''The Secret Garden'' is a novel by
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' (published in 1885–1886), '' A Little ...
first published in book form in 1911, after serialisation in ''
The American Magazine
''The American Magazine'' was a periodical publication founded in June 1906, a continuation of failed publications purchased a few years earlier from publishing mogul Miriam Leslie. It succeeded ''Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly'' (1876–1904), ' ...
'' (November 1910 – August 1911). Set in England, it is one of Burnett's most popular novels and seen as a classic of English children's literature. Several stage and film adaptations have been made. The American edition was published by the
Frederick A. Stokes Company
Frederick Abbott Stokes (November 4, 1857 – November 15, 1939) was an American publisher, founder and long-time head of the eponymous Frederick A. Stokes Company.
Biography
Stokes graduated from Yale Law School in 1879. He worked at Dodd, Mead ...
with illustrations by Maria Louise Kirk (signed as M. L. Kirk) and the British edition by
Heinemann Heinemann may refer to:
* Heinemann (surname)
* Heinemann (publisher), a publishing company
* Heinemann Park, a.k.a. Pelican Stadium in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
See also
* Heineman
* Jamie Hyneman
James Franklin Hyneman (born Se ...
with illustrations by
Charles Heath Robinson.
[
]
Plot summary
At the turn of the 20th century, Mary Lennox is a neglected and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in British India
The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
to wealthy British parents who never wanted her and made an effort to ignore her. She is cared for primarily by native servants, who allow her to become spoilt, demanding and self-centred. After a cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and ...
epidemic kills Mary's parents, the few surviving servants flee the house without Mary.
She is discovered by British soldiers who place her in the temporary care of an English clergyman, whose children taunt her by calling her " Mistress Mary, quite contrary". She is soon sent to England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven, whom her father's sister Lilias married. He lives on the Yorkshire Moors
The North York Moors is an upland area in north-eastern Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of i ...
in a large English country house
An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...
, Misselthwaite Manor. When escorted to Misselthwaite by the housekeeper Mrs Medlock, she discovers Lilias Craven is dead and that Mr Craven is a hunchback
Kyphosis is an abnormally excessive convex curvature of the spine as it occurs in the thoracic and sacral regions. Abnormal inward concave ''lordotic'' curving of the cervical and lumbar regions of the spine is called lordosis. It can result fr ...
.
At first, Mary is as sour and rude as ever. She dislikes her new home, the people living in it and, most of all, the bleak moor on which it sits. Over time, she becomes less temperamental and befriends her maid, Martha Sowerby, who tells Mary about Lilias, who would spend hours in a private walled garden
A walled garden is a garden enclosed by high walls, especially when this is done for horticultural rather than security purposes, although originally all gardens may have been enclosed for protection from animal or human intruders. In temperate ...
growing roses. Lilias Craven died after an accident in the garden ten years prior, and the devastated Archibald locked the garden and buried the key.
Mary becomes interested in finding the secret garden herself, and her ill manners begin to soften as a result. Soon, she comes to enjoy the company of Martha, the gardener Ben Weatherstaff and a friendly robin redbreast. Her health and attitude improve with the bracing Yorkshire air, and she grows stronger as she explores the estate gardens. Mary wonders about the secret garden and about mysterious cries that echo through the house at night.
As Mary explores the gardens, the robin draws her attention to an area of disturbed soil. Here, Mary finds the key to the locked garden, and eventually she discovers the door to the garden. She asks Martha for garden tools, which Martha sends with Dickon, her 12-year-old brother, who spends most of his time out on the moors. Mary and Dickon take a liking to each other, as Dickon has a kind way with animals and a good nature. Eager to absorb his gardening knowledge, Mary tells him about the secret garden.
One night, Mary hears the cries once more and decides to follow them through the house. She is startled to find a boy of her age named Colin, who lives in a hidden bedroom. She soon discovers that they are cousins, Colin being the son of Archibald Craven, and that he suffers from an unspecified spinal problem which precludes him from walking and causes him to spend all of his time in bed. He, like Mary, has grown spoilt, demanding and self-centred, with servants obeying his every whim in order to prevent the frightening hysterical tantrums Colin occasionally flies into. Mary visits him every day that week, distracting him from his troubles with stories of the moor, Dickon and his animals and the secret garden. Mary finally confides that she has access to the secret garden, and Colin asks to see it. Colin is put into his wheelchair and brought outside into the secret garden. It is the first time he has been outdoors for several years.
