THE EROTICISATION OF THE INNOCENT:

AN ANALYSIS OF THE CREATION OF THE

IDEAL VICTORIAN CHILD, USING QUEER
THEORY AND TEXTUAL ANALYSIS.

BY MEGAN LYNCH
 The Eroticisation of the Innocent | Megan Lynch

A classic children’s novel written by Frances Hodgson Burnett and debuted in 1886, Little
Lord Fauntleroy is a story that captures the faultless model of the ideal Victorian child. It
follows an innocent, highly romanticised boy of seven named Cedric Errol who, out of mere
circumstance, unexpectedly becomes heir to his self-centred and violently impatient
grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt. An adult in his actions, and yet child-like in his
ignorance of what his actions imply, Cedric is the perfect embodiment of the knowing-
innocent child, “a being who can, impossibly, embody the potentiality of a future, not-yet-
realized social order and also give its full consent to that suppositious future, maintaining
both childish purity (ignorance) and mature selfhood (knowingness)…” (Jones; 2013, pg. 2).
Cedric Errol is a literary child designed by the subjection of the adult, and by the desire to
create the image of perfection and innocence. Therefore, applying both queer and text-
centered theories reveals that the ideal child doesn’t exist, but is a romanticised and eroticised
construction modelled by adult sentimentality.

When referring to children’s literature, it can be assumed that the creator of such a genre was
not children, as to begin with, “one must no longer be a child to write well enough to publish
children’s fiction.” (Pugh; 2011, pg. 3). Neither are children the main purchasers of
children’s fiction, as adults are often prone to provide children with books to begin with,
asserting the notion that children are incapable of achieving anything without the assistance
of the adult. (Chandler; 2014). This implies that adults are the sole creators of children’s
novels, and therefore the Child. This invites a level of queerness, as it suggests that children’s
literature “is a unique genre in that its authors create their fictions for an audience of whom
they are by definition no longer a part.” (Pugh; 2011, pg. 2).

The Child and by default childhood, then becomes a construct of adult sentimentality.
According to Leskin-Oberstein, “the child does not exist…the ‘child’ is a construction,
constructed and described in different, often clashing, terms.” (Leskin-Oberstein; cited by
Pugh; 2011, pg. 2). The Child is made into a being that is unformed and part of an adult’s
fantasy, created through merely “the act of adults looking back.” (Stockton; 2009, pg. 5).
Therefore, there is no clear definition of what the Child is, which allows space for the Child
to be shaped and molded as the adult desires. This explains the attractiveness of a literary
Child such as Cedric Errol to the adult reader, who is described by Burnett as being “so
handsome and strong and rosy that he attracted everyone’s attention.” (pg. 7). He is a child in
which adults can project themselves and experience childhood once more, creating a version
of it that improves on their own, perhaps mundane or cruel memory of it. (Tribunella; cited
by Lareau; 2011).

This attempt to both define the Child and control what the Child ‘is’ through adult subjection
has caused the concept to become “thick with complication.” (Stockton; 2009, pg. 2). This is
because the Child is a figure that is empty and devoid of social implications and restraints,
which allows room for the adult to create just about any implied reading desired. (Kincaid;

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cited by Lareau; 2011). As a result of this fact, the literary Child has become a method in
which adults can extend their own ideals – these being mostly social and political – onto
child readers. Due to this, children’s literature has come to preserve ideological values, often
to serve a future objective, mainly to educate real children about moral codes rarely taught in
classrooms. (Pugh; 2011). Therefore, the Child is constructed to “solicit our (adult) anxieties,
our delights, our ethics, our love, or really any form of our attention, especially when politics
and moral values are made an issue…” (Cobb; 2005, pg. 119). The Child and children’s
literature become a kind of sign system, which employs a range of recognizable symbolism,
all to imply these social themes and changes. (May; 1997). This is exemplified in Little Lord
Fauntleroy, as Cedric Errol, the Child of the text, is constructed to “exist as a compromised
amalgam of American and English identities – a manufactured object of trans-Atlantic
identity.” (Chandler; 2014). Historically, the relationship between England and America had
been strained by past conflict and misunderstandings. However, Cedric Errol crosses the
divide between these two cultures by addressing an issue that is the same in both; social
status, or the differences between high society and the working class. Several times in both
America and England, Cedric uses his new status to grant those who are less fortunate a
better life, exemplified when his selfish grandfather pondering how “it had amused him to
give into those childish hands the power to bestow a benefit on poor Higgins. My lord cared
nothing for poor Higgins, but it pleased him a little that his grandson would be talked about
by the country people and would begin to be popular with the tenantry, even in his
childhood.” (pg. 136). This allows for Cedric to become the Child of English and American
projection, an object in which both nationalities can be explored. (Chandler; 2014). It can
thus be concluded that the literary Child often serves a purpose in society, either to bridge
political or social gaps, or as a method of creating a desired future.

