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Chapter 2 - Fauntleroy’s Ghost

New Thought in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2020

Anne Stiles
Affiliation:
Saint Louis University, Missouri
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Summary

Chapter two turns to Henry James’s supernatural classic, The Turn of the Screw (1898), to show the backlash of the literary intelligentsia against New Thought and the inner child. This chapter reads The Turn of the Screw as a critical response to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy that mocks the book’s saccharine portrayal of innocent children and its New Thought overtones. While siblings Miles and Flora initially resemble Lord Fauntleroy in their youth, beauty, and apparent innocence, their subsequent actions could not be more different. Whereas Burnett’s protagonist heals his grieving mother and depressed grandfather and brings them spiritual peace, Miles and Flora lead their governess to the brink of madness by consorting with evil spirits. James, who wrote so perceptively about the inner life of a child a year earlier in What Maisie Knew (1897), deliberately portrayed Miles and Flora as opaque, unsympathetic, and allied with dark forces. In so doing, he skewered New Thought's relentless idealization of children as conduits to God. He also paved the way for more recent depictions of evil children in horror fiction and in films such as The Bad Seed (1956), The Omen (1976), or We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011).

Type
Chapter
Information
Children's Literature and the Rise of ‘Mind Cure'
Positive Thinking and Pseudo-Science at the Fin de Siècle
, pp. 54 - 82
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Fauntleroy’s Ghost
  • Anne Stiles, Saint Louis University, Missouri
  • Book: Children's Literature and the Rise of ‘Mind Cure'
  • Online publication: 10 December 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914604.003
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  • Fauntleroy’s Ghost
  • Anne Stiles, Saint Louis University, Missouri
  • Book: Children's Literature and the Rise of ‘Mind Cure'
  • Online publication: 10 December 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914604.003
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Fauntleroy’s Ghost
  • Anne Stiles, Saint Louis University, Missouri
  • Book: Children's Literature and the Rise of ‘Mind Cure'
  • Online publication: 10 December 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914604.003
Available formats
×