While in the garden, the children look up to see Ben Weatherstaff looking over the wall on a ladder. Startled to find the children in the secret garden, he admits that he believed Colin to be "a cripple". Angry at being called "crippled", Colin stands up from his chair and finds that his legs are fine, though weak from long disuse. Colin and Mary soon spend almost every day in the garden, sometimes with Dickon as company. The children and Ben conspire to keep Colin's recovering health a secret from the other staff to surprise his father, who is travelling abroad.
While his son's health improves, Archibald experiences a coinciding increase in spirits, culminating in a dream where his late wife calls to him from inside the garden. When he receives a letter from Mrs Sowerby, he takes the opportunity to finally return home. He walks the outer garden wall in his wife's memory, but hears voices inside. He finds the door unlocked and is shocked to see the garden in full bloom and his son healthy, having just won a race against Mary. The children tell him the entire story, explaining what had happened. Archibald and Colin then walk back to the manor together as the servants watch, stunned.
Themes
In his analysis of the narrative structures of "the traditional novel for girls", Perry Nodelman highlights Mary Lennox as a departure from the narrative pattern of the "spontaneous and ebullient" orphan girl who changes her new home and family for the better, since those qualities appear later on in the narrative. The revival of the family and the home in these novels, according to Nodelman, "is carried to the extreme in ''The Secret Garden''", in which the garden's restoration and the arrival of spring parallel the emergence of human characters from the home, "almost as if they had been hibernating". Joe Sutliff Sanders examines Mary and ''The Secret Garden'' within the context of the Victorian and Edwardian cultural debate over affective discipline, which was echoed in contemporary books about orphan girls. He suggests that ''The Secret Garden'' was interested in showing the benefits of affective discipline for men and boys, namely Colin who learns from Mary, understood as "the novel's representative of girlhood" and how to wield his "masculine privilege".
The titular garden has been the subject of much scholarly discussion. Phyllis Bixler Koppes writes that ''The Secret Garden'' makes use of the fairy tale
A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic (paranormal), magic, incantation, enchantments, and mythical ...
, the exemplum
An exemplum (Latin for "example", pl. exempla, ''exempli gratia'' = "for example", abbr.: ''e.g.'') is a moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point. The word is also used to express an action performed by an ...
, and the pastoral
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...
literary genres, which lends the novel a deeper "thematic development and symbolic resonance" than Burnett’s earlier children's novels which only used elements from the first two traditions. She describes the garden as "the central georgic
The ''Georgics'' ( ; ) is a poem by Latin poet Virgil, likely published in 29 BCE. As the name suggests (from the Greek word , ''geōrgika'', i.e. "agricultural (things)") the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example ...
trope, the unifying symbol of rebirth in Burnett's novel". Madelon S. Gohlke understands the titular garden as "both the scene of a tragedy, resulting in the near destruction of a family", as well as the site of its regeneration and restoration.
Discussing representations of disability within the novel, Alexandra Valint suggests that the most of the novel's depictions of disability coincides with the stereotypical view of people with disabilities as unhappy, helpless, and less independent than people without disabilities. She looks at how disability intersects with gender and social class within the novel through Colin, whose wheelchair would have been understood by Edwardian readers as a marker of both disability and social status.
Elizabeth Lennox Keyser writes that ''The Secret Garden'' is ambivalent about gender roles: while Mary restores the garden and saves the family, her role in the story is overshadowed at the conclusion of the novel by the return of Colin and his father, which may be seen as a defense of patriarchal authority. Danielle E. Price notes that the novel deals with "the thorny issues of gender, class, and imperialism". She writes how Mary's development in the novel parallels "the steps of nineteenth-century garden theorists in their plans for the perfect garden", with Mary ultimately turning into "a girl who, like the ideal garden, can provide both beauty and comfort, and who can cultivate her male cousin, the young patriarch-in-training".
