The Secret Garden (1911)

by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1849-1924

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• The main point of this story is that one can achieve anything, when one puts one's mind to it...
• The problem faced by the heroine (Mary Lennox) is how to keep her wits after her (always distant) parents perish, and she is sent to live with an even creepier relative (Archibald Craven). Discovering that Craven has a victimized passive/aggressive son (Colin) only redoubles the problem, at first.
• The resolution of the problem is brought about through contact with nature:

  "I'm lonely," she said. She had not known before that this was one of the things which made her feel sour and cross. She seemed to find it out when the robin looked at her and she looked at the robin.

  
  In the end, both Colin and Mary, with the help of a local lad (Dickon), nurture themselves and Archibald Craven back to an appreciation of life.
• The child appeal of this story is due to the feeling of being co-conspirators in a secret anti-adults plot.
• The parent/teacher appeal of this story is in the spirited pick-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps ethics, relentlessly expounded.

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Project Gutenberg e-text available at ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/etext94/gardn11.txt

My notes while reading the book

• In the midst of the book's emphasis on learning and growing, the rejection of a governess seems to indicate a bias against formal education. While Mrs. Sowerby thinks that Mary "ought to be learnin' [her] book by now", the girl in fact enjoys a half-year of truancy.
• For a writer, Hodgson Burnett also seems oddly inimical to 'bookish' learning, which is denied a role in the children's growth:
  • Mary's initial wanderings through the house are prompted by a desire to find the library--but soon she is sidetracked by the discovery of the tapestry-covered passageway.
  • Colin's interest in picture books is something he's reproached for. Even when he draws upon his readings for his 'experiments', the emphasis remains on calisthenics and a sturdy outgoing nature.
• The book is ambiguous in its attitudes towards colonialist racism.
  • Martha oscillates between blaming Mary's faults on India: "there's such a lot o' blacks there instead o' respectable white people"; and making paternalistic excuses for Indians: "I've nothin' against th' blacks. When you read about 'em in tracts they're always very religious. You always read as a black's a man an' a brother."
  • Mary is violently offended by the thought that she may have been considered a 'native'. At the same time, she is in awe of the Rajah's imperiousness, and uses her Ayah's song to soothe Colin.
  • Above all, India is made to be the exact opposite of everything that the writer wants for the body and mind of Mary and the young reader:
    • unhealthy climate (the "frightfully hot morning" of the day everybody in Mary's house dies from cholera)
    • lack of initiative:
      

      "It was the custom." The native servants were always saying it. If one told them to do a thing their ancestors had not done for a thousand years they gazed at one mildly and said, "It is not the custom" and one knew that was the end of the matter.

    • shameful lack of dignity:
      

      "Native servants always salaamed and submitted to you, whatever you did."

My notes about the film screened

• The Secret Garden, 1993, dir. by Agnieszka Holland.

  
  You can purchase the video of this film from Amazon.com
  in VHS or DVD format.

  • Other motion pictures based on this story include an earlier theatrical release directed in 1949 by Wilcox; two made-for-TV movies produced in 1975 by the BBC and in 1987 by Hallmark; and an animation dated 1994.

    These are also available from Amazon.com in VHS format:
    (1994), (1987), (1975), (1949),