With the Child being a social construct, the Child is molded into an insinuated asexual being,
which is also “tacitly, assumed to be heterosexual.” (Bruhm, Steven & Hurley, Natasha; cited
by Pugh; 2011, pg. 1). This firstly alludes to the concept of heterosexism, which stems from
the viewpoint that the only correct or natural sexual orientation is heterosexuality and
concludes that all must therefore be heterosexual. (Tyson; 2011). It secondly reveals a sense
of cultural confusion amongst adults about sexuality in children and the concept of
innocence, as the idea of a queer or ‘ghostly gay’ child suggests that “the adult gaze cannot
be innocent despite the expectations of childhood innocence… an implicated gaze suggests
pedophilic impulses for considering the child as a sexual being.” (Lareau; 2011, pg. 236).
This forces the literary Child to become a representation of these beliefs and confusion, and
therefore is obligated to continually impose these social standards, even if these standards are
clouded by uncertainty. (Cross; cited by Pugh; 2011). This invites the application of queer
theory. Whilst it doesn’t necessarily construct a child with same-sex desires, it does suggest
that “childhood marks a similar locus of impossibility, of murderous disidentifications,” (Ohi;

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cited by Cobb; 2005, pg. 127) or a figure that doesn’t fit any kind of defined shape, which has
been dictated by adults since the beginning of the Child’s existence.

During the period between the late Romantic era and the early Victorian era, the idea of the
child was a newly created concept, influenced by those of the middle-to-upper classes
affording more time for leisure, which therefore implied that there wasn’t such a need for
people of those classes to start working at such a young age. Within this period, queer
theorist, James Kincaid claims that the ideal child was a symbol of “innocence, active
sympathies and primal love.” (Kincaid; 1998, pg. 54). The adult’s captivation with the child
in the time can be attributed to the fact that “the child could stand as an image of the
metaphysical, the mystical, everything which was opposed to the privileged location of the
rational adult.” (Kincaid; cited by Renfro-Sargent & Saad; 2000, pg. 48-49). This suggests
that the concept of the Child was “loaded from the start with lots of very positive and active
attributes” which “was sort of drained out in the process of maturation to adulthood.”
(Kincaid; cited by Renfro-Sargent & Saad; 2000, pg. 48-49). Therefore, children were seen as
something god-like and unattainable by the adult, thus causing the concept to be heavily
romanticised and objectified by adult expectations.

Therefore, “The child is precisely who we are not and, in fact, never were.” (Stockton; 2009,
pg. 5). The Child is an inversion of the adult, which creates a child/adult binary opposition,
with the Child serving as the lesser of the opposing pair, or the adult’s other. This power
imbalance exists because the adult relegates children as inferior and weak, as “in the eyes of
the adults, the child is ignorant” and therefore lacks the power of knowledge that the adult
comes to possess with maturity. (Ren; 2015, pg. 1660). This ignorance is seen often in the
book, particularly when Cedric speaks, as most don’t take his words seriously. “Mary, in the
kitchen, would hear Mrs Errol laughing with delight at the quant things he (Cedric) said.”
(pg. 8). Cedric often uses words that are considered mature in the eyes of adults without
always being certain of what they mean, often causing the adults to question and laugh at
him, usually with Cedric being unaware of the fact that he is being mocked. This combination
of ignorance and knowing that he possesses allows him to not only “exist as an object
controlled by adults” but to also exist as an object of adult admiration. (Chandler; 2014).

These factors thus imply the imitation of the knowing-innocent child. This form of literary
Child is to the reader “at once familiar and strange, naïve and knowing, transparent and
inscrutable, docile and dangerous, innocent and guilty.” (Cobb; 2005, pg. 125). It is a child
constructed by contradictions, which suggests a form of childhood that did not grow straight,
but bent sideways, therefore inviting a queer reading of the text. (Stockton; 2009). It allows
for a “sophisticated meditation on the figure of the child and the social order that is
maintained through that figural child’s fetishisation, sentimentalisation, and even
eroticisation.” (Jones; 2013, pg. 2). Cedric Errol is an ideal representation of this knowing-
innocent child, as while the reader is made aware that he is only a boy of seven, his actual age

