Children's Literature and the Rise of ‘Mind Cure' Book contents
- Children’s Literature and the Rise of “Mind Cure”
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Children’s Literature and the Rise of “Mind Cure”
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Inner Child in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy and Sara Crewe
- Chapter 2 Fauntleroy’s Ghost
- Chapter 3 Rewriting the Rest Cure in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden
- Chapter 4 Sunshine and Shadow
- Chapter 5 New Women, New Thoughts
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Chapter 4 - Sunshine and Shadow
New Thought in Anne of Green Gables
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2020
- Children’s Literature and the Rise of “Mind Cure”
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Children’s Literature and the Rise of “Mind Cure”
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Inner Child in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy and Sara Crewe
- Chapter 2 Fauntleroy’s Ghost
- Chapter 3 Rewriting the Rest Cure in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden
- Chapter 4 Sunshine and Shadow
- Chapter 5 New Women, New Thoughts
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Summary
Chapter four turns to Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery. New Thought offered Montgomery an escape from the rigid Presbyterianism of her rural Prince Edward Island community and helped assuage her chronic depression and insomnia. Ultimately, New Thought was not enough to save the author, who committed suicide in 1942. But New Thought pervades her fiction, particularly Anne of Green Gables (1908), which features an inspired girl child in the New Thought mold.Anne Shirley’s revitalizing influence on her adoptive parents, her healing of a dying baby, and her transformative imagination all signal her conformity to this role. So do her homosocial relationships with female “kindred spirits” like her “bosom friend,” Diana Barry. Close relationships between women were a common feature of New Thought novels, which appealed to lesbian and bisexual readers and women seeking escape from oppressive marriages. The conclusion of this chapter turns to Montgomery’s later novel, the adult-themed comedy The Blue Castle (1926), to show that New Thought was more than a passing fancy for the author. Rather, it was a coping strategy that she returned to throughout her life and explored in various genres, from children’s literature to romances for adult readers.
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- Children's Literature and the Rise of ‘Mind Cure'Positive Thinking and Pseudo-Science at the Fin de Siècle, pp. 115 - 154Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020