Scots. Poor people. Invalids. High-minded food faddists. Children who have no choice in the matter. Characters in literature do not just happen to eat porridge, the fact that they eat it says something about them.
Usually what it says is that they are poor. In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell has Margaret sing an 1815 Lancashire dialect song called ‘The Oldham Weaver’. (Ewan MacColl sang it more recently, and Oldham Tinkers sing it on YouTube).
"We tow'rt on six week--thinking aitch day wur th' last,
We shifted, an' shifted, till neaw we're quoite fast;
We lived upo' nettles, whoile nettles wur good,
An' Waterloo porridge the best o' eawr food,
Oi'm tellin' yo' true,
Oi can find folk enow,
As wur livin' na better nor me."
In this version, the song is presumably referring to an economic downturn at the time of the Napoleonic Wars; later it was rewritten for other crises. (There is a somewhat unreliable discussion of the history of the song on Wikipedia). I have not well-referenced explanation yet of ‘waterloo porridge’, but it’s probably not a good thing if one eats it after the nettles run out.
Porridge takes on a different meaning in another novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1855). Margaret Hale is shocked to hear that the mill owner Mr. Thornton once worked in a shop, and Mr. Bell tells his story:
"Mr. Bell said they absolutely lived upon water-porridge for years--how, he did not know; but long after the creditors had given up hope of any payment of old Mr. Thornton's debts (if, indeed, they ever had hoped at all about it, after his suicide,) this young man returned to Milton, and went quietly round to each creditor, paying him the first instalment of the money owing to him" (Ch. 11).
Here the living on ‘water porridge’ is a sign of Mr. Thornton’s and his mother’s moral fiber: he worked hard and they lived in poverty until he could pay off his father’s debts, and now he is successful and presumably has a more varied diet.
The best novel in English literature, for porridge, is probably Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, where David Balfour, fleeing across Scotland in the 18th century, comes across all sorts of porridge eater's good and bad. Here is the first, his Uncle Ebenezer, who has greeted David with an offer of porridge while he himself has ale. Things get rather heated.
"Hoot-toot!" said Uncle Ebenezer, "dinnae fly up in the snuff at me. We'll agree fine yet. And, Davie, my man, if you're done with that bit parritch, I could just take a sup of it myself. Ay," he continued, as soon as he had ousted me from the stool and spoon, "they're fine, halesome food—they're grand food, parritch." He murmured a little grace to himself and fell to. "Your father was very fond of his meat, I mind; he was a hearty, if not a great eater; but as for me, I could never do mair than pyke at food." He took a pull at the small beer, which probably reminded him of hospitable duties, for his next speech ran thus: "If ye're dry ye'll find water behind the door."
('Meat' here is the any food; it is used earlier to refer to the porridge). David is rather offended to be offered just porridge after his journey, and to be given water rather than ale, but later in the novel he is happy enough to have porridge on the ship, and ‘porridge and whey’ with Mr. Henderland in the Highlands.
Let us end with a more complicated mention – just mention – of porridge, in Edith Wharton’s excellent but little-read novel The Custom of the Country (1913). A bit of background: the wonderfully-named Undine Spragg is a relentless and observant social climber who marries Ralph Marwell for his social position. Now she is off having social engagements and ignoring their son Paul, even forgetting his birthday. Ralph has come over to his sister Laura's house to be at the party, which hasn't happened. Instead of Undine, Ralph’s cousin Clare van Degen comes in with a gift for Paul. At first she satirises herself in terms of what others might think of her as a member of a wealthy family, but her offering turns out to have a different kind of value.
Slender and shadowy in her long furs, she bent to kiss Mrs. Fairford and then turned back to Ralph. "Yes, I knew I'd catch you here. I knew it was the boy's birthday, and I've brought him a present: a vulgar expensive Van Degen offering. I've not enough imagination left to find the right thing, the thing it takes feeling and not money to buy. When I look for a present nowadays I never say to the shopman: 'I want this or that'--I simply say: 'Give me something that costs so much.'"
She drew a parcel from her muff. "Where's the victim of my vulgarity? Let me crush him under the weight of my gold."
Mrs. Fairford sighed out "Clare--Clare!" and Ralph smiled at his cousin.
"I'm sorry; but you'll have to depute me to present it. The birthday's over; you're too late."
* * *
He turned to his cousin. "Will you trust me with your present for the boy?"
Clare gave him the parcel. "I'm sorry not to give it myself. I said what I did because I knew what you and Laura were thinking--but it's really a battered old Dagonet bowl that came down to me from our revered great-grandmother."
"What--the heirloom you used to eat your porridge out of?" Ralph detained her hand to put a kiss on it. "That's dear of you!"
She threw him one of her strange glances. "Why not say: 'That's like you?' But you don't remember what I'm like."
So what is she like? She is someone who values a gift for its associations with generations of her family rather than for its expense (as Undine, who finds out later, does not). And she is an aristocrat who, as a girl, had porridge for breakfast. Even van Degens are porridge eaters.