Essay: The Secret Garden

The book that I am choosing to evaluate this time around is The Secret Garden. The Secret Garden is a coming-of-age story in the Children’s Literature genre that is told in a third-person point of view. The Children’s Literature genre is one that is very specific with it’s target audience as well as the story that it is telling. Also in books that are of the Children’s Literature genre, one can expect to find that the main protagonist is a child. In this case, the target audience would definitely be children 8 years old and older, who would probably have a better time connecting with the main characters who are of a similar age. In The Secret Garden, we find our main protagonist in the initially not most likable 10 year old Mary Lennox. I personally read this book for the first time as a 10 year old, and it was one of the first English books that I was able to read by myself after moving to the US and getting out of the ELD program. I think that The Secret Garden really is one of the best examples of the Children’s Literature genre, as it is a story which talks about companionship, friendship, loneliness, familial relationships, and magic, all of which children can easily empathize with. Not necessarily with the personalities of the main characters, but with the magical ability of how us humans can learn to become self aware of our actions and also move on from our painful scars with the help of positive people and positive thinking.
The main protagonist, Mary Lennox, is really the butterfly to our butterfly effect, the character which starts the chain of character developments in our story. Mary was described by Frances Hodgson Burnett as the “most disagreeable looking child” as well as “tyrannical and selfish a pig as ever lived” at the start of the novel (Ch 1). Even now, I remember my first time opening this book in elementary school when I wondered why the writer would want to introduce the main character in such an unpleasant way from the first paragraph of the book. However, at the same time, I found this method to also be very useful as it made me want to read further and try to understand why a character who was the same age as me (at the time I first read the book) would act in such displeasing ways. And once I began to read further, I realized that Mary’s personality and attitude towards life was the result of serious neglect from her parents and lack of proper guidance from those appointed to take care of her. This initial character setting and the stark contrast it posed to how Mary would become at the end of the book shows how much Mary’s character really develops as the story goes on. And as Mary encounters new friends in her life such as Dickon, Ben Weatherstaff, the robin, and Colin Craven who were not paid to “keep her quiet and our of sight”, she really gains the ability to take control of her own life and make choices that she wants for herself. After all, not every child has the fortune of being born to great parent, and I think that this novel really teaches us to be thankful if we have that fortune. And for those who, like Mary, are not that fortunate, we can all find our own “secret garden” to pour our own love, sweat, and effort into in order to create our own happiness.
The other main character in The Secret Garden would be Colin Craven, who I personally referred to as Mary 2.0 the first time I bread this book. As the story goes on and Mary transforms into a much kinder character, most of the focus of the book then goes towards Collin (Chapter 13 onwards). When I first read about Collin in the book, I have to say that I really felt a sense of deja vu with the first time I read about Mary. Collin is the son of Archibald Craven, Mary’s Uncle who becomes becomes Mary’s guardian after her parents passed away. Collin is a character who at the beginning would hurt other people because he was hurting so badly himself. He, like Mary at the beginning of the book, was suffering from lack of familial love where his father can’t even stand looking at him because in Colin’s face, Archibald sees “the great gray eyes with black lashes around them, so like and yet so horribly unlike the happy eyes he had adored” of Collin’s mother who died when she fell from a branch in the Secret Garden while pregnant with Colin. Colin survived, but his mother didn’t. The large amount of emotional baggage that Collin has carried from a young age is the key factor that is making him physically, as well as emotionally, sick. These factors also make it easier for us readers to sympathize with Collin’s character as we get to see the reason behind his negative attitude. But as the story develops and Collin meets new friends like Mary and Dickon and also gets to connect emotionally with his mother through her beloved garden, his health begins to improve. And more importantly he also finds something to believe in—-the “magic.” The magic of the secret garden is a reoccurring symbol that is brought up in the story that stands for the importance of positive energy and thinking to a person’s overall health. With this positive energy magic, Collin’s able to find the strength to stand again, and its also “t’s same Magic as made these ‘ere work out o’ th’ earth” that helped bring the Secret Garden back to life (Ch. 22).
The setting of The Secret Garden is at first in colonial India, where Mary lived with her parents in their giant bungalow, then later on switches to the Misselthwaite Manor where Mary now lives after her parents death. One of the most important things to notice is how large these houses are and how they make the isolation the children face even more obvious in comparison. One of the things I remember the most when I first read this book was the image of Mary, all alone in the empty bungalow, not realizing that both of her parents have died and that all of the servants have died or run away. This really hit me hard the first time I read the book and this time around, I once again felt that same sense of sympathy for Mary who lost her parents so suddenly, and also how sad it is that she spent almost no time thinking about her parents’ death. Especially when it talked about how “Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance and she had thought her very pretty, but as she knew very little of her she could scarcely have been expected to love her or to miss her very much when she was gone. She did not mss her at all, in fact, and as she was a self-absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself, as she had always done” (Ch 2). That’s probably a parent’s worst nightmare: that their own child didn’t really care that he or she died. And even when Mary gets to the Misselthwaite Manor, the countless empty rooms really gave me an eerie vibe that I hope I will never encounter in my lifetime. This book definitely stresses the importance of how human contact and interaction during one’s upbringing can definitely affect one’s emotional health. The more Mary and Collin came in contact with nature and other people, the healthier they became.
Some of the most important reoccurring themes in the book are the importance of family, friends, nature, and something to pour your efforts into and believe in, which really leads to the idea of how the secret to happiness in this book is to think less about yourself and more about the other people around you. Mary and Colin were extremely unhappy when their world really revolved around themselves and they had nothing to think about or do except wallow in their pride and self pity, but when they find friends to care for and share their happiness and secret (garden) with, they are able to truly see how small a lot of their worries are compared to the problems of people like Dickon and Mrs. Sowerby. In terms of the adults in the story, the most important message that I got would be the importance of facing your problems and responsibilities, especially when you are a parent. The decision of Mr. Craven to not face Collin, who reminded him of his beloved wife, as well as the actions of Mr. and Mrs. Lennox who chose to run away from the responsibilities of parenting (which is definitely much more than just financially providing for your child) are prime examples of how once a person becomes a parent, your world no longer revolves around yourself and your own problems. The children that the parents chose to bring to this world are innocent, yet ultimately become victims that lose a precious portion of their childhood because of their parents’ irresponsible actions. Imagine if Mary had no other relatives to go to or if there was no Secret Garden or it was never discovered. The sadness that Mary and Collin felt would probably then carry on into their adult lives and who knows how it would affect them when they become parents themselves. So most importantly, the book reminded me once again the importance of being a responsible adult (especially as a teacher in the future). Everything a child comes in contact with in their early childhood, the books they read, the people they meet, the actions of their teachers and parents, all lead to indoctrination.
Overall, I really enjoy reading this wonderful once again and remembering once again the joy it brought me as a young 10 year old girl who was new to the English language.