takes after their mother in personality, mostly by being manipulative and unnecessarily secretive. Aberforth shares these personalities traits to a certain as well.
- A plot point in Hercule Poirot's Christmas, where Simeon Lee's sons share their father's habit of throwing their heads back when laughing and Stroking The Chin. Including his bastard son from South Africa, and his bastard son who joined the police force....
- Hive Mind (2016): Amber's grandmother Palma loves chocolate crunch cakes as much as Amber does. When Emmett (Palma's husband) hears Amber sneaking a bite of one during the Circle of Life ceremony, he immediately assumes the sound is coming from his wife.
- In Inheritance Cycle, Ajihad realizes that Murtagh is Morzan's son because their voices are apparently identical.
- The Kitchen Daughter: Ginny's dad, from whom she inherited her undiagnosed Asperger's, used to tap his fingers in the same pattern she does.
- In the short story Little Miss Sneezems, Tina sneezes whenever she comes into contact with any furry animal. His father used to be the same way when he was her age.
- In the kids' book Peek-a-Boo Poo, Alfie would poop in random places to rebel against his toilet training. In its sequel, he is older and has thankfully outgrown this behaviour but his sister Heidi does the same thing.
- In the children's book Potty, Poo-Poo, Wee-Wee, Littlesaurus has a habit of randomly saying bathroom-related words, and it's revealed that his dad did too when he was a toddler.
- Roys Bedoys: The Bedoys brothers both have a sweet tooth and they’re both gamers.
- In the Simon the Rabbit books, Simon and his brother both had "poo bum" as their first words.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: Bully hunting keeps popping up in the Stark family in remarkably similar ways, with Lyanna Stark beating up some squires who attacked Howland Reed, her niece Arya beating up the Crown Prince for threatening the butcher's boy and Arya's favourite brother Jon beating up some nastier Night's Watch recruits when they hurt his friend Sam. The similarities between Jon and Lyanna, and his attachment to Arya who is noted to be a Generation Xerox of her aunt, is one of the biggest arguments behind the fan theory that Lyanna may be Jon's mother.
- In the Thora books, the titular protagonist often scratches her elbows. She learns that her Disappeared Dad Thor had itchy elbows too.
- In Vampire Academy, Rose notes that Victor Dashkov and his teenage daughter Natalie share the tendency of rambling when they speak.
- In Warrior Cats, occasionally kits have traits that are just like their parents. In Moth Flight's Vision, for instance, Moth Flight notices that one of her kits washes his paws the same way his deceased father Micah did.
- In Wicked Good, Rory's biological father Jib shared his obsession with lawnmowers and similar machines. Once Jib drove a riding lawnmower to school, which took hours; Rory drives a lawnmower onto the interstate. He also collected gasoline globes, while Rory collects gas cans.
- In The Worst Thing About My Sister, Melissa and her mother are both fashionistas and can be a bit grumpy, while Marty and her and Melissa's father have a similar sense of humour.
