My Thoughts of the Secret Garden's "magic"

This book is open to many interpretations, but I think there is one thing that may be undeniable: the parallels between Mary, Colin, and the garden. Each has been neglected for 10 years, each has been sick or dying, and each is rejuvenated only when he/she/it begins to interact with the others.

For this reason, I would venture that the "secret" of the garden is the secret of life itself, for when it is locked up, all of Misselthwaite Manor, headed by the grieving Archibald Craven who is the most inclined to cast life away, becomes a lifeless place, with initially "no lights at all in the windows" save but a "dull glow" (Burnett). Mary and Colin's existences are also "secrets of lives," in a sense; they are both kept hidden such that when they are discovered (Mary by the two officers, Colin by Mary), their discovers don't even know who they are. And as long as the garden, Mary and Colin are neglected and kept hidden away, none of them are able to grasp life either.

It seems to me that the Magic of the garden lies in its interaction with other forms of life. It is transformed "as if Magicians were passