Little Lord Fauntleroy

I feel as though the author's gender has a major influence in how the story is presented for the reader to perceive and comprehend. Whether it be the characters or the underline meaning of the story the authors gender is very influential in creating the type of environment the author wants. In Little Lord Fauntleroy we see for the first time in are readings dealing with boys that he is well mannered, handsome, well dressed, and overall very mature for his age, which is completely different from other boy characters like Tom Sawyer and Ragged Dick. "he was so handsome and strong and rosy that he attracted every one's attention." (Burnett pg. 445) This shows the comparable difference in Cedric to Tom and Dick, I feel that this can be attributed to the author being a female. With the author being female I feel she made Cedric fit the role of what women want boys to be like. While we see with male authors like Twain and Alger made the boys in their stories more rugged and mischievous that followed the stereotypical male child during that time period.

As far as how the text changes when the reader finds out that an author is male or female I feel that gender factors into how the story is is developed in boys literature. With a male author you are going to see a more male ego driven story that depicts the boy as tough and cool not showing any type of compassion or feelings. While a female author writing about boys in literature will show a softer side that we don't identify with males whether it be through how they dress, their manners, their looks and other characteristics we don't see male authors doing with their male characters in this time period. We see in Little Lord Fauntleroy that Cedric personality is far different than the other male characters from previous stories and I fell it was described perfectly in class when someone called him the male version of Ellen Montgomery. But this can be attributed to the author being female because of the non traditional male characteristics that were given to Cedric. Overall though I feel that while gender of an author does have some significance in how the story is portrayed. Each author whether it be male or female has their own distinct style that makes their writing their own no matter their sex.