The Secret Garden

Huh.

What started out as a rather enchanting revisiting of a childhood story began to deteriorate once I was about halfway through. After the more straightforward regenerative themes from early in the book, all the “Magic” (positive thoughts! Colin’s “lectures”!) operative in Colin’s healing sounded quite iffy to me, then I read up a bit on Burnett and realized it’s basically Christian Science in the form of a sentimental children’s serial:

“One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—-are as powerful as electric batteries...To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it show more stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.”

“Much more surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.” Indeed. You just need to “have the sense” to mentally argue your way out of debilitating sickness, depression, and suffering.

It’s a shame, because I very much like Mary’s odd, sharp-edged little character and her funny relationship with Colin. Her transformation is still lovely.

Overall, though, this is kind of ruined for me. :( Thanks, but no thanks, Mrs. Burnett. show less

This was a lot more delightful than I expected, completely charmed me. I love nature in my reading generally and plants are extra special to me, so I lapped up all those lovely, loving descriptions of the Secret Garden and surrounding moor.

I also liked Burnett's treatment of the children Mary and Colin. They both started off as entitled, obnoxious brats -- who actually suffered deeply. I would hate to be around them but you can't help but feel sympathy. Then friendship and observing wonderful things in the world around them inspired them, transforming their fears and trauma. They began to learn there was a different way, not only giving them pleasure but also competency. I was reminded of those places people go now, to farms to do show more chores and spend time with horses or other animals as therapy.

Sure it was a sappy story. But come on, we all could be a bit more sappy. And a bit more happy. Hard to begrudge a children's book for letting readers share in that fresh sense of newly discovered joy. show less

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, published 1911

This was pure delight to read. From the opening when the narrator calls Mary Lennox “as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived” to the end, this story and the characters held me enthralled. I expected to find the narrative outdated and overly formal; instead I found a pleasantly lilting narrative voice that readers of any age can enjoy.

My favorite moment was when Mary takes the “sickly” spoiled boy to task. Talk about a battle of wills! I laughed out loud several times. What a lovely book!

5 stars

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In this classic work of children’s literature, the healing properties of wild nature and the pleasing physical labor of revitalizing a neglected garden transform an under-parented, ill-mannered girl and an under-parented, invalid boy into happy, productive people. Author Frances Hodgson Burnett writes particularly well about the importance of cultivation and care for gardens and children alike. Yet, although many readers love this book, I found it slow-moving at the beginning (before sickly, “hysterical” Colin entered the story) and loaded with toxic positivity at the end.

Like Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden is another book that I was not allowed to read as a child because I was a boy. The most interesting thing about this book is that it has none of the things we think books need to have to be successful. There's almost no conflict. After the opening incidents, almost nothing goes wrong. The book is supposedly a series of adventures of some children overcoming hardship... but there isn't any hardship. Every chapter is just a list of things *going right*, and almost nothing going wrong, and that should mean a very dull and pointless book. Even the starving moor children are depicted as quaint and happy, ignoring their likely miserable state. Despite the opening chapter of disease and death, life show more is inherently wonderful for everyone in this book, which renders the children' accomplishments as nil, and should make the plot hollow and pointless. So why did I cry so much while reading it? Why did I care? Why did I enjoy it so much? It has a lot of spelled-out philosophy, which I am a sucker for. Even done imperfectly, I love it when a book takes that risk. The book also has joy and happiness, which is hard to find in a modern novel. It has redemption. It acknowledges both that the father has neglected his duties but also explains his point of view and what he has suffered, without beating it over our head. The book believes in life and in magic. There is never any doubt that everything is going to work out and be wonderful, that kindness is going to win. And despite how boring that ought to be, it mostly works. How often do we get to read something like that? Finally, it is possible that this book contains a message that I, Douglas, need to hear. Something particular about trust--or about the inevitability of growth, that nature pushes us along, that green shoots *always* pop up from the dark soil. Because they do--it's true. And humanity is not in conflict with that spirit... we actually embody it, mostly. This book says that things are going to be okay, and it teaches us some of what we can do to help things be okay. Trump might be president, my children might hit each other, but things are going to be okay. And I can help. In our culture, it is a tremendous bit of bravery to consider that point of view, even for a moment. I've seen clips of television or movie versions of this story, and I've sat through the musical, and I have to record here that I hated all of it. Watching them was like eating food that someone else had already chewed on for a while. I feel the same way, though not quite as strongly, about Anne of Green Gables. These are really interesting, good books, and they've been made *less* accessible to the world by adaptations. The book isn't perfect. Besides the aforementioned bizarre lack of conflict, and the sweetness that is almost cloying, there are some passages that were poorly written or poorly imagined. It is almost as if the author were learning to write, and so she tried a series of different styles and techniques as she created a book. Some of the things she tried worked brilliantly, like the first paragraph of chapter 21, or indeed many of the exploratory tone changes that the author uses when starting a new chapter. But some passages demonstrably fail, like Mr. and Mrs. Crawford's conversation in chapter 2, which almost made me drop the book. I can't make up my mind about the robin's point of view passage, and the section from Archibald Craven's point of view towards the end... does it work? Yes? Maybe? But I am impressed and inspired by the commitment and creativity used in crafting all of it. Will re-read. show less

