The Secret Garden

Orphaned in India

Nine-year-old Mary Lennox is an unattractive girl, in both body and mind. Her father is a government official in India, and her mother, though beautiful, cares more about parties than her young daughter. To keep Mrs. Lennox happy, the family’s Indian servants must keep Mary from disturbing her mother, and out of view of her friends. The servants indulge Mary’s every whim, and Mary quickly becomes selfish and tyrannical.

One day, a cholera epidemic breaks out. As people fall ill, the household devolves into a state of panic. Mary, forgotten by both her family and the servants, hides in her nursery. When she awakens the next day, the house is silent. After several hours, a group of soldiers discovers Mary. From them, she learns both her parents have died.

Mary is sent to England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven. His housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock, meets Mary in London. Together, the two travel to Yorkshire. Along the way, Mrs. Medlock tells Mary more about her uncle, who is a hunchback, and about his home, Misselthwaite Manor. The ancient house stands on the edge of a moor, and almost all of its hundred rooms are kept locked. Mr. Craven’s beautiful wife died young, and the man became a near-hermit in his grief.

At Misselthwaite Manor

The next morning, at the manor, Mary wakes to find a young maid tending her fireplace. The maid, Martha, chats with Mary as if she were her equal, which irritates the spiteful little girl. Martha manages to soothe Mary by telling her about her brother, Dickon, who has an affinity with animals. Listening to Martha talk about Dickon, Mary feels an interest in something outside herself for the first time in her life. Martha also tells Mary that, somewhere on the estate grounds, there is a garden that has been locked up for 10 years.

Outside, in one of the kitchen gardens, Mary spies a robin. The robin’s happy song makes her feel less surly than normal. In another garden, she meets a grumpy old gardener named Ben Weatherstaff. When she tells him about the robin, Ben whistles a song, and, to Mary’s surprise, the robin reappears. Ben explains that the robin befriended him after becoming separated from the rest of his brood. Mary realizes all at once that she too is lonely. The robin resumes singing and Ben tells Mary this means the bird has decided to befriend her too.

“Even a disagreeable little girl may be lonely, and the big closed house and big bare moor and big bare gardens had made this one feel as if there was no one left in the world but herself.”

Mary’s life begins to settle into a routine. Every day she wakes up, has breakfast, and goes to wander the gardens. Slowly, her time spent outside begins to have a positive effect: She begins to look less sickly and grows stronger. One evening, Mary asks Martha about the locked garden again. Martha explains that the garden belonged to Mrs. Craven, who spent hours there with her husband. Mrs. Craven loved to sit on the branch of a particular tree. One day the branch broke and she fell. When she died from her injuries Mr. Craven locked the garden up and buried the key. Suddenly, Mary hears sounds like a child crying. Martha insists it is only the wind, but Mary doesn’t believe her.

The next day, the rain keeps Mary indoors. She explores the house for several hours. On her way back to her room, Mary again hears a child crying. As she searches for the source of the sound, she runs into Mrs. Medlock, who drags Mary back to her room and tells her to stay there.

Buried Keys and Hidden Doors

Martha goes home for the day to visit her family. After she leaves, Mary goes out to the gardens where she finds Ben Weatherstaff in a good mood for once. He tells her that spring is coming soon. As she resumes her wandering, Mary thinks about how she has grown fond of Martha and the robin. This is a new experience for her as she has never liked anyone before. She hears the robin twittering and goes toward the flower bed where he is hopping around. There, next to a hole dug in the earth by a dog, Mary finds an old key she thinks must be the key to the locked garden. The thought of getting inside the locked garden excites Mary’s imagination. She decides to keep the key with her at all times in case some day she should find the door.

“’People never like me and I never like people,’ she thought. ‘And I never can talk as the other children could. They were always talking and laughing and making noises.’” (Mary)

The next morning, Mary receives a present from Martha’s mother: a jump rope. As Mary practices her skipping, she sees the robin perched on a piece of ivy on a wall. A gust of wind blows the ivy and Mary suddenly glimpses a door knob. Digging under the ivy, Mary finds the door’s lock. She takes the key from her pocket, puts it in the keyhole, turns it, and pushes the door open.

