Little Lord Fauntleroy and the Evolution of American Boyhood

Abstract

This paper evaluates late nineteenth and early twentieth-century definitions of idealized childhood through an analysis of the rapid rise and fall of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy . The 1886 novel of a British-born and American-bred author, Little Lord Fauntleroy tells the story of an American-raised child whose British grandfather suddenly calls him to England to become an earl. Fauntleroy’s initial popularity, the paper argues, can be credited to his embodiment of concepts of innocent childhood found in lingering constructions of the Romantic child still flourishing on both sides of the Atlantic. The essay explores how in the early twentieth-century United States, such ideals came to be considered threats to nationalism because they smacked of an allegedly degenerate effeminacy caused by over-civilization. Though the infamously frilly Fauntleroy suit is actually only briefly described in the novel, it was widely marketed to early readers, and this paper contends that it became a straw man read in contrast to teleological conceptions of U.S. identity which venerated constructions of rugged, rebellious male adolescence as evidence of America’s rightful place at the pinnacle of social evolution. The paper concludes that the drama of Little Lord Fauntleroy ’s reception history suggests that the enormous cultural capital of the figure of the child stems from the way in which the transience and dependency of childhood exposes it to continual social repurposing under the cover of outwardly timeless essentialism.