The Secret Garden and Professor Meadow

[steepholm]

Much has been written about The Secret Garden and Froebel, mens sana in corpore sano, and all that jazz, but as I was marking an essay just now, it occurred to me that Archibald Craven may be one of the earliest representations of Münchausen by proxy - more than 65 years before Roy Meadow first described the condition. Has this ever been remarked? (This is not necessarily to weigh in on whether the condition actually exists, of course. Last time I looked, Mr Craven was a fiction, and for all I know his syndrome is too.)

P.S. The perils of the spell checker! One of my students just wrote that The Secret Garden was written by Frames Bennett.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm not too bothered about Colin perpetuating things. He's been told all his life that he's going to die young: why would he question that, rather than trying to make the (admittedly morbid) best of a bad situation? But I do take your point about Mr Craven not being sorry to see his son cured - and in general he probably exhibits far less interest in "the case" than the classic MbP.