The inside of the walled garden is filled with rose bushes of all kinds – though Mary is unsure if they are dead or alive. Looking at a flower bed, Mary see some green shoots poking out of the earth. Happy that something in the garden is growing, she decides to lend the baby plants a hand by clearing the weeds. That night, she asks Martha to help her purchase some gardening tools. Martha agrees to the plan, telling Mary they can ask Dickon to help Mary make a garden. As Martha leaves the room, Mary hears the same crying sound that she heard before.

Dickon

For the next week, Mary spends each day working inside the garden. She also becomes better friends with Ben, who tells her he learned about rose care from a young lady, now deceased, who had loved them. Afterward, Mary wanders into a small wooded plot. There, she sees a strange boy sitting against a tree, playing a pipe, surrounded by a squirrel, two rabbits and a pheasant. He introduces himself as Dickon and shows Mary the tools and seeds he has bought for her. Suddenly they hear the robin singing. Dickon whistles back to the bird in a way that sounds almost exactly like the robin’s own twitter. Listening to the robin’s reply, Dickon confirms for Mary that the robin is her friend. He then asks Mary about the location of her garden. After a brief hesitation, Mary takes Dickon to the locked garden and lets him inside.

“The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was.”

Mary asks Dickon if he thinks the rose bushes are dead or not. He examines them and tells her that while there is a lot of dead wood to remove, he sees new growth as well. He also remarks on Mary’s weeding work – praising her impulse to give the flowers room to grow. Mary asks if he will help her return the garden to its former glory and Dickon agrees. Mary tells Dickon she likes him and asks, in Yorkshire dialect, if he likes her too. His confirmation makes Mary gladder than ever.

“A Bit of Earth”

That day, after lunch, Mary learns her uncle has returned from his recent travels and has asked to see her before he leaves again. Once in Mr. Craven’s presence, Mary studies him carefully: His back is indeed uneven, but he is not ugly, only very sad. When he apologizes for having failed to send Mary a governess, Mary asks that she be allowed to play outside and grow stronger before having a governess. Mr. Craven says that is the exact advice Martha’s mother, Mrs. Sowerby, offered, and he agrees Mary may continue to do as she wishes for the time being. Mary then asks if she can have a piece of land for a garden. Mr. Craven is surprised and moved by this request: Mary’s desire reminds him of his wife’s love of growing things. He tells her she can have as much land as she likes, anywhere on the grounds.

A Cry in the Night

That night, as Mary lies in bed listening to the rain, Mary again hears the sound of someone crying. She goes in search of the source of the noise. Finding the room, Mary opens its door. Inside, she sees a frail-looking boy lying in a bed. The two children stare at one another, each wondering if the other is a ghost. After a few moments, they introduce themselves: The boy is Colin Craven. Mary, shocked, tells Colin she had no idea her uncle had a son. Colin explains that he’s been sick ever since he was born and probably won’t live, and if he does he will be a hunchback. Even his father only sees him when he is asleep. He never goes outside and, Colin adds, normally, he never lets people see him. And everyone has to obey him, since getting angry makes Colin more ill.

Colin asks Mary her age. She replies that she is 10, and that she knows he is too because that’s when Mr. Craven locked up the garden. Colin begins peppering Mary with questions about the secret garden. To distract him, Mary asks Colin if he really believes he will die young. He tells her that’s what people say. Colin returns to the subject of the secret garden insisting he wants to see it, and will make the servants show it to him. Mary, thinking fast, explains that Colin must not do that: If he does, the garden won’t be a secret any longer. Colin, who has never had a secret, is convinced. He tells Mary he wants her to come back and talk to him every day.

