Mary Baker Eddy (Radcliffe Biography Series)

For far too long, Mary Baker Eddy has been worshiped by Christian Scientists and either castigated or ignored by nearly everyone else. Thanks to this long-needed biography, we now know that Eddy provides an inspiring model for mid to late life accomplishment. As biographer Gill puts it, she was "conventional in her 20s, weak in her 30s, struggling in her 40s, a social outcast in her 50s, indefatigably working in her 60s, famous in her 70s, formidable in her 80s." Over her long life, Eddy overcame ill health, poverty, widowhood, divorce, accusations of plagiarism, lawsuits, mockery and deception, in addition to the expected obstacles of being born poor, uneducated and female in the 19th century. Yet this woman became the most influential and controversial woman in America at the turn of the century. Her writings so challenged contemporary mores that her detractors expended massive amounts of energy producing -- or manufacturing -- damning facts and damaging documents. Over the years, men from Mark Twain to Noel Coward stooped to cheap shots, calling her, variously, shallow, stupid, egotistic, illiterate, illogical, uncultured, poorly read, incapable of love, painted, bedizened, affected, hysteric , paranoiac, mad, ambitious, mercenary, tyrannical, a man eater, a husband killer, a drug addict, a mesmerist, a plagiarist, and even, long after her death, "Hitler with no mustache." Unhappily, most feminists have been so blinded by Eddy's religion that they have failed to properly acknowledge much less honor her considerable courage and accomplishments. Thank you Gillian Gill for setting this straight.

This is not a light book--in tone or weight! However, it gave me a rich, deep, understanding of Mary Baker Eddy as a person and as a figure in history--plus many hours of reading pleasure.Most well-researched biographies are dry and factual. Ms. Gill has managed to organize an unusual life into chapters that are more than chronological slices. Step by step, she takes the reader through the development of Ms. Eddy's thought and philosophy. At the same time, we learn a huge amount of Ms. Eddy as a literary, spiritual, and political leader.If you buy this book, please don't neglect to read the footnotes. Ms. Gill has packed them with tons of interesting trivia that otherwise would have cluttered up her well-turned prose. This is a rare and valuable work--one that should become the standard starting place for any serious student of either the Christian Science movement or of women's role in the late 19th century. I hope that Ms. Gill will receive the time and resources to complete other projects, such as this one.

Gill debunks the past so-called 'facts' of the inaccurate and false Milmine and others, traditions about an 'evil' Mary Baker Eddy. She includes a great Appendix to juxtapose these different biographies. She uncovers outright misogyny toward Mary Baker Eddy and the Christian Science Church's own error of a sugar coated mythologizeing of Mary Baker Eddy which doubtless, she would not have approved of herself, from all her own admonitions for others to stop being preoccupied with her personality.She shows how the inaccurate information of a certain biographical tradition about Eddy, based in the beginnings of yellow journalism, served the interest of sensationalism of an early era of low class profit driven tabloid journalism - which even Willa Cather was later ashamed to admit she participated in, by evidence of her own last will and testament. Gill makes Eddy human, which in no way detracts from her revelations as a religious discoverer and healer. You do not learn so much about Eddy's own personal preoccupation with healing, however, but you do learn why she felt the need to end suffering in her own life and others. I loved the chapter on Mark Twain, whose daughter was healed in Christian Science; -- if you be sure to read all Gill's copious footnotes, you'll find this out. Gill sees Twain with more sophistication than those who would merely lump him against Mary Baker Eddy and uncovers his great ironic admiration through his ambivalence as a 19th century male (who must have felt some competition with her.)It is a sober balance to the poor scholarship - where is serves Ms.Frasier's purposes - in her book, 'God's Perfect Child', which is a wholey different kind of book - a catharsis of the disenchanted and wounded feelings. Frasier has a right to her feelings about her experience but it is no excuse for really bad scholarship. She had a bone to pick and literalist fundamentalist parents (let it not be said that Christian Scientist's do not suffer from the same kind of fundamentalist stupidity of other religions) but she is certainly not the caliber of historical researcher as Gillian Gill. Frasier's inaccuracies will reinforce the minds who want to believe false myths about Eddy even if Gill takes the high road for true meticulous scholarship. Unfortunately since Fraziers's 19th century era research was so bad it makes me doubt much of what she says about her 20th century revelations. As a third party and not a Christian Scientist, you get the feeling Gillian Gill came away admiring Mary Baker Eddy for what she was up against as a 19th century woman -- the 'cult of womanhood', and 'true womanhood' -- myths of her own era which tried to supress women through a fashionable and harmful glorification of physical weakness and illness. A time when a woman could not own her own children, speak in public, or hardly even own her own clothes. It was a time when a woman was 'one husband away from poverty.' So, h

I was so impressed by this book. In a way, it changed my life. I've read many, many biographies of Eddy, from Tomlinson to Peel to the newest one authorized by her church (Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer), and this was the first I could relate to directly. Others have been less than completely frank about Eddy's early life-they either idolize her or mock her. I was also fascinated to learn more details about Eddy's parents and siblings-with all their foibles and weaknesses. Gill's biography comes up to my standard of straightforward honesty, without either the apologetics of a follower or the sarcasm of a detractor. Gill weaves contextual information about life in the 1800s throughout her work, yet as a woman of the late 20th century, I found myself relating to Eddy and her struggle in so many ways. She was a single mom. She wrote romantic fiction and poetry. She lived through both widowhood and divorce. She had financial struggles, and, for a long time, no place to call home. She would get angry on occasion, yet she was also sublimely loving. She retained a girlish pleasure in clothes and fashion-she loved ice cream! Her life was not perfect, nor was she a perfect human being, yet she still rose to the heights of spiritual healer and religious leader-all in the face of intense opposition that would be difficult for anyone today, let alone a woman of her time period. Each challenge she faced was turned into an opportunity; each relationship that ended was grist for the mill of her own spiritual growth. As someone who is learning to practice spiritual healing, I found it inspiring to know that, if Eddy is any example, I don't have to be a perfect human being in order to get started. This shouldn't be the only biography one reads to get a complete composite of Mary Baker Eddy, but it's certainly an excellent foundation against which other information can be juxtaposed and evaluated. Of course, reading her seminal work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, gets to the heart of her mission the fastest way of all.

Ms Gill is not a Christian Scientist but you would suppose she has lived with her subject for a very long time. Her considerable forensic skills are just what her subject needs. In the sections dealing with P.P Quimby, the Misses Ware and Eddy's second husband Daniel Patterson, she contributes solid new material. Frequently she demolishes myths promulgated by the Mimine/Dakin/Braden biographies (and in a devastating appendix, analyses the motivations of these biographers). A new Mary Baker Eddy emerges, something of diamond in the rough but a diamond to be reckoned with, nonetheless. But if Ms Gill's objectivity is the result of not being a Christian Scientist, it also gives her book a problem. Her grasp of Christian Science theology is not...well, not complete. This leads, for example, to a very good joke about what Christian Science calls 'animal magnetism' but a joke based on a misconception nonetheless. Without a more complete understanding of Mrs Eddy's thinking, it is impossible for Ms Gill to provide a balanced view of her later years. The frenetic outward activity of Mrs Eddy's life in her eighties and even nineties is described minus the ballast of the spiritual mediation that made this activity possible. But this is still a very good book and a fun read. Ms Gill says Mrs Eddy would have enjoyed meeting Mark Twain. It's certain Mrs Eddy would have relished meeting Ms Gill.