Fathers in Brontë Novels

An alert for tomorrow, July 13, in Sydney, Australia:

Saturday 13th July
Michelle Cavanagh discusses
Literary Fathers and Fathers in the Brontë Novels
Castlereagh Boutique Hotel, 10:30am

What sort of father was Patrick Brontë? Mrs Gaskell did not paint him in a very favourable light. He certainly seems to have been a strange mixture of being very supportive to his children as well as being remote from them. To what extent did their experience of their own father colour the Brontës’ descriptions of the fathers in their novels?