The next morning, Mary tells Martha she has met Colin. Martha worries she will lose her job, but Mary assures her Colin was happy to meet her. Martha, who is only used to Colin’s tantrums and tears, can hardly believe what she hears. When Mary asks Martha about Colin’s illness, Martha says her mother thinks Colin is sickly, mainly, because he lies in bed all day long.

“Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way – or always to have it.” (Martha to Mary)

Later, Mary returns to Colin’s room. Colin’s talk quickly returns to the subject of his illness. The only person who ever questioned the idea of his dying young, Colin tells Mary, was a specialist from London. He thought Colin could get well and live if Colin decided that he wanted to. Thinking about this, Mary wonders if meeting Dickon might help make Colin want to live. She begins to describe Dickon, his family, the gardens and the moor to Colin.

Soon, Colin forgets about being sick, and he and Mary are laughing happily together. Suddenly, Colin’s uncle Dr. Craven and Mrs. Medlock enter. They are shocked to see Mary, but Colin announces he and Mary are now friends, and she will visit him whenever he wishes. When Dr. Craven tells Colin to remember he is not well, Colin retorts that Mary makes him better by helping him forget that exact fact.

The Taming of a “Boy Animal”

After a week of rain, the sunshine returns and Mary goes back to the garden. There, Dickon introduces her to a fox named Captain and a crow named Soot. Mary tells him about Colin. Dickon says Colin’s best chance to get well is to spend time outdoors and the two discuss bringing Colin to the garden. When Mary returns to the house, Martha reminds her Colin is waiting to see her, but Mary is unconcerned and says she will go to him later. That evening when she goes to see Colin she finds him in a terrible mood. He tells Mary if Dickon is going to keep her away from him all day, he’ll banish him from Misselthwaite. A bitter argument ensues: Each call the other selfish, and when Colin tries to remind her he is going to die, Mary tells him she doesn’t believe him. Enraged, Colin orders her out of the room.

That night, Mary is awakened by the sound of Colin having hysterics. Mary runs into Colin’s room and begins yelling at him, demanding he stop his tantrum at once. If he doesn’t, she warns, she’ll start screaming too, and she’ll do it even louder. Colin, shocked out of his fit, moans to Mary that he felt a lump on his back. Mary demands to see Colin’s back and, upon seeing it, announces that it is perfectly straight. Colin, astounded by her pronouncement, begins to wonder if, perhaps, he is not that sick after all.

The next morning, in the garden, Mary asks Dickon if he would come visit Colin and bring some of his animals with him. Dickon agrees. Later, in Colin’s room, Mary describes her time with Dickon. When Colin remarks that he’s never had a friend because, generally, he doesn’t like people, Mary tells him she used to feel the same, but doesn’t anymore. She tells him Dickon will visit soon and, seeing his happiness, finally confesses she’s been inside the secret garden and plans to take Colin there.

“Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”

When Dr. Craven arrives the next day to check on Colin, he is shocked to see his last tantrum appears to have had no ill effects. Mrs. Medlock replies that her friend Mrs. Sowerby says children need to spend time with other children in order to learn they aren’t the center of the universe. Dickon and his animals arrive to meet Colin. In addition to two squirrels, Nut and Shell, and Soot and Captain, Dickon brings a baby lamb he is fostering. Soon the three children are chatting like old friends.

Magic

On the day Colin is to venture outdoors, he orders that all the manor staff stay away from the garden paths. Dickon pushes Colin around the grounds in a wheelchair. Colin is delighted with the sights, sounds and smells of the natural world. Finally, they reach the secret garden. Inside, Colin’s pale skin begins to show a flush of color for the first time, and he announces to his friends that he will indeed get well and live. Suddenly, the children spy Ben standing on a ladder looking over the wall. Colin asks if Ben knows who he is and, caught off guard, Ben’s reply refers to Colin as a cripple. This rouses Colin’s temper. Grasping Dickon’s hand, Colin rises from the wheelchair and stands on his own legs. He then orders Ben to come to join them in the garden. Once Ben arrives, he tells the children he used to work in the garden once a year, each year as a way of honoring Colin’s mother, who loved it so. Colin replies that it is now his garden, but he will allow Ben to keep visiting if he keeps it a secret.

