Trinity University Digital Commons @ Trinity English Faculty Research English Department 9-2008 The otheM r Church: Mary Baker Eddy and the Practice of Sentimentalism Claudia Stokes Trinity University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/eng_faculty Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Repository Citation Stokes, C. (2008). The mother church: Mary Baker Eddy and the practice of sentimentalism. The New England Quarterly, 81(3), 438-461. doi: 10.1162/tneq.2008.81.3.438 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English Department at Digital Commons @ Trinity. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Trinity. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦ The Mother Church: Mary Baker Eddy and the Practice of Sentimentalism claudia stokes ONSIDER the following: a young New England woman C of a strict Calvinist upbringing falls in love with a dashing soldier, but he dies suddenly just months after their marriage, leaving her penniless and pregnant. With no income or home of her own, she bounces from relative to relative, receiving little hospitality or financial assistance. Unable to provide for her son, she is forced to give him up, and he falls into the hands of cruel guardians in the distant West who refuse to educate him. Desperate to support herself, the disconsolate mother takes up her pen, writing poetry and sorrowful essays for local journals and receiving rejection notices from national periodicals such as Godey’s Lady’s Book. After years of poverty, loneliness, and poor health, she experiences a spiritual epiphany while reading the Bible during the course of a grave illness and soon transmutes that revelation into physical vitality, prosperity, a happy marriage, and a new form of literary output.