Annotations Related to Victorian

Eder finds in Mary Baker Eddy’s writings about masculinity that Christian Science could not be practiced only as an ethereal form of religion (caricatured as a woman) but reflect “a discernible and repeated thrust to extend the reach of Christian Science thought and practice beyond the sheltered sphere of nineteenth-century feminine religiosity into the proving grounds of the public realm.”

This comprehensive 80-page chronology begins with the birth of Mary Baker Eddy in 1821 and ends with her funeral in 1910. In between, it includes the individuals, events, and publications connected to the multifaceted life of Eddy. The scholar can also tap into the Chronology’s extensive footnoting for source material.

Eddy spent her last three years living in a grand residence outside of Boston. This well-referenced book details her life and the lives of her loyal household— a family of workers who came to support Eddy and the Cause of Christian Science. Frederick references staff diaries and written reminiscences to highlight qualities brought to their tasks, blessings received, and lessons learned.

This beautifully crafted book is essentially a compilation of the writings of Stephen R. Howard, who served as director-curator of Longyear Museum from 1997 to 2014. (The museum is an independent historical institution dedicated to the understanding of Mary Baker Eddy’s life and work.) Nearly every page includes multiple photographs, facsimiles, artwork, Illustrations and portraits representing the holdings of the museum.

Bessette analyzes the historical milieu that resulted in the late Victorian era’s “birth of the therapeutic.” Besides Mary Baker Eddy, Bessette taps into the various social, religious and psychosomatic thinkers of this period along with the New Thought and Emmanuel movements, and how they shaped a more unified “whole man” view of mind and body.

Simon unpacks Mary Baker Eddy’s theological construct of the feminine divine and shows how Eddy mobilizes her conception of a benevolent maternal deity to challenge the gender ideology and conventions of her day. She finds in Eddy’s Genesis interpretation her ultimate goal: her feminized divine is an enabling belief that undoes Adam’s dream—the history of error, an assumed material selfhood.

Choi’s and Huff’s chapters explore how two 19th-century Christian women, Lucy Rider Meyer and Mary Baker Eddy respectively, interpreted Pauline and deuteron-Pauline texts to validate women’s empowerment in the Church. Hogan then details striking similarities between Meyer’s and Eddy’s approaches to these texts, and that of many recent feminist and womanist scholars.

This exhaustive, groundbreaking book, of special interest to both Christian Scientists and architectural historians, details the conception and building of the original edifice of The Mother Church. It is a treasure trove of primary source materials including 340 illustrations, 20 plates, 400 document reproductions, letters to and from Mary Baker Eddy, biographies and candid discussions of all relevant personnel involved.

This article includes an examination of feminism and the quest for gender equality in 19th century America, particularly in rejection of interpretations of the second biblical creation story that justified male dominance and female subservience. One sub-section devoted to Mary Baker Eddy describes her unique interpretation of the spirituality of divine creation, which undergirds Christian Science and the church she founded.

Corbett examines the ways that Eddy exercised effective leadership in increasingly male-dominated fields from which women were excluded: education, health care, and religion. She is particularly interested in the way Eddy incorporated obstetrics into her system of healing. Corbett also responds to claims that Eddy expressed an ambiguous feminism by championing women’s authority yet promoting male authority within her Church.

Michell examines the influences, and theological connections and differences, between the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, Emma Curtis Hopkins, the 19th-century Woman’s movement, and the New Thought and New Age movements. Hopkins, unlike Eddy, would see Truth in all religions, not limited to Christianity, and focused more on a prosperity gospel.

This well-researched biography of Emma Curtis Hopkins, little-known founder of the 19th-century New Thought movement, includes Hopkins’s early-stage affiliation with Mary Baker Eddy—her tutelage by Eddy and editorship of The Christian Science Journal for 13 months before being suddenly discharged. Harley draws on a range of scholarship to contextualize the complexity of this knotty developmental stage of Christian Science.

Eddy’s Science and Health critiqued the contemporary ideology of invalidism. Male doctors had a vested interest in women’s weakness, making their own treatments necessary. Eddy, by contrast, validated the authority of the patient to bring about healing, thereby giving women more control over their bodies. Eddy’s message emphasized vitality and health for women and diminished biological differences between the sexes.