In his examination of ''The Secret Garden'' within the context of postcolonialism
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...
, Jerry Phillips writes that the novel "is not so much a discourse on the end of empire End of empire is a phrase that may refer to:
* The final phase in the decline of an imperial power, such as the British or Byzantine empires.
* Decolonization
* Abolition of monarchy
* List of extinct states
A historical sovereign state is a Sover ...
as an embryonic commentary on the possibility of blowback".
Background
At the time Burnett began working on ''The Secret Garden'', she had already established a literary reputation as a writer of children's fiction and social realist
Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structure ...
adult fiction. She had started writing children's fiction in the 1880s, with her most notable book at the time being her sentimental novel ''Little Lord Fauntleroy
''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was published as a serial in '' St. Nicholas Magazine'' from November 1885 to October 1886, then as a book by Scribner's (the publisher of ''St. Nicholas'') in 1886. The ill ...
'' (1886). ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' was a "literary sensation" in both the United States and Europe, and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Prior to ''The Secret Garden'', she had also written another notable work of children's fiction, ''A Little Princess
''A Little Princess'' is a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published as a book in 1905. It is an expanded version of the short story "Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's", which was serialized in '' St. Nicholas M ...
'' (1905), which had begun as a story published in the American children's magazine '' St. Nicholas Magazine'' in 1887 and was later adapted as a play in 1902.
Little is known about the literary development and conception of ''The Secret Garden''. Biographers and other scholars have been able to glean the details of Burnett's process and thoughts on her other books through her letters to family members; during the time she was working on ''The Secret Garden'', however, she was living in close proximity to them and thus did not need to send them letters. Burnett started the novel in spring 1909, as she was making plans for the garden at her home in Plandome
Plandome is a village in the Town of North Hempstead in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. It is considered part of the Greater Manhasset area, which is anchored by Manhasset. The population was 1,349 ...
on Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
. In an October 1910 letter to William Heinemann
William Henry Heinemann (18 May 1863 – 5 October 1920) was an English publisher of Jewish descent and the founder of the Heinemann publishing house in London.
Early life
On 18 May 1863, Heinemann was born in Surbiton, Surrey, England. Heine ...
, her publisher in England, she described the story, whose working title was ''Mistress Mary'', as "an innocent thriller of a story" that she considered "one of erbest finds". Biographer Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina offers several explanations as to why there is so little surviving information on the book's development. Firstly, Burnett's health faltered after moving to her home in Plandome, and her social excursions became limited as a result. Secondly, her existing notes about ''The Secret Garden'', along with a portrait of her and some photographs, were donated by her son Vivian after her death to a lower Manhattan public school serving the deaf in remembrance of her visit there years previously, but all the items soon vanished from the archive of the school. Lastly, a few weeks before the novel's publication, her brother-in-law died in a collision with a trolley, an event that likely darkened the novel's publication.
Burnett's story ''My Robin'', however, offers a glimpse of the creation of ''The Secret Garden''. In it, she addresses a reader's question on the literary origins of the robin that appears in ''The Secret Garden'', whom the reader felt "could not have been a mere creature of fantasy". Burnett reminisces on her friendship with the real-life English robin, whom she described as "a ''person''—not a mere bird" and who often kept her company in the rose garden where she would often write, when she lived at Maytham Hall. Recounting the first time she tried to communicate with the bird via "low, soft, little sounds", she writes that she "knew—years later—that this is what Mistress Mary thought when she bent down in the Long Walk and 'tried to make robin sounds'".
Maytham Hall in Kent, England, where Burnett lived for a number of years during her marriage, is often cited as the inspiration for the book's setting. Biographer Ann Thwaite writes that while the rose garden at Mayham Hall may have been "crucial" to the novel's development, Maytham Hall and Misselthwaite Manor are physically very different. Thwaite suggests that, for the setting of ''The Secret Garden'', Burnett may have been inspired by the moors of Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë (, commonly ; 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, ''Wuthering Heights'', now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poet ...
's 1847 novel ''Wuthering Heights
''Wuthering Heights'' is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moorland, moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their tur ...
