Little Lord Fauntleroy

When I started to read Little Lord Fauntleroy I was not aware of who the author was exactly. Most of the time, I just read and don't find out the name of the author until it is mentioned in class unless it was on the first page of the story. I always assume it's a man or a woman based on how the story is played out and the characteristics of it and I think many other people do that too. In my opinion, I think assuming whether a story was written by a woman or a man has a lot to do with what we have grown up with in society such as the stereotypes surrounding what men and women are like and how men and women should behave.

Finding out an author's gender before you read a story makes a big difference because when you start reading a story you already have this idea of how it is going to play out. In the case of Little Lord Fauntleroy, we were unsure if the author was a man or a woman but from the discussion in class on Tuesday it was apparent that many people were questioning whether Frances Hodgson Burnett was a man or a woman. Many assumed it was a woman because of how she described Lord Fauntleroy such as when she said, "In the first place, he was always well and never gave anyone trouble; in the second place, he had so sweet a temper and ways so charming that he was a pleasure to every one; and in the third place, he was so beautiful to look at that he was quite a picture." (444-445). I believe that many people thought the author was a woman mainly because of the use of the word "beautiful." Looking back at Ragged Dick and Tom Sawyer, we don't really see many uses of the word "beautiful" or many other superficial words like that. The comparison brings up another difference between Lord Fauntleroy,Ragged Dick and Tom Sawyer because it is apparent that Ragged Dick and Tom Sawyer had many flaws, yet we see that Lord Fauntleroy is nearly perfect because of his beauty and because it is said that he had "a kind little heart that sympathized with everyone, and wished to make everyone as comfortable as he liked to be himself." (446). We see that Lord Fauntleroy has everything a person could want in a person's characteristics along with good looks, and this generosity is seen in Ragged Dick also, but the main difference is that Lord Fauntleroy has everything going for him and he is not so much ambitious as he is kind-hearted and generous.

In conclusion, when we find out that an author is female we tend to focus more on superficial things and emotions such as the sympathy of Little Lord Fauntleroy and set ourselves up to capture the story in a woman's perspective even though a woman isn't the only gender that sees things emotionally and superficially but we have been taught that women are more open with emotions and beauty such as in The Wide Wide World. When we know that an author is male we tend to focus more on the wit and charm of the characters and the other characteristics apart from beauty and emotions. When we don't know if an author is male or female I believe that we form our own conclusions based on how society views what men and women are like and how they each behave and what they each focus on, which makes us biased to what we are reading. In reality, there probably isn't that much of a difference between male and female authors except for stories where it is apparent that a woman or male wrote it because it might end with marriage or focus more on ambition like in the 19th century because female and male authors were trying to stick to society's expectations of males and females back then. However,in our minds as we read stories that can go either way we assume it is either a man or a woman based on what the story focuses on and when we know beforehand if the author is male or female, we have set up ourselves to view the story a certain way and we tend to focus on what we have been taught about women and men characteristics.