Seeing no social change favoring women’s rights, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton switched her energies to addressing the underlying issue of women’s subordination rooted in the Bible. Like Mary Baker Eddy’s opus, Science and Health, Stanton’s Women’s Bible was intended as a vehicle for emancipation. Kern includes Eddy among the many women bearing (indirect) influence on Stanton’s story.

Piepmeier studies five women, including Mary Baker Eddy, as examples in 19th-century America of the ‘outing’ of women’s bodies in the public sphere in ways not easily categorized. They had to address the powerful ideologies of domesticity and sentimentality to distinguish their own ideologies. Eddy’s textbook was a rewriting of major discourses, representing a significant rethinking of women’s roles and rights.

This illustrated Guide tells the history and process of sites associated with women’s achievements, including those of Mary Baker Eddy. Her locations include her Bow birthplace and New Hampshire homes, her Massachusetts properties and homes, the Longyear Museum, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, the Boston house at 385 Commonwealth Ave, and other Eddy houses owned by Longyear.

Christian Science and New Thought both conveyed a “metaphysical perfectionism” in sync with late 19th-century American can-do spirit and the golden glow of California culture with its promises of prosperity. Key women in Christian Science left the movement to become teachers and prime movers of New Thought in California. Other reasons for the decline in both movements today are discussed. 

Gartrell-Mills’s Part II continues her study of Christian Science in 20th century Britain, examining the initial negative reaction of the public, medical establishment, and Anglican Church. But then she finds ways in which Christian Science eventually contributed to more favorable medical attitudes toward spiritual considerations, and the Anglican Church’s opening up to spiritual forms of healing. 

McDonald notes that most feminist and psychological explanations attribute the success of Christian Science not to its theological worth, but for its personal utility. These explanations ironically resemble the traditional reductionism assigned to public women by 19th-century men—ironic because a decade of feminist scholarship on Eddy has helped to reinforce patriarchy. McDonald examines these social, intellectual, and religious stereotypes.

Hansen examines the formative period of the Christian Science movement and discovers not only restorations of health but also healing as a religious act. From this, Hansen distinguishes Christian Science from the women metaphysical healers of the same period who eventually formed the New Thought movement. Eddy’s declaration, “This is woman’s hour” conveys the female contribution to Christian Science.

Meyer’s purpose was to assess religion as therapy: as a cult of reassurance, as psychology of peace and positive thinking. After a brief biography of Mary Baker Eddy’s life, Meyer positions Christian Science as a kind of psychotherapy dressed in religious attire —mind cure’s tightly organized, exclusive denomination. However, his perception is based on very few and dated resources.

Fox, a social anthropologist, claims that Mary Baker Eddy and the early Christian Science movement functioned socially as a protest movement against 19th-century social assumptions and roles assigned to women. Eddy and the women who followed her found leadership and healing roles independent of the social, religious and medical authority of men. But Christian Scientists did not recognize their historical role.

Modern scholars explain Mary Baker Eddy’s frequent childhood illnesses from a variety of perspectives. Setta argues they were symptomatic of the 19th-century form of American Calvinism. Eddy’s illnesses were pronounced when her femaleness was most pronounced (marriage and birth). Rejecting the 19th century female role, Eddy reinstated feminine qualities of Deity, whereby women and men are both seen as spiritual beings.

Bundy examines the historical record of Mary Baker Eddy’s formative years including her birthplace in Bow, New Hampshire, and her family. A special focus is Eddy’s father, Mark Baker, a leading citizen of Bow who is described as both a strict Puritan, but also charitable and kind.

Chapel details how Mary Baker Eddy successfully employed ‘argumentative synthesis’–the ability to “unite ideas which appear to be in opposition into a coherent whole.” Reflecting a larger debate in the late 19th-century, Eddy reconciled opposing views such as: science and Christianity, the masculine and feminine, and the Calvinist view of sinning humanity–Eddy’s mortal man–and the more liberal view of humanity as essentially good.