By knowing that Frances Burnett, the author of “Little Lord Fauntleroy” is a woman makes me look at the story differently. Especially in the way she describes Cedric, she says “He has a beautiful face and a fine, strong, graceful figure; he has a bring smile and a sweet, gay voice; he was brave and generous, and has the kindest hart in the world….”(442). The adjectives she uses are extremely famine and ones that I believe only a woman author would choose to use in describing a little boy. She also makes Cedric extremely sensitive to other people’s feelings and also the way he dresses is exactly how a woman would picture a clean-cut boy to dress like. After Cedric won the race against Billy we see him console him by saying “I guess I won because my legs are a little longer then yours. I guess that was it. You see, I’m three days older then you, and that gives me a ‘vantage. I’m three days older” (476). Most little boys are not usually sensitive to other people’s feelings, they usually only care about themselves and the glory they got from winning. In this passage we see signs of how Frances Burnett may have used Cedric to have a woman’s sensitive nature in caring and consoling Billy.
By not knowing whether the author of a story is a woman or a man it allows you to have no biases of how the story is written. If we can’t tell at the beginning of a story of whether the author was a male or female we tend not to look at that as a important part of the story. I think the gender of the author makes a difference in the story. Once we found out that Frances Burnett was a woman it made more sense that she was describing Cedric in words such as “beautiful.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I also wrote about how we wouldn't have biases if we didn't know if the author was female or male. I think that some boys can be sensitive, beautiful and what not and that some men can protray boys like that, but with how we have been raised in society and by our parents we tend to use stereotypes for what men and women should be like and I think that affects us a lot in terms of how we read a story and if the author is female or male.
ReplyDeleteI think that by reading Little Lord Fauntleroy without knowing the sex of the author, the words that stick out to us now that we know Burnett is a woman would not have stuck out so much. I believe that in the nineteenth century, a man or a woman creating a boy character and describing him as “beautiful” and with curly blond locks would be more accepted then it would be today.
ReplyDeleteI agree that not knowing the gender of an author gives you less bias towards the story. I think I actually enjoyed reading Little Lord Fauntleroy first, and then finding out the author is a female. Once you form your own opinions towards the story, there is a whole different dimension added on when you find out more about the author.
ReplyDeleteI also think that knowing the authors gender changes the way that you digest the feminine choice of words that are used by the author to describe Little Lord Fauntleroy. Knowing that the author Burnett is a woman, explains why the choices of the words are ones that are quite feminine.
ReplyDelete