Children's Literature and the Rise of 'Mind Cure'

Positive Thinking and Pseudo-Science at the Fin de Siècle

Anne Stiles

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781108830942
• eBook ISBN: 9781108910729
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Positive thinking is good for you. You can become healthy, wealthy, and influential by using the power of your mind to attract what you desire. These kooky but commonplace ideas stem from a nineteenth-century new religious movement known as 'mind cure' or New Thought. Related to Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, New Thought was once a popular religious movement with hundreds of thousands of followers, and has since migrated into secular contexts such as contemporary psychotherapy, corporate culture, and entertainment. New Thought also pervades nineteenth- and early twentieth-century children's literature, including classics such as The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, and A Little Princess. In this first book-length treatment of New Thought in Anglophone fiction, Anne Stiles explains how children's literature encouraged readers to accept New Thought ideas - especially psychological concepts such as the inner child - thereby ensuring the movement's survival into the present day.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Inner Child in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy and Sara Crewe
• Chapter 2 Fauntleroy’s Ghost: New Thought in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw
• Chapter 3 Rewriting the Rest Cure in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden
• Chapter 4 Sunshine and Shadow: New Thought in Anne of Green Gables
• Chapter 5 New Women, New Thoughts: Millennial Motherhood in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland Trilogy
• Epilogue: The Cinematic Afterlife of New Thought Fiction
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index