“Christian Science Versus The Rest Cure in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden”

Stiles, Anne. “Christian Science Versus The Rest Cure in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.” Modern Fiction Studies 61, no. 2 (2015): 295-319.

Stiles’s goal for this article is to demonstrate the difficulty of fully understanding the literary work of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s early twentieth-century book, The Secret Garden, because the concepts of healing are so radically different now, over a century later. In essence, Burnett’s work could be “read as a feminist, Christian Science revision of Silas Weir Mitchell’s rest cure” (295). Between 1880 and 1920, Mitchell’s rest cure was among the most popular treatment options, but its regimen was demoralizing for those who endured it: lie in bed up to two months, sitting up or turning over only with a doctor’s permission and assistance, and eating enormous amounts of required meat and milk. Christian Science (along with Spiritualism and Theosophy) came as a profound relief to Burnett. Ultimately, Burnett embraced Christian Science and its offshoot, New Thought. Stiles is convinced of the opposite argument by Beryl Satter, however, that it is more accurate to think of Christian Science as a branch of New Thought. Nonetheless, Burnett lost faith in therapies like rest cure, due to their preoccupation with bodily disease, so she offered her readers a different sort of cure. Her novels highlight educated women eschewing conventional medicine in favor of faith healing movements.

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