Little Lord Fauntleroy

Fauntleroy inspires loyalty in those he befriends. Dorincourt, still mostly stuck in his selfish character when he throws the party to show off Fauntleroy, rises to defend the boy’s title when it is unexpectedly challenged. With Cedric gone, Mr. Hobbs nonetheless shows that he’s dedicated to him by trying to learn about his world and by befriending Dick. Both Dick and Mr. Hobbs feel protective of Cedric when they learn his title is being challenged, angered by what they see as an anti-American attempt to rob him of his rightful inheritance.

The contrast between Dorincourt on the one hand and Cedric and his mother on the other is also highlighted. Burnett uses both direct and indirect characterization to paint this difference of character as these three characters react to Bevis’ wife’s claim. The Earl is enraged not only because the woman threatens to strip Fauntleroy of his title, but because she reignites the shame Bevis brought him. He is consumed by his hatred of his late son and now, by extension, of his wife: “[Bevis] was always a disgrace to us. Always a weak, untruthful, vicious young brute with low tastes—my son and heir, Bevis, Lord Fauntleroy” (223). Dorincourt’s descent back into hatred and rage immediately affects his health, with Mr. Havisham noting that “he looked broken and haggard and changed. His rages had always been bad for him, but this one had been worse than the rest because there had been something more than rage in it” (224). Again, physical appearance indicates character, in this case Dorincourt’s haggardness to show a regression to his former ways. This rage is worse than others because Cedric has given Dorincourt what he always wanted—an heir he’s proud of—and now, as Dorincourt sees it, Bevis is ruining even that from the grave by having married the woman threatening Cedric’s title. Confronted with the woman’s threat, Dorincourt regresses to the hate and rage that dominated his life before Fauntleroy, determined to regain the joyful life his grandson showed him was possible.

Cedric and his mother react to the news much differently, demonstrating the importance of equanimity in world where fortune is fickle. Both archetypal innocents are concerned primarily with doing the right thing, and neither is perturbed by the loss of the title. Mrs. Errol cares more that her son become a moral person than become Earl, and Cedric, while regretting that he’ll no longer be able to do good with his grandfather’s money, is primarily concerned with staying close to his mother and grandfather. Neither Mrs. Errol nor Cedric, who she raises in her image, value money, power, or status in themselves. Rather, they only see these things as instruments of doing good. Consequently, the loss of these things doesn’t distress them in the way it does the Earl, who has built his life on the importance of these things. Being forced to give away the only things that mattered to him—his title, his money, his land—to the son of someone he despises, a low-class vulgar woman, in his words, would confirm his fear that those things in fact don’t make him better than everyone else, as he thought they did. To be forced to give the defining things of his life to someone who won’t make him proud, won’t carry on his title, would be to confront the dissonance at the center of his being—that his choice to value money and status over generosity and love has made him miserable. Cedric, and his inheritance of Dorincourt’s title, offers the Earl an opportunity to right his wrong, to revise his character in accordance with a set of values whose worth he is just realizing.