In Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett we see that the role of authorship can have a great deal of an impact that the author makes on people. I find it interesting, now knowing that the author is for sure a female, how little boys are supposed to act as portrayed through Ceddie. In the previous readings we see how little boys are to be independent, witty, and not the perfect little angel we see girls being portrayed to be. We see Ceddie as completely different from Tom Sawyer and Dick. Ceddie is “beautiful” (445), “wished to make every on as comfortable as he liked to be himself” (446), and “seems to be a very mature little fellow” (473). I think the fact that this is a female writer really shows how she was not pleased with the way little boys were portrayed. She completely turns everything that Mark Twain shows a little boy to be on its head. She proves the point that little boys can be sensitive, sweet, and good too.
I think that not knowing what the author’s gender is plays a little role on how we interpret the text we read. If we do not know the gender of the author we just take the text as is written and do not even stop to worry about the background behind why certain points are made. I know we mentioned in class that this story is to be used to help parents raise up the “perfect” son. This idea does not change when we find out the author is a girl. The main thing that changes is the point of view that it is coming from. I think it gives it a little more of an edge, and come to think of it, I could not see a man portraying a young boy this way. If you think about it, in most families, the dad lets the little boys run free and the mom is in charge of the boy behaving. Does that show through in Burnett’s writing? I think so.
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I found it interesting how you contrasted the way that mothers and fathers raise their little boys because there is a big significance in how they both raise them. Like you mentioned, I do believe that shows through in Burnett's writing because she might have been a mother and mother's portray their children differently than fathers do. This is probably the reason that Tom Sawyer and Ragged Dick were portrayed as the opposite of Ceddie because men wrote the story and they were also fathers.
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