“He had made himself believe that he was going to get well, which was really more than half the battle.”

In the months that follow, the garden blooms. Colin decides he will become a scientist – and will start with a study of Magic in the world. As his first experiment, he will call on the Magic to make him well. He, Dickon, Mary and Ben sit in a circle under a tree and Colin chants his wish over and over. Then, he walks around the garden. Colin decides not to tell the doctor, or anyone else about his growing strength until he is completely well. When that happens, he will surprise his father.

One afternoon, Mrs. Sowerby appears at the secret garden door. The children welcome her with joy, and she, in turn, treats Mary and Colin like her own children. As they all talk and laugh together, Colin inquires whether she believes in Magic. She says she does – though she calls it by other names. Before she departs, Mrs. Sowerby says she hopes Mr. Craven will return home soon so see how well Colin has become. When Colin replies that he wishes she was really his mother, as well as Dickon’s, Mrs. Sowerby assures Colin that his own mother’s spirit lives on in the garden.

Archibald Craven Returns 

While good thoughts help people flourish, bad ones are like poison. Ever since his wife’s death, Mr. Craven has allowed grief full control of his mind and has run from his responsibilities at home. That is, until one day, as he is sitting outdoors next to a lake, a clump of blue flowers catches his eye. He finds himself marveling at their loveliness and, for a moment, the darkness retreats. Some nights later, he dreams about his wife: She tells him to come find her in their garden. The next morning, when he receives a letter from Mrs. Sowerby advising that he come home, Mr. Craven packs his bags.

On his trip home, Mr. Craven finds himself thinking deeply about his son for the first time in years. Mr. Craven decides he must try to improve his and Colin’s relationship. He sets off looking for Colin as soon as he arrives home. As he approaches the secret garden, he is shocked to hear what sounds like children’s voices inside. Suddenly, the garden door swings open and Colin runs out, stumbling straight into his father’s arms. Mr. Craven is overcome with joy at the sight of his son. Colin shows his father around the garden and tells him all his adventures there. Colin, Mary and Mr. Craven walk back to the manor together where the entire household is utterly surprised and delighted to see the changes in father and son.

Structure and Style

The Secret Garden is a coming-of-age story with certain features drawn from Gothic fiction. While today the novel is classified as children’s literature, the story was originally serialized in a magazine for adults. The novel is narrated chronologically in a third-person-omniscient voice. Perspective occasionally shifts to unlikely characters, such as the robin that lives inside the secret garden. At times, the narrator addresses the audience directly. Sometimes the narrator speaks to the reader in order to tell them about the characters (including how they look and behave) or settings – the descriptions of nature are particularly detailed. 

The novel’s tone oscillates between light and dark throughout the text. The narrator does not shy away from highlighting the characters’ less-than-admirable traits, and treats the underlying horror of the abandonment and isolation Mary and Colin suffer from with a marked seriousness. At the same time, an unabashed joy pervades the scenes set in the natural world. The first part of the novel charts the early stages of Mary’s gradual shift from an unloved, misanthropic little girl to a healthier, less self-centered young person – thanks to the transformative effects of friendship and nature. The second part introduces another spoiled, sickly child, Mary’s cousin Colin, and follows his own path of spiritual and physical healing, thanks to Mary, Dickon and the secret garden. The last part of the novel focuses on Colin’s father, Archibald Craven, who himself is in dire need of redemption and renewal.

