The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

First published: 1911; illustrated

Type of work: Moral tale

Themes: Nature, health and illness, friendship, and death

Time of work: The late nineteenth century

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Misselthwaite Manor, Yorkshire, England

Principal Characters:

• Mary Lennox, a sickly, spoiled orphan, who has come from India to live with her uncle
• Archibald Craven, her uncle, a wealthy recluse and hunchback who is haunted by the death of his wife
• Colin Craven, Archibald’s son, bedridden and disagreeable, who fears that he has inherited his father’s deformity
• Martha Sowerby, the housemaid, a cheerful, friendly girl
• Dickon Sowerby, her brother, a sturdy, kind-hearted boy who has the uncanny ability to tame wild animals
• Susan Sowerby, their mother, a wise and compassionate woman
• Ben Weatherstaff, the gardener, who keeps the locked garden’s secrets

The Story

In its plot and setting, The Secret Garden has all the earmarks of the gothic novel, with one crucial difference: In this children’s tale, the mysteries confronting the protagonist are solved and resolved with no residue of horror. Ten-year-old Mary Lennox, born and reared in India, becomes an orphan when her parents die in a cholera epidemic. Leaving behind all that is familiar to her, she must travel to Yorkshire, England, to become a ward of her uncle, Archibald Craven. Craven, a reclusive hunchback who has never recovered from the death of his wife, ten years earlier, lives at Misselthwaite Manor, on the edge of the moor, but spends most of his time abroad, trying to forget his loss.

When Mary arrives in England she is a self-centered and unattractive child, but the fault is not primarily her own. Ignored by her parents and indulged by servants, she has been brought up in an unnatural way. At the manor, she makes two discoveries that enable her to grow and mature.

First, soon after her arrival, Mary learns of a garden on the grounds that Craven locked up following his wife’s fatal accident there. Finding her way into the garden—which, though beautiful and mysterious, appears to be dead—Mary determines to bring it back to life. With the help of Dickon Sowerby, the twelve-year-old brother of her housemaid, Martha, she begins the process of pruning, planting, and weeding the secret garden.

Mary’s second discovery is made within the rambling corridors of the manor house itself. Seeking the source of a cry that she has heard twice before, she enters for the first time the room of Colin, Craven’s son, who has been bedridden for the entire ten years of his life, since the death of his mother. A spoiled child accustomed to having his own way, he harbors the fear that he too is a hunchback and that he will die before he grows up. He and Mary become friends, but she will not tolerate her newly found cousin’s tantrums, standing up to him almost brutally. Her no-nonsense approach works; on a beautiful spring day, Colin agrees to be taken in his wheelchair into the garden with Mary and Dickon. Throughout the spring and summer, Colin succumbs to the “Magic” of the garden, where he is soon walking, working, and running. His plan is to keep his transformation a secret until his father returns from a trip abroad. Ben Weatherstaff, the gruff but kindly gardener, joins in the conspiracy.

Finally, in Italy, Craven has a dream in which his wife calls him back to the garden. The same day, he receives a letter from Susan Sowerby (Martha’s and Dickon’s mother), urging him to return for his son’s sake. When he arrives, he hears voices in the garden; suddenly, Colin bursts out of the garden and into his father’s arms. Mary, running behind him, is now lovely and strong. It is clear that the garden, the children, and Craven himself have been restored, even reborn.

Context

The Secret Garden is Burnett’s best-known and most accomplished children’s book. Unlike A Little Princess (1888) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1885), in which the central characters Sara Crewe and Cedric Errol, respectively, are entirely pure and blameless, The Secret Garden presents characters who are capable of bad behavior as well as good, characters whose complexity makes them compelling. Indeed, the scene in which Mary confronts Colin and shakes him out of his self-pity has been called a landmark in children’s literature. By showing a central character behaving reprehensibly but to good effect, Burnett helped to prepare the way for more realistic depictions of children in fiction.

Many critics have noted the similarity of The Secret Garden to works such as Jane Eyre (1847), Heidi (1881), and Wuthering Heights (1847). The cry that Mary hears in the night is reminiscent of the one that Jane Eyre hears at Thornfield, leading her to Bertha Mason Rochester; Mary and Dickon’s cure of Colin recalls Heidi and Peter’s cure of Clara Sesemann; and, alluding to Wuthering Heights, Carpenter notes that Dickon is a sort of “Heathcliff-gone-right.”

Nevertheless, Burnett’s achievement is original. With the central image of the garden, Burnett fashioned a metaphor that resonates on many levels: biblical, Freudian, and mythic, with the garden representing Eden, the unconscious mind, and a universal womb from which the children are reborn. The Secret Garden thus contains an unusual symbolic richness that has contributed to its longstanding popularity with children.