Shame, Enchantment and the 'There-ness' of Disability in The Secret Garden

Cooper, Harriet ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0510-2669 (2025) Shame, Enchantment and the 'There-ness' of Disability in The Secret Garden. Literature and Medicine, 43 (1). pp. 52-74.

[thumbnail of project_muse_975543]
Preview
PDF (project_muse_975543) - Published Version
Available under License Unspecified licence.

Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden has been a repugnant object for contemporary scholars of disability studies because of the equivalence it draws between able embodiment and morality. While scholars have remarked on the novel’s linguistic register of rectitude, few have focused on what it might mean to analyze The Secret Garden through the prism of shame. I attempt to develop such a reading here, exploring shame’s textual and historical multivalence.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Publisher Copyright: © 2025 by Johns Hopkins University Press
Uncontrolled Keywords: shame,disability,reading,rectitude,rehabilitation,health(social science),literature and literary theory ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3306
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Mental Health and Social Care (fka Lifespan Health)
Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Media Equality
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Epidemiology and Public Health
Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Gender and Its Intersections
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Medical Humanities Research Network
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 01 Sep 2026 14:35
Last Modified: 07 Sep 2026 12:57
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/104401
DOI: 10.1353/lm.2025.a975543

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item