Interpretation

• While most coming-of-age stories focus solely on a character’s growth from innocence to maturity, The Secret Garden shows Mary and Colin’s development operating in two directions. As the pair abandon their selfish, isolated ways, they grow less helpless, overly emotional and otherwise infantile. At the same time, as they become healthier in mind and body, they grow less serious and more childlike: learning how to play, imagine and laugh. 
• The Secret Garden offers a twist on the traditional 19th-century orphan narrative. While orphans were typically framed as saintly creatures who, though mistreated, eventually get the reward they deserve, both Mary and the orphan-like Colin are depicted as a decidedly unpleasant, unattractive children who are redeemed due to their willingness to change and find ways to connect with the world around them.
• Burnett helps ground the novel’s sense of place by having characters like Dickon, Ben Weatherstaff and Martha speak in Yorkshire dialect. The use of dialect also works to identify characters’ sense of belonging: As Mary and Colin grow more connected with their home, they begin to use the Yorkshire dialect, at times, themselves.
• The Secret Garden links mothering with magic: With their ability to help children grow, emotionally and physically, women like Mrs. Sowerby, Mrs. Craven, and, in many ways, Mary herself, possess the same kind of positive, nurturing energy – which Colin and Mary call Magic – that is found in nature and in the divine.
• Isolation is portrayed as a prime evil in The Secret Garden. It is a major contributor to Mary, Colin and Mr. Craven’s unhappiness and selfishness. Once these characters open themselves to communion with others, it checks their worst impulses but breeds kindness and love.
• The secret garden acts as a symbol of Mary and Colin’s own physical and spiritual state. They, like the weed-choked flower beds and the rose bushes covered in old, dead wood, must be freed from the confines of their own dark thoughts before they can grow.
• Though Burnett shows that Dickon’s ability to tame wild creatures is unique, the fact that Mary and Ben Weatherstaff are able to befriend the robin – who lives in the semi-domesticated space of the secret garden – underscores the strong connection between humankind and the natural world. 
• The novel posits that bodily health follows where the mind leads: If a person cultivates negative thoughts, they will blind themselves to everything beautiful in the world, and thus, breed more misery. If, on the other hand, they cultivate positive thoughts, they will gain happiness and health.

Social Change and New Spiritualism at the Turn of the Century

The end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th were marked by sweeping social and political reforms. Child labor was a key issue for reformers, driven in no small part by changing attitudes toward the nature of childhood itself. For much of the Victorian era, childhood was viewed, primarily, as a training ground for adulthood, and children themselves as miniature adults. While upper-class children typically enjoyed leisure time, they were nonetheless expected to comport themselves in a mature manner from a young age. Meanwhile, children of the lower classes were expected to contribute to the family income. They toiled their days away in factories, mines and in domestic service. As the 20th century dawned, Britain’s upper and middle classes, together with its artists and authors, began to reconsider the meaning of childhood and to push for child labor and education reforms. A more Rousseauian view of childhood gained popularity, and the image of the innocent child with a strong connection to the natural world proliferated in literature.

During this same time, in America, Progressive Era reforms led to a reassessment of the treatment of orphans. Orphans were traditionally expected to earn what they received from the individuals and institutions that provided their minimal care. Reflecting this idea, pre-Progressive Era fictions, especially those featuring female orphans, relied upon a narrative structure in which the good and obedient orphan gets their happily ever after by proving themselves useful to a benefactor. Such characters stand in stark contrast to the more realistic portrayal of orphanhood found in The Secret Garden: Mary Lennox is not only a disagreeable child, but, for much of the story, a helpless one at that. Characters like Mary underscore how, as views on children began shifting, society started to see its responsibility to orphans in a new light and accept the idea that orphans, too, deserve a childhood unencumbered by adult cares. New ideas about spirituality also blossomed during these years. The New Thought movement, based on the metaphysical teachings of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, and the Christian Science movement, founded by Mary Baker Eddy, for instance, posited positive thinking as a kind of divine act: capable of acting as a force for good, and of promoting mental and physical healing. By contrast, negative thinking poisoned both body and mind, and was, thus, viewed by believers as the source of disease. 