• Most differences between the book and the movie are the result of the differences between the two media:
  • Archibald Craven, as portrayed in the movie, is a good example of the difficulty of representing inner complexities in film--which often leads to outright caricature.
    • The involuntary humor of this campy performance is quite distracting. It's like watching a one-man compendium of every tormented romantic hero ever to writhe on a page--with a dash of Marlboro Man thrown in for good measure (see: swooping aerial shot at cliff's edge)
  • Mary's representation is unfaithful to the book for the same basic reason.
    • The book can convince us that she is 'marred-looking', a misfit--because that is the perception of those around her, and the book is at liberty to take inner feelings as its point of view.
    • The movie camera can only stand outside and show us an objective picture of a little girl--hardly repulsive.
    • By changing the point of departure, Mary's accomplishments along the arc of the story are less striking: she hardly changes on the outside, and her inner changes are obscured.
  • Other details change merely for the sake of cinematic impact: an earthquake instead of cholera as the parents' cause of death; Mary alone in the train station, visually emphasizing her isolation.
• Other differences are more significant, and reflect the momentous changes intervening between the publication of the book and the release of the movie.
  • Hodgson Burnett wrote at the height of the 'Gilded Age', at a time when westerners where reaping the benefits of unprecedented scientific advances--and before the negative side-effects of those advances became apparent. Swept along in the apotheosis of the 1800's positivist tradition, she drew the central themes for her book from that optimistic heritage: self-reliance, triumph through persistence, the power of cheerful thinking to overcome adversity and even infirmity.
  • By the time Holland adapts the story for the film screen, that central message must have seemed imbarrassingly naive. In what appears as a conscious strategy, various key elements of the story are dropped or altered:
    • In the book, the character of Martha's and Dickon's mother, Susan Sowerby, is set up as the sturdy peasant role model of healthy motherhood. Her absence from the movie deprives the story of much of its intended didacticism.
    • Mary finding the key to the garden in the house--instead of having it pointed out by the robin--distances the film from the book's theme of deriving strength and knowledge from nature.
    • In a scene which initially hews closely to the book--perhaps to stress that any differences that will follow are intentional--an Indian-looking bellhop (a remarkable detail, since the setting is Como, Italy) approaches the awakening Mr. Craven as if to bring him a letter. But in the film, no letter is needed to summon Archibald Craven to the ancestral manor--the children's incantations are entirely adequate to the task.
      • Both the letter and the spirit of Hodgson Burnett's argument are perverted by the filmmaker. The writer did allow the children to indulge in Magic ritual (under the guise of "sinetifik 'speriment"). But it is abundantly clear that the children are using the benighted vocabulary of fairy tales and Indian Ayahs to describe plain positive thinking. Someday, humankind will have "sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us--like electricity and horses and steam." Thus, if Mr. Craven is to be summoned back home, mere chanting around a bonfire (as in the film) won't be quite enough. A very tangible, un-mystical letter must be mailed to him, and it is Mrs. Sowerby's appointed role to write and send it.
  • Dropping the positivist teachings of the book leaves the film adrift, blandly replacing that central thrust with a New Age dancing-by-the-bonfire cop-out. Given Holland's personal experience of oppression in her native Poland (which led to the death of her father), I expected a political spin instead (which the book invites, with its subtext of class conflicts). Alas, the film came too late for that, at a time when most everyone was pondering "The End of History" (to borrow the title of Francis Fukuyama's much-debated article from approximately the same period), and retreating from political involvement.
• The film does appear to remedy what I see as an important flaw in the original story:
  • In the book, the ending seems at odds with everything that leads up to it. The focus is abruptly restricted to Colin and his newfound father. As the two talk, Mary recedes into the background (she is simply a foil to the accomplishments of Colin, who exults: "I'm well; I can beat Mary in a race.") Mary's own story is left dangling. There is no acknowledgement of how traumatic the final turn of events must be for her: while Colin is no longer an orphan, she will never be reunited to either one of her parents.
  • By showing Mary's tearful escape from the reunion scene, the film gives release to her realization--and allows Mr. Craven to express his gratitude to her.
  • Dickon, who is likewise missing entirely from the end of the book, initially drops out of sight in the movie as well--but then returns triumphantly on horseback.

Class discussion

• The author emphasizes how character is shaped by the environment. This is a common theme in contemporary works:
  • In Great Expectations the main character Pip is also harshly shaped by the environment: he is brought up "by hand"--meaning he gets beaten a lot.
• Reflects a middle class audience's disdain for parasitical aristocrats.
  • A detail missing in the movie is that Mary strives to speak Northern England's Yorkshire dialect. In the book, this is meant to emphasize a social class concern: Mary (a typical "poor little rich girl") is getting closer to the wisdom embodied by the lower classes.
  • Weak, amoral upper-class males (like Archibald Craven) were a common fixture in English literature of the period. This book, for good measure, also provides us with a weak, amoral upper-class female (Mary's mother).
• The chief reason for the lasting appeal of the book is in the way the children build a world of their own--grow their garden, prepare their food, establish unique rules.
  • Boredom and loneliness are a child's worse nightmares--hence the reader's identification with Mary's predicament.
  • The episode in which Colin and Mary explore the grand old house during a rainy day is an attractive fantasy for children.
  • The theme of empowerment is especially notable, since it represents a break with the literature previously addressed at children (which emphasized obedience as the utmost good).
  • The fight between Colin and Mary over the former's tantrum is rendered with the exact language that one would expect from ten-year-olds. Mary's unsympathetic attitude towards Colin's "hysterics" is also true to life.
  • The secrecy surrounding the garden allows Mary to work out issues of trust in deciding with whom and when to share the secret.
• The failings of the book (at least for a modern audience) are due to the blatant nature of its rhetorical devices:
  • The garden is an all-too-obvious metaphor for the children's growth--physical and spiritual.
  • The events in the plot are forced into the shape demanded by the book's higher goals--even if they become quite far-fetched (a ten-year-old who willingly entumbs himself).
  • The heavy-handed message that given a healthy, cheerful attitude, all people can blossom--regardless of the hurdles standing in their way. Self-pity leads to physical impairment. Power of positive thinking.
    • Mary and Colin, the product of total parental abandonment, become likable because of their struggle to overcome their misfortunes.
    • Martha, the product of positive parenting, is allowed to be likable at once.
  • In developing the key contrast between Mary's determination and Colin's passivity, Mary's sudden success at drawing Colin out of his shell (after a lifetime of isolation) appears simplistic.
• The theme of the colonies as "the white man's grave" is used to underscore the folly of colonial imperialism.
• The chief difference between the movie and the book is that the latter can spend more time on showing a gradual, deeper change in its characters.
  • The design of the garden seen in the movie emphasizes the notion of a religious experience--it looks like the ruins of a cathedral.
    • In the book, the Magic stands for a providential goodness of the universe--later connected to Christianity by the singing of the Doxology, but without great emphasis (the children are never shown going to church, or otherwise receiving a conventional religious upbringing).
  • The underage romance in the movie (entirely absent from the book) is as grating and out-of-place as the similar theme in Charlotte's Web.

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