The Secret Garden was a spiritually lifting experience like nothing I've experienced and is one of my absolute favorites, yet I hadn't even considered reading another book by the same author. I will check it out.
I also had to tackle the Secret Garden on trust because it sounded absolutely dull (it wasn't). And though I usually don't like audio books, I listened to the version read by Johanna Ward based on your suggestion (https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2019/10/review-of-secret-garden-by-frances.html) and I highly second your recommendation!
@Sean - Glad we agree! I have added FHB to my list of women literary geniuses; and - as usual with that species - she had a strange personal life. There seem to be approximately zero 'normal' woman geniuses (I can't think of any) - although a fair proportion (albeit probably a minority) of men geniuses are pretty 'normal' (at least to appearances) - like Bach, RW Emerson, or Tolkien.
3 August 2020 at 13:53
Dave said...
When my daughter was little, about a decade ago, I read to her three FHB novels -- Fauntleroy, Little Princess, and Secret Garden, and we enjoyed them very much. They are not however suitable for older children and adults. For one thing, they rely too heavily on million-to-one coincidences, e.g. in "Little Princess", the girl he was searching the world for just happened to live next door!
The moral message, as one would expect of a woman, is 100% empathy, 0% justice. Why look, these peasants on Lord Fauntleroy's estate have allowed their cottages to fall into utter ruin! We must build them new ones at once! Of course the peasants gratefully accept the boy's charity because a woman is writing the story; real-world peasants would see an opportunity to overthrow him and loot the store-houses.
When women are given the right to vote, they bring this empathy out of the nursery, where it belongs, and into public policy, creating a highly-taxed, highly-regulated welfare state with legal abortion, low fertility, and mass third-world immigration.
@Dave - You do realise, don't you, that this is the Marxist (everything is politics, at root) way of reading children's literature?
3 August 2020 at 17:57
Dave said...
Lordship over a vast 19th-century English country estate is inherently political and should not be entrusted to a young boy or a woman of any age. If you're too nice to people, they *will* take advantage of you, the estate will sink into debt, and you'll be forced to sell off big chunks of it to more savvy lords.
In Anna Karenina, the author's alter-ego Count Levin spends much time thinking and writing a book about the proper management of agricultural labor following the recent emancipation of the serfs. He never solves this problem, nor did we; John Deere solved it for us.
@Dave - I had a too much of this kind of stuff - economic/ political analyses of novels - when I was actively studying Eng Lit. It's just another version of convergence.
3 August 2020 at 19:24
Anonymous said...
Have you tried Charlotte M. Yonge? I thoroughly enjoyed The Clever Woman of the Family (surprisingly as reprinted in the 1985 Virago Modern Classics ed.) - though, somewhat like SeanG, I have not yet read another of her novels after having so enjoyed that one.
Just a brief note to endorse what generations of readers already know: Little Lord Fauntleroy is a superb children's novel!
Having found the same to be true of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden - I moved on to tackle FHB's earlier, and most famous, story - but I must admit that I had to force myself. I needed to take Fauntleroy on trust - because I could not really believe that it would be much good, nor that I personally would like it...
My mind was too full of images of nauseating, cloying, simpering boys with long blond hair in velvet suits with lace collars (some depictions of LLF even cast a pretty girl in the lead role). But eventually I got myself to tackle it - and was quickly swept away by enjoyment and appreciation.
The USP (Unique Selling Point) of Fauntleroy is that he is close to being a perfect child - beautiful, tough, clever, kind, stoical, generous, athletic, brave - and everybody loves him (including other children)...
Now, saying this is one thing, but to make such a good child firstly convincing, then interesting (let alone likeable to the reader - since we are usually most inclined to resent perfection), is quite an ask: a tall order. Many have tried, and failed... But FHB does it!
The way she achieves this, is to structure the book as (mostly) a series of interactions between Fauntleroy and a sequence of contrasting people, in a variety of situations: his mother, the local grocer, a shoe-shine boy, other kids playing a game, a lawyer, sailors on board ship, the Earl his grandfather, a 'society' debutante beauty surrounded by her admirers etc.
Thus she does not just tell, but shows us the effect that a truly good child could have on the people he met. These dyadic interactions also lead to much humour of the 'talking at cross-purposes' kind - generally because Fauntleroy is immediately liked by people, and naturally assumes the best of them; so they do not want to disillusion him or let him down. Most end-up becoming better people themselves in response to F.
So, in multiple ways - small and larger - we find Fauntleroy making the world a better place, and in a way that is very believable - given the premise that he is indeed, the kind of 'perfect' child that he is depicted.
Altogether, Little Lord Fauntleroy is an unique, original, enjoyable and extremely effective novel; of the first rank in its genre. So, don't be put-off!
"Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1886)"
8 Comments -
The Secret Garden was a spiritually lifting experience like nothing I've experienced and is one of my absolute favorites, yet I hadn't even considered reading another book by the same author. I will check it out.
I also had to tackle the Secret Garden on trust because it sounded absolutely dull (it wasn't). And though I usually don't like audio books, I listened to the version read by Johanna Ward based on your suggestion (https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2019/10/review-of-secret-garden-by-frances.html) and I highly second your recommendation!
3 August 2020 at 13:05
@Sean - Glad we agree! I have added FHB to my list of women literary geniuses; and - as usual with that species - she had a strange personal life. There seem to be approximately zero 'normal' woman geniuses (I can't think of any) - although a fair proportion (albeit probably a minority) of men geniuses are pretty 'normal' (at least to appearances) - like Bach, RW Emerson, or Tolkien.
3 August 2020 at 13:53
When my daughter was little, about a decade ago, I read to her three FHB novels -- Fauntleroy, Little Princess, and Secret Garden, and we enjoyed them very much. They are not however suitable for older children and adults. For one thing, they rely too heavily on million-to-one coincidences, e.g. in "Little Princess", the girl he was searching the world for just happened to live next door!
The moral message, as one would expect of a woman, is 100% empathy, 0% justice. Why look, these peasants on Lord Fauntleroy's estate have allowed their cottages to fall into utter ruin! We must build them new ones at once! Of course the peasants gratefully accept the boy's charity because a woman is writing the story; real-world peasants would see an opportunity to overthrow him and loot the store-houses.
When women are given the right to vote, they bring this empathy out of the nursery, where it belongs, and into public policy, creating a highly-taxed, highly-regulated welfare state with legal abortion, low fertility, and mass third-world immigration.
3 August 2020 at 17:29
@Dave - You do realise, don't you, that this is the Marxist (everything is politics, at root) way of reading children's literature?
3 August 2020 at 17:57
Lordship over a vast 19th-century English country estate is inherently political and should not be entrusted to a young boy or a woman of any age. If you're too nice to people, they *will* take advantage of you, the estate will sink into debt, and you'll be forced to sell off big chunks of it to more savvy lords.
In Anna Karenina, the author's alter-ego Count Levin spends much time thinking and writing a book about the proper management of agricultural labor following the recent emancipation of the serfs. He never solves this problem, nor did we; John Deere solved it for us.
3 August 2020 at 18:45
@Dave - I had a too much of this kind of stuff - economic/ political analyses of novels - when I was actively studying Eng Lit. It's just another version of convergence.
3 August 2020 at 19:24
Have you tried Charlotte M. Yonge? I thoroughly enjoyed The Clever Woman of the Family (surprisingly as reprinted in the 1985 Virago Modern Classics ed.) - though, somewhat like SeanG, I have not yet read another of her novels after having so enjoyed that one.
David Llewellyn Dodds
12 August 2020 at 03:29
David - I'll take a look
12 August 2020 at 08:54