In Little Lord Fauntleroy Frances Hodgson Burnett presents her reader with one of the most well behaved little boys in literature, children’s or otherwise. The ‘ideal child’ in many ways, little Cedric with his curly blond hair, his big brown eyes, and his sturdy legs seems to charm everyone he meets from the poor old apple-woman with aching bones to his curmudgeonly grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt. He does everything with utmost care and the purest of intentions; Cedric’s only fault is his perfection. It is, perhaps, because of this fault (that many people found greatly appealing in a way beyond my comprehension) that lead to the immense popularity of this novel and the subsequent fashion craze that it spawned, which caused, as far as records indicate, at least one little boy to burn down his family’s home in protest to having to don the “Fauntleroy suit.” In stark contrast of Lord Fauntleroy, is Mark Twain’s eponymous Huckleberry Finn, another story that may have lead to house fires, though for completely different reasons. Despite Huck’s wild child ways and refusal to be tamed, he has become synonymous with American boyhood and so culturally significant that his escapades along the Mississippi hardly call for reiteration. The only thing that Fauntleroy and Huck seem to share is that they both hold the title of epitomizing American boyhood, a feat that calls into question not only the significance of that title but also what exactly it means to be an American boy. As with childhood in general, we are brought up with notions of what constitute ideal American boyhood yet these notions are vague and ambiguous and seem to exist only to perpetuate the myth of the perfect childhood. The fact that Fauntleroy and Huck are so dissimilar in their function within American boyhood may be traced back to their origins.
Burnett’s Lord Fauntleroy seems to exemplify the perfect childhood for the precise reason that a boy like Huck might be excluded from that role. A mother’s dream, Fauntleroy is generous and unassuming. He gives the needs of others priority over his own and it is through this trait that he has power. However, in examining Fauntleroy in terms of American boyhood it seems reasonable that his nationally should come into question. Though born in New York, he is transplanted to England to inherit earldom after the deaths of all other remaining heirs to the position. However, it may be argued that while Lord Fauntleroy may have British loyalties, Cedric is an honest all-American lad. In her essay “Little Lord Fauntleroy: The Darling of Mothers and the Abomination of a Generation,” Anna Wilson writes that “Dearest has made Fauntleroy what he is; to a quite surprising extent, Fauntleroy is his mother’s creation, the product of a regime of construction through sentiment.” As Dearest (the title he has given to his mother) is marked by her Americanism it may be deduced that if Fauntleroy is his mother’s child than that national identity is passed down along with an almost nauseating temperament among other things.
Wilson also questions Fauntleroy’s identity as a male, suggesting that he is defined by his femininity she writes, “rather than just a boy rendered girl, little Lord Fauntleroy represents a boy functioning as a female substitute.” This argument may have some validity based on Christopher Wagner’s claim on the website he operates dedicated to the historical background of both Fauntleroy and his little velvet suit, that Burnett’s inspiration, her son Vivian, was given the masculine form of the name the Burnetts planned to give the daughter that they had expected. Fauntleroy’s femininity may be further demonstrated by the 1921 film adaptation in which “America’s [Canadian] sweetheart,” Mary Pickford, plays not only Cedric’s mother, but also Cedric himself. It is of note that another classic boy, though undeniably un-American, Peter Pan, is traditionally a role held by women, suggesting an almost inherent femininity or androgyny to boyhood. Despite the fact that Fauntleroy is traditionally seen as effeminate, Burnett attempts to create a little man out of him, describing the Earl’s first encounter with his grandson she writes that he saw “a graceful childish figure in a black velvet suit, with a lace collar, and with love-locks waving about the handsome, manly little face, whose eyes met his with a look of innocent good-fellowship." It’s almost as though Burnett’s attention to Fauntleroy’s more “manly” features is meant to remind readers that he is in fact male. Of his appearance, Wilson claims that “Fauntleroy's effeminacy would present no great difficulty if it were not precisely this version of him, the little boy with the long golden curls wearing the velvet suit with the lace collar, that captured the public imagination.” It may seem that Burnett’s well behaved little man never really stood a chance against his bad boy contemporaries, his timing was just
too off. “The model of manliness that he represents is closer to the androgynous ideal of an earlier time than it is to Tom Sawyer’s world, in which the ‘model boy’ who takes perfect care of his mother is automatically an object of loathing and contempt."
It is “Tom Sawyer’s world” that Huck inhabits, or at least one very similar to it, and unlike the realm of Fauntleroy where cuteness prevails, we are left with gray areas in St. Petersburg and along the Mississippi. This distinction is most notably seen through the relationships of our young heroes. Before being whisked away to England, Fauntleroy and his mother “knew very few people, and lived what might have been thought very lonely lives,” yet we don’t get much of a sense of their isolation, perhaps because they are never truly alone because they always have each other. In contrast to the mother-son relationship that Burnett gives us is the relationship between Huck and Jim. Even in spite of his companion, T.S. Eliot notes that Huck “is alone; there is no more solitary character in fiction.” Huck and Jim have a much more complicated relationship than Fauntleroy and his mother, in that it is almost impossible to define and the source of much conflict in the novel. On one hand they behave in a rather familial way with Jim acting as the sober father Huck never had, yet there is a dehumanization and objectification of Jim as he shifts from person to property depending on what is more convenient for Huck. There is always something that prevents them from ever becoming a singular unit. This behavioral disparity between Fauntleroy and Huck extends to how each interact with their surroundings. Fauntleroy engages in the world around him, he acts as a catalyst for the other characters and his very presence inspires action. Whereas Huck may be seen as a passive spectator. His presence may no doubt influence the situations that he becomes involved in, as with the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons, though there is the feeling that even without his involvement things would have progressed similarly. Fauntleroy, like Tom Sawyer, is a doer, while Huck is an observer—a distinction that is not limited to the characters themselves but the narrative structures in which they reside. Rather than utilizing an omnipotent narrator, as is the case in Little Lord Fauntleroy, Twain evokes the voice of Huck providing a first person account of his adventures and allowing his readers stylistic consistency as well as a much more personal connection to his unwitting hero who seems to attract adventure rather than seek it out.
In returning back to the idea of American boyhood and what that means, I think there is something to be said about its mythic quality, as Leslie Fielder wrote in his essay, “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!,” “The mythic America is boyhood.” The ideal boyhood is an experience that no real boy ever had, it has been relegated to fiction and its popularity is linked to the fact that it allows us relive experiences that we never had in the first place. Perhaps Adventures of Huckleberry Finn gives its readers the opportunity to fill in fading memories with experiences more desirable than those that actually existed. It is precisely this sense of nostalgia that separates a book like Huck Finn from Little Lord Fauntleroy. While I don’t doubt that there were and still are men that treat Little Lord Fauntleroy wistfully, I do think that Burnett’s book presents a boyhood that is more fabricated by one’s parent than one’s own desire. The fundamental dissimilarity between Fauntleroy and Huck is that it is Fauntleroy who our parents wish we could be and Huck Finn who we wish we could have been.
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