Development

In a 1910 letter to her publisher, Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote of her excitement for her idea of a story centered around “a long deserted garden… whose locked door is hidden by ivy and whose key has been buried for 10 years.” This initial inspiration for The Secret Garden seems to have come from Burnett’s fond memories of her beloved Great Maytham Hall in Kent, which served as her home for 10 years and which she was forced to vacate in 1908. Maytham was Burnett’s refuge: a place where she cultivated a beautiful rose garden and enjoyed the company of a semi-tame robin. The walled garden Mary Lennox discovers in The Secret Garden was, Burnett wrote to a friend, her own “Rose Garden as it would have been locked up for years and years and years – and some hungry children had found it.” Too, according to the author’s 1912 story, “My Robin,” Burnett’s real-life robin was just as personable as the one immortalized in her novel. Burnett writes that she felt bereft when, upon her departure from Maytham, she had to tell her little friend “that we should not see each other again.” Though Maytham served as Burnett’s prime inspiration for her novel, according to her memoir, it was another garden that first sparked her belief in the “magic” found in nature – a core idea of The Secret Garden. Burnett writes that the “enchanted” garden she played in at the back of a house called Seedly Grove, “remained throughout [her] lifetime, the Garden of Eden.”

While The Secret Garden celebrates Burnett’s lifelong love of growing things, it also reflects more conflicted aspects of her life, including Burnett’s somewhat uneasy relationship with motherhood, and her deep sorrow over the death of her eldest son, Lionel. Like Archibald Craven, Burnett spent much of Lionel and Vivian’s childhood on trips which took her away from them; and Burnett did not immediately return home to care for Lionel upon learning he was sick. Critics who see Colin as a version of Lionel, thus, view that fictional boy’s recovery as a kind of wish-fulfillment. Burnett ardently embraced certain New Thought, Christian Science and Theosophy beliefs after Lionel’s death. Though she resisted the notion of labeling her beliefs – “Why give it a name; why label it with any limited creed?” she asked a New York Times reporter in 1906 – they appear throughout The Secret Garden. The central image of the garden as a place where healing occurs melds Burnett’s belief in the power of positive thinking with a Romantic understanding that nature reflects deeper spiritual truths and nurtures physical well-being. As Burnett wrote in 1925, “As long as one has a garden one has a future, and if one has a future one is alive.” Burnett also appears to have drawn inspiration for The Secret Garden from the Brontë sisters’ Jane Eyre (1847) and Wuthering Heights (1847). Allusions to both novels appear throughout The Secret Garden particularly in Burnett’s descriptions of the dark, moldering Misselthwaite Manor, the “wuthering” winds that sweep the Yorkshire moors, and the ghostly, far off sounds of someone weeping.

Reviews and Legacy

The Secret Garden sold well upon its initial publication, first, in serialized form in The American Magazine in 1910, and then, in book format in 1911. The novel received good reviews from critics: The Bookman reviewer R.A. Whay noted it “is more than a mere story of children” and praised the novel’s “deep vein of symbolism,” and “pathos of sheer happiness.” Still, in comparison to Burnett’s previous works, like the best-selling Little Lord Fauntleroy, the novel was only a moderate success and did not linger long in the public consciousness: None of the obituary notices that appeared after Burnett’s death, for example, made any mention of The Secret Garden. 

A revival of interest in the book began in the 1960s and when the book went out of copyright in 1986, various reprints helped bring the story to a wider audience. Today, The Secret Garden is considered one of the most important and best-loved children’s book of the 20th century. It has also enjoyed a revival within academia: Critics have examined the book’s exploration of gender identity, read it in the context of cultural history – including English colonialism – and charted its connection to the tradition of the female novel of development, among other critical lenses. The book has been adapted for the stage and screen numerous times. A 1949 MGM film starred Margaret O’Brien as Mary, and was filmed in both black-and-white and Technicolor. A 1993 film, directed by Agnieszka Holland, featured Dame Maggie Smith as Mrs. Medlock. A musical version of the story was nominated for seven Tony Awards in 1991. In 2020, a film version starring Colin Firth debuted.