Module 2: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a classic tale that has been winning readers for over a century with its heart warming story of an orphan girl and a forgotten boy who find one another and discover a magical garden that will change their lives.

Summary

A spoiled little rich girl, Mary, is sent off to live with an uncle she has never met after she is tragically orphaned.  She experiences culture shock as she is uprooted from her colonial home in India to a drab manor in England.  Despite her contrary nature, the house staff gradually befriends her and helps her to begin to relate to others.  No longer the coddled, doted on little princess she once was, she starts to discover who she really is.  Her lonely days lead her to explore her new home, a sprawling manor full of gloom, dust, and sadness.  When she discovers a sickly young boy who lives a similar life of solitude due to illness and his own mother’s untimely death, she tries to help him even though he has fits of outrage, anger, and cruelty.  Having been a person who acted similarly, Mary is unphased by his attacks.  After discovering an overgrown garden that has been hidden away for a decade, Mary begins to prune away and care for it.  The two children spend precious hours in the garden caring for it and basking in its glow.  As the garden begins to grow, they grow too and they forget about their loneliness and sorrow.  They are even able to reach out to their uncle whose sad and lonely existence is manifest in a hunched back.  Their health and the health of the garden help to make them realize that they are a family and that they can help one another to live full and rewarding lives.

Impressions

This book is full of a descriptive prose that makes it easy to imagine what the author describes.  Although some of the vocabulary will likely be unfamiliar to young readers, they can easily imply the meaning.  There are several stories going on simultaneously throughout.  The story of Mary and her epiphany and change, the story of her cousin, Colin and his change in health and demeanor, and the eventual changes in her uncle from a reclusive, bitter man to a loving caretaker.  There is also a story of the little garden that has been locked away and only needs a nurturing, loving, caretaker to bring it back to its full glory.  Children should be able to recognize these themes as the book goes into not so subtle details to make them clear.

Professional Reviews

Few books so beautifully capture and celebrate the transformative power of spring and nature as The Secret Garden. The story follows Mary Lennox, a spoiled and crabby child, as she moves from India to England to live an almost solitary existence at her uncle's manor, Misselthwaithe. Here, Mary's elitism and bad humor are disrupted by the good-natured common sense of a Yorkshire housemaid and her brother Dickon, who can communicate with animals. In a far corner of the mansion, Mary finds an unknown cousin who has been hidden away. Outside, she finds a secret garden. The change that the garden brings to Mary and her cousin is magical. Although many abridged editions are available, only the original version enables you to enjoy fully Frances Hodgson Burnett's glorious descriptions and lyrical prose.

Bauermeister, 2007

There are many reasons why The Secret Garden is one of the best-loved of all stories for children. The garden itself, locked away for ten years, with bulbs and roses waiting to be released into life; the fresh simplicity and feeling of excitement running through the book; the two ruthless egotists in confrontation; the actual and subliminal change from dark to light, from stuffiness to fresh air, from misery to joy. Above all, here are three characters who are completely real and recognizable. Mary's tough, obstinate, wayward temperament has something basically good about it that only needs the right circumstances for it to bloom into energy and usefulness, as quickly as her sallow face freshens to a healthy pink. Frances Hodgson Burnett is surely remembering her own childhood when she describes the little gardens Mary contrived in India with a patch of mud and a handful of withered flowers and when she makes her heroine free of a garden as secret and dormant as the one she had found herself behind `the little green door which was never unclosed' in Manchester. There are clues in the early chapters that make it perfectly natural that Mary should climb out of the depths of gloom into the sunshine through her delight in weeding and sowing and freeing the old rose trees from tangled undergrowth. We can readily accept that a child like this should storm at Colin for his selfishness instead of being afraid of his hysterical fits, as the rest of the household are. We can appreciate that a child who has been both spoiled and neglected in childhood should actually have to learn to be interested in other people—and so forget herself. Nor will any young reader fail to see the absolute logic of Mary's remark to Dickon that he makes the fifth person that she likes. The others are his mother and Martha `and the robin and Ben Weatherstaff'. This grouping seems no more odd to her than the fact that she has only liked five people in her life; it is one of many points through which the author shows that the change in her is subtly different from that in Colin, whose story runs parallel with hers. (pp. 211–15)

Fisher, 1979

Library Uses

This book could be used for an author study on Frances Hodgson Burnett or even for an introduction to gardening.  The descriptions of working the earth and pruning and weeding that Mary has to do are vivid and would spark interest in plants and gardening.  

References

Bauermeister, E., & Smith, H. (2007). Review of the secret garden. Children's Literature

    Review (Vol. 122). Detroit, MI: Gale. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.c/ps/i.do?id=GALE%

    7CH1420076140&v=2.1&u=txshracd2679&it=r&p=LitRC&

    sw=w&asid=71f5c1147784281c94da346121bbc1fe

Burnett, F. H., & Tudor, T. (1962). The secret garden. Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott Company.

Fisher, M. (1991). Who's who in children's books: 'The secret garden'. Children's

    Literature Review (Vol. 24). Detroit, MI: Gale.