Children's Literature and the Rise of 'Mind Cure': Positive Thinking and Pseudo-Science at the Fin de Siècle by Anne Stiles (review)

In Children's Literature and the Rise of 'Mind Cure,' Anne Stiles restores New Thought—a religious movement that believes in the transformative power of thought—as a vital context for fin de siècle authors and their works. Through meticulous and impressive research, Stiles convincingly argues that the authors she discusses—Frances Hodgson Burnett, Henry James, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman—were all cognizant of New Thought. In the introduction and throughout the chapters, Stiles instructs readers on the major tenets of New Thought, which, above all, promotes the power of positive thinking to make good things happen (hence the term mind cure). Stiles positions Christian Science as a more biblically grounded and stringent sect of New Thought; founded by Mary Baker Eddy in Massachusetts in 1879, practitioners pray away illness and avoid conventional medical care. In all of its strands, New Thought privileges the mind and spirit over the body and materiality. The "magical thinking" and "rosy perspective" of New Thought are still with us (7, 10), Stiles emphasizes, from the bestselling self-help book The Secret to the prosperity gospel.

Scouring these authors' journals, letters, relationships, and broader biography, Stiles demonstrates these authors' familiarity with New Thought, which lays the groundwork for her claim that New Thought shaped their writings. For example, Burnett was friends with Eddy and read Eddy's seminal Christian Science text Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. James's brother William wrote about New Thought and Christian Science, tried mind cure treatments, and even publicly defended Christian Science while Henry was writing The Turn of the Screw. Montgomery read and re-read Thomas Jay Hudson's The Laws of Psychic Phenomena, which includes New Thought and Christian Science content, while working on Anne of Green Gables. In a letter to a friend, she divulged "trying some little experiments in 'mental healing' on myself" (128), and in her journal, she admitted "command[ing] my subconscious mind to cure" an ill friend (129). Gilman's stepmother converted to Christian Science, and Gilman herself spent time at the Unity Settlement in Chicago, run by New Thought practitioners. Importantly, none of these authors ever formally identified as a Christian Scientist or New Thought follower—and Montgomery and Gilman actually criticized Christian Science in some writings. But Stiles still establishes not only each author's connection to New Thought but also New Thought's relevance to fin de siècle discussions of religion, philosophy, psychology, medicine, and womanhood.

While scholars such as Gretchen Gerzina and Christine Wilkie have previously noted Burnett's links to New Thought and Christian Science, Stiles offers innovative analyses of New Thought's presence in Burnett's most enduring books. Particularly persuasive is her interpretation of A Little Princess's Sara Crewe. Suddenly impoverished by her father's death, Sara's school relegates her to servanthood and to the attic; there, Sara takes comfort in pretending to be a princess. Stiles insightfully classifies Sara's coping strategies as common New Thought practices: "Sara Crewe resembles a faithful New Thought believer in her use of affirmations and denials, creative visualization, nonresistance to evil, and meditative withdrawal from her surroundings" (49). In Little Lord Fauntleroy, Stiles focuses on the close relationship between child Cedric Errol—a happy and healthy "New Thought exemplar" (36)—and his mother. New Thought "promoted the idea of the divine Man Child within each adult" (30); women could ascribe their desires and ambitions to this inner "Man Child," thereby "claim[ing] authority for themselves without disrupting the patriarchal status quo" (31). Stiles claims that Cedric functions as this New Thought Man Child because he "secures his mother's health, wealth, and happiness" (38) through both his inheritance and charming of his grandfather. Stiles suggests that Burnett may have named Mary Lennox, the protagonist of The Secret Garden, after Mary Baker Eddy, the...