![]() While Burnett did not join either religion, she acknowledged that they influenced her work. ![]() It was developed by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby in the 19th century, and one of Quimby’s students was Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. New Thought teaches that people can enhance their lives by altering their thought patterns. This focus on the power of positive thoughts highlights Burnett’s interest in New Thought and Christian Science. The Secret Garden emphasises the power of positive thinking: “thoughts – just mere thoughts – are as powerful as electric batteries – as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison”. By interacting with nature, the children grow in strength and in heart. Mary is subordinated as Colin’s healing becomes the text’s main focus Colin gains the ability to walk and – importantly – to win a race against her. Colin’s gardening suggests mastery of the space as he plants a rose – the floral emblem of England. Both gain weight and strength and lose their pallor. The children are healed by gardening in the “fresh wind from the moor”. Then the green things began to show buds and the buds began to unfurl and show colour, every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. The stifling rooms and constricting passages of Misselthwaite Manor are contrasted to the freedom of the secret garden.Īt first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the crevices of the walls. Mary and Colin are both physically and psychically transformed through working in the garden. The garden becomes a space of rejuvenation for the children. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), The Secret Garden also explores an English turn-of-the-century interest in paganism and the occult, expressed through the book’s fascination with the Greek god Pan.ĭickon, who shares an affinity with animals and the natural world, is first introduced as he sits under a tree “playing on a rough wooden pipe” reminiscent of Pan’s flute. Like other Edwardian texts, such as Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908) and J. Eventually, she manages to draw Colin out of his room with the help of Dickon, and the garden helps him to recover his strength.īurnett draws upon the cultural connection between childhood and nature, highlighting Edwardian beliefs about the importance of the garden. When she died after an accident in the garden, her husband, Archibald, locked the door and buried the key.Īfter Mary unearths the key, she begins to work in this mysterious, overgrown garden along with Martha’s brother, Dickon. This walled garden had formerly belonged to Colin’s mother, Lilias Craven. Perhaps the most famous image associated with Burnett’s text is the locked door leading to the eponymous garden. The first edition of The Secret Garden, published in 1911. / Houghton Library, Harvard University On the death of her parents, Mary is sent to live with her reclusive uncle Archibald Craven at Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire. The Ayah tasked with caring for Mary and the other “native servants … always obeyed Mary and gave her her own way in everything.” She makes futile attempts at gardening, planting hibiscus blossoms into mounds of earth. Mary is “disagreeable”, “contrary”, “selfish” and “cross”. hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Burnett depicts India as a site of permissive behaviour, illness and lassitude: ![]() The book opens as nine-year-old Mary Lennox is discovered abandoned in an Indian bungalow following her parents’ deaths during a cholera outbreak. A scene from the new movie version of the book. A new film, starring Colin Firth, Dixie Egerickx and Amir Wilson, updates the story in some ways for modern audiences. The Secret Garden has been read by generations, remains a fixture on children’s publishing lists today and has inspired several film versions. It also reveals anxieties about national identity at a time of the British Empire, drawing on ideas of Christian Science. The novel is, in fact, a sensitive and complex story, which explores how a relationship with nature can foster our emotional and physical well-being. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden has been described as “the most significant children’s book of the 20th century.”įirst published in 1911, after being serialised in The American Magazine, it was dismissed by one critic at the time as simple and lacking “plenty of excitement”.
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