'', given that Burnett only went once to Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
, to Fryston Hall
Fryston Hall was a country house at Water Fryston, West Yorkshire which stood in an estate between the town of Castleford and the River Aire near where the river is crossed by the A1(M). The main building was demolished in 1934 and only some outb ...
. She writes that Burnett may have also taken inspiration from Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature.
She enlisted i ...
's 1847 novel ''Jane Eyre
''Jane Eyre'' ( ; originally published as ''Jane Eyre: An Autobiography'') is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first ...
'', noting parallels between the two narratives: both of them, for example, feature orphans sent to "mysterious mansions", whose master is largely absent. Burnett herself was aware of the similarities, remarking in a letter that Ella Hepworth Dixon
Ella Hepworth Dixon ( pen name, Margaret Wynman; 1857–1932) was an English author and editor. Her best-known work is the New Woman novel ''The Story of a Modern Woman'', which has been reprinted in the 21st century.
Early life and education
D ...
had described it as a children's version of ''Jane Eyre''.
Scholar Gretchen V. Rector has examined the author's manuscript of ''The Secret Garden'', which she describes as "the only record of the novel's development". Eighty of the first hundred pages of the manuscript are written in black ink, while the rest and subsequent revisions were made in pencil; the spelling and punctuation tend to follow the American standard. Chapter headings were included prior to the novel's serialization and are not present in the manuscript, with chapters in it delineated by numbers only. The pagination of the manuscript was likely done by a second person: it goes from 1 to 234, only to restart at the nineteenth chapter. From the title page, Rector surmises that the novel's first title was ''Mary, Mary quite Contrary'', later changed to its working title of ''Mistress Mary''. Mary herself is originally nine in the manuscript, only to be aged up a year in a revision, perhaps to highlight the "convergent paths" of Mary, Colin, and the garden itself; however, this revision was not reflected in either the British or the American first editions of the novel, or in later editions. Susan Sowerby is initially introduced to the readers as a deceased character, with her daughter Martha perhaps intended to fill her role in the story; Burnett, however, changed her mind about Susan Sowerby, writing her as a living character a few pages later and crossing out the announcement of her death. Additionally, Dickon in the manuscript was physically disabled and used crutches to move around, perhaps drawing on Burnett's recollections of her first husband, Dr. Swan Burnett, and his physical disability. Burnett later removed references to Dickon's disability.
Publication history
''The Secret Garden'' may be one of the first instances of a story for children first appearing in a magazine with an adult readership, an occasion of which Burnett herself was aware at the time. ''The Secret Garden'' was first published in ten issues (November 1910 – August 1911) of ''The American Magazine
''The American Magazine'' was a periodical publication founded in June 1906, a continuation of failed publications purchased a few years earlier from publishing mogul Miriam Leslie. It succeeded ''Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly'' (1876–1904), ' ...
'', with illustrations by J. Scott Williams. It was first published in book form in August 1911 by the Frederick A. Stokes
Frederick Abbott Stokes (November 4, 1857 – November 15, 1939) was an American publisher, founder and long-time head of the eponymous Frederick A. Stokes Company.
Biography
Stokes graduated from Yale Law School in 1879. He worked at Dodd, Mea ...
Company in New York; it was also published that year by William Heinemann
William Henry Heinemann (18 May 1863 – 5 October 1920) was an English publisher of Jewish descent and the founder of the Heinemann publishing house in London.
Early life
On 18 May 1863, Heinemann was born in Surbiton, Surrey, England. Heine ...
in London, illustrated by Charles Robinson. Its copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
expired in the USA in 1986, and in most other parts of the world in 1995, placing the book in the public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
. As a result, several abridged and unabridged editions were published in the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as a full-colour illustrated edition from David R. Godine, Publisher
Godine is a New England based independent book publisher, known for its beautifully published and carefully selected books, primarily nonfiction, literary fiction, and poetry.
History
The company was founded in 1970 by David R. Godine who acted a ...
in 1989.
Inga Moore's abridged edition of 2008, illustrated by her, is arranged so that a line of the text also serves as a caption to a picture.
