Little Lord Fauntleroy: The Defence of a Fashion Victim

Abstract

Little Lord Fauntleroy was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett; it was serialized in the children’s magazine, St. Nicholas, in 1885 and published in book form in 1886. Though intended for children, the book was extremely popular among readers of all ages. During the story’s peak in popularity, a vogue for the ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy suit’ began to sweep both England and America. This ensemble, which the novel describes as ‘a black velvet suit, with a lace collar, and with lovelocks waving about the handsome manly little face,’ was so wildly popular among mothers that many arranged for their sons to wear the requisite long blond curls and knickers. The fervour with which cartoonists, humorists, and angry editorialists reacted against the fad implied that the whole western world was under siege by a swarm of Fauntleroys or, more specifically, that the boys of the western world were under siege by a swarm of Fauntleroy crazed mothers. Reactions against the fad accused mothers of imposing their romantic (and therefore feminine) fantasies on the lives of their sons. Maternal vanity was targeted as the morally corrupt motivation that led mothers to fashion themselves into queens with sons adorned like little princes. The most damning criticism accused mothers of abusing the very nature of boyhood, thereby threatening the development of the future generation of American men. An examination of both the fad and reactionary criticism against it provides an illuminative perspective on evolving concepts of boyhood as reflective of the changing social structure of late nineteenth century American life.