I find it hard to believe that this book wasn't at all on my radar in childhood. We had well-stocked school libraries and teacher/school librarians. Unfortunately, though, book talks and reader's advisory were not a thing. I had friends who were voracious readers and they recommended titles to me, but not this one.

In any case, I finally got to this classic but fairly simply plotted story about the transformation of a sour, spoiled young English girl, Mary Lennox, whose parents die of cholera in Colonial India. Mary is sent back to England to Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire, the home of her mother's brother, Archibald Craven. Mr. Craven is a remote figure, still bowed low by grief ten years after his lively, beloved wife accidentally show more died in the garden she loved so much. An old tree branch she was sitting on broke, and she fell to her death. Mr. Craven spends most of the year away from the manor. He can't bear to be in the place he once so happily shared with her. Her garden has been left alone. All are apparently forbidden to enter it.

Mary, who is largely left to her own devices, discovers this secret garden one day. A friendly little male robin appears to beckon her to come in, guiding her to a once-buried key to a garden door hidden under a thick growth of ivy. The young maid, Martha, who attends to Mary at the manor, has a younger brother, Dickon, a friend to all plants and animals. He speaks the language of birds, squirrels, lambs, and foxes, and hasn't a mean bone in his body. Mary's introduction to Dickon and her sharing the secret garden with him are her salvation.

There is, of course, one more surprise. Mary also has a secret cousin, Archibald Craven's invalid son: Colin. He is, in many ways, like Mary herself--about the same age, pathologically spoiled, and deeply unpleasant. All the adults have led him to believe he has inherited his father's spinal deformity. He's been bed-bound and sequestered for most of his life. Mary discovers him because he's prone to violent tantrums and sessions of wild weeping, which she can hear at some distance from his room in the large house. The curious girl follows the sounds of crying one night and finds him. Ultimately, she takes him in hand, scolding him as only one spoilt child can another. She also offers stories, including one about the magical secret garden and another about a boy who can communicate with animals.

Well before people were writing books about "nature-deficit syndrome," Burnett was aware of the restorative power of the natural world. Mary's friendship with Colin, her introducing him to Dickon and the garden prove to be his salvation as well.

I can imagine that some members of the Woke crowd might not be too keen on the Colonial Anglo-Indian elements in this children's novel, the intimations that South-Asian servants are somehow less than the ruling English who used them as servants. If Farley Mowat's wonderful [book:Owls in the Family|785656] can be purged from school libraries, just about anything can be, it would seem. Some of the vocabulary Burnett regularly uses has also taken on very different meanings. I'm thinking of the word "queer" in particular.

Overall, though, I can't see how anyone could object to this lovely novel maintaining a special place in the canon of beloved children's literature. show less

I like the beginning of this book a lot. Mary is snotty and annoying, a nice departure from many protagonists in children's literature (see Daddy-Long-Legs), but her evolution into someone worth knowing is pretty believable. There's an intriguing mystery set up, as Mary has to hunt down the garden and figure out what the mysterious cries from the other end of the house are. A feeling of magic permeates the early garden scenes, as Mary learns how to nurture. But then, Colin recovers and the last third of the book just becomes annoying as we're forced to read speech after speech about "the Magic", "the Magic." Oh shut up kid. Either lay in your bed and cry or just get on with playing in the dirt. I don't need to hear pedantic lectures show more from a ten-year-old on life force. Mary's a more interesting character than you, anyone. Actually, most people in the book are. show less