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is often contradicted by the adult-like attributes that are frequent in his character. His
grandfather had often been charmed by these qualities, with the book quoting that “he had
never taken any interest in them himself, but it pleased him well enough that with all of his
childish habits of thought and in the midst of all his childish amusements and high spirits,
there should be such a quaint seriousness working in the curly head.” (pg. 138). Despite these
qualities however, there are also moments in the book in which Cedric’s ignorance is also
made apparent, as seen in his interactions with Miss Vivian Herbert, the most beautiful lady
of the season. In his first meeting with her, he confesses her beauty directly to her, causing all
of her suitors and herself to laugh at him. “Then all the gentlemen laughed outright, and the
young lady laughed a little too…” (pg. 171). He becomes an object of her amusement and
interest, but is by no means a candidate for marriage, “making him irrelevant and powerless,
and emphasising that any influence or power he does hold is only invested in him by others.”
(Chandler; 2014). Cedric becomes both a child of adult fantasy and of adult domination, a
contradiction, and thus a “species of strangeness”, or a form of queer child. (Cobb; 2005, pg.
127). These children were, and perhaps are still the most appealing to the adult reader, as they
have the ability to “coexist…with an ideal of unspoiled purity and innocence” while forming
“a screen onto which a range of significations and adult desires can be projected.” (Jones;
2013, pg. 22).

These dominions establish a sense of erotic investment in the literary Child, or more
specifically, “an erotic investment in the child as future adult.” (Jones; 2013, pg. 20).
Throughout the novel, the reader is positioned to view Cedric Errol as an almost godly
creature. This is achieved with the use of semiotics, which aid in portraying the child’s
immense and unattainable beauty. Words, such as “soft”, “sweet”, and “lovely” are often
used to describe the child’s appearance, signifying a sense of femininity and untouched
purity. (pg. 6). Also, words such as “strong” and “sturdy” are used as well to describe the
boy’s physique, signifying a contrasting masculine handsomeness. (pg. 6). These descriptions
are classified as being homoerotic, which consist of “erotic (though not necessarily sexual)
visual images that imply same-sex attraction or that might appeal sexually to a same-sex
reader.” (Tyson; 2011, pg. 177). This figuring of the Child as erotically attractive “is the way
they (children) have been positioned, from their physical features and the smooth skin, to
their helplessness, their innocence, and so forth.” (Kincaid; cited by Renfro-Sargent & Saad;
2000, pg. 50).

Possessing a combination of masculine and feminine physical characteristics, Cedric is

positioned as being a “universal object of attraction and desire,” and therefore is a literary
child who crosses “both fictional and gender boundaries.” (Chandler; 2014) (Jones; 2013, pg.
21). Cedric, with his physical characteristics being established as divergent, the question of
his gender, although declared in the novel, is indeterminate within the bounds of an adult
lens. A queer reading of this text identifies the Child “as a kind of ungendered subject”, and
further diminishes the humanity of literary children, figuring them as more of an object of

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adult design rather than human themselves. (Kincaid; cited by Renfro-Sargent & Saad; 2000,
pg. 52) (Chandler; 2014).

All these assertions thus lead to the concept of innocence and whether or not any form of
literary Child, past and present, is truly innocent. Being confirmed that the Child is but an
object to be exploited and used in any way that the adult pleases, and is but a construction, it
can be concluded that innocence must also be a construction. The innocence of the Child is a
result of the adult’s “averted gaze” which denies “childhood sexuality in favour of
perpetuating childhood innocence.” (Lareau; 2011, pg. 236). Therefore, when one
acknowledges childhood sexuality – such as Cedric’s admiration of Miss Vivian Herbert,
when he claims to be “thinking how beautiful” she is, which can be interpreted to imply
childhood sexuality - the concept of childhood innocence is eradicated. (pg. 171). This is
because innocence itself is, by default, an object that only existed as a result of “an adult gaze
that often renders nostalgia for a childhood lost – usually a childhood that is romanticised.”
(Lareau; 2011, pg. 236).

Little Lord Fauntleroy is a novel that captures a heavily romanticised concept of what the
literary Child has been and continues to be. Having applied both a queer lens and a textual
lens to the novel, the inexistence of the Child has been proven, as well as the inexistence of
childhood innocence. It has been made clear that the adult is solely the creator of the Child,
and therefore the Child is merely an extension of the adult, gaining both its meaning and
power not from itself, but from the one who constructed it. It is also reinforced that innocence
is a product of adult sentimentalisation and social confusion, borne from a sense of
uncertainty surrounding childhood sexuality. It can be concluded that while Cedric Errol
might be a flawless example of the ideal Victorian child, he is by no means a realistic
example of what the living child was and still is to this day.

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