Public reception
Upon its publication in novel format, ''The Secret Garden'' garnered largely warm reviews from literary critics, and sold well, with a second printing announced within a month after the novel's release. In general, it was seen as an enjoyable novel, and was reviewed within the context of Burnett's previous works, including ''Little Lord Fauntleroy''. It sold well during the 1911 Christmas season, becoming a bestseller in the fiction category, and placing on critical "best of" lists, including that of the ''Literary Digest
''The Literary Digest'' was an influential American general interest weekly magazine published by Funk & Wagnalls. Founded by Isaac Kaufmann Funk in 1890, it eventually merged with two similar weekly magazines, ''Public Opinion'' and '' Current ...
'' and ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. Its literary debut in a magazine for adults led the public to understand it as adult fiction; the book was marketed accordingly, "with some overlap in the juvenile market", which affected its reception by the public. Of this time, scholar Anne Lundin writes that "''The Secret Garden'' struggled to assert its own identity as a different kind of story that spoke to both the romanticism and modernism of a new century". Burnett regarded ''The Secret Garden'' as her favorite novel, although she considered one of her novels for adults, ''In Connection with the DeWilloughby Claim'', to be her Great American Novel.
Tracing the book's revival from almost complete eclipse at the time of Burnett's death in 1924, Lundin notes that the author's obituary notices all remarked on ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' and passed over ''The Secret Garden'' in silence. Burnett’s literary reputation waned over the following decades, possibly as a result of biases towards books that garner a female audience. Despite being largely overlooked by literary critics and librarians, ''The Secret Garden'' enjoyed a considerable following among its readers. It continued to rank well on readers’ polls for favorite stories. In 1927, it placed in the top fifteen favorite books of female ''Youth Companion'' readers, and in the 1960s, the readers of ''The New York Times'' ranked ''The Secret Garden'' as one of the best children's books. Surveys of adult readers in the 1970s and 1980s show that the novel was a frequent childhood favorite, especially for women.
Burnett's literary reputation underwent a critical resurgence in the 1950s. Marghanita Laski
Marghanita Laski (24 October 1915 – 6 February 1988) was an English journalist, radio panellist and novelist. She also wrote literary biography, plays and short stories, and contributed about 250,000 additions to the ''Oxford English Diction ...
's ''Mrs Ewing, Mrs Molesworth and Mrs Hodgson Burnett'' (1951) described ''The Secret Garden'', ''A Little Princess'', and ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' as the best of Burnett’s children’s books; Laski considered ''The Secret Garden'' to be the best of the three, with a capacity to reach thoughtful and self-reflective children. Other British literary critics and historians began to take note of the novel, including Roger Lancelyn Green
Roger Gilbert Lancelyn Green (2 November 1918 – 8 October 1987) was a British biographer and children's writer. He was an Oxford academic who formed part of the Inklings literary discussion group along with C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkie ...
and John Rowe Townsend
John Rowe Townsend (19 May 1922 – 24 March 2014) was a British children's writer and children's literature scholar. His best-known children's novel is ''The Intruder'', which won a 1971 Edgar Award. His best-known academic work is a reference s ...
. Thwaite's biography about Burnett, ''Waiting for the Party'' (1974), highlighted ''The Secret Garden'' for its depiction of unpleasant children that she felt was much closer to contemporary ideas about how children behave. At the time that Thwaite's biography was published, children's literature was becoming a field of greater scholarly interest, and as a result, ''The Secret Garden'' began to garner more scholarly analysis. ''The Secret Garden'' became accepted as part of the scholarly canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
of children's literature in the 1980s.
In the twentieth-first century, ''The Secret Garden'' continues to be well regarded among readers. In 2003 it ranked No. 51 in The Big Read
The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three-quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel of all time. The year-long survey wa ...
, a survey of the British public by the BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
to identify the "Nation's Best-loved Novel" (not just children's novel). Based on a 2007 online poll, the U.S.
listed it as one of "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children".
In 2012, it was ranked No. 15 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by ''
'', a monthly with a primarily US audience.
''A Little Princess'' was ranked number 56 and ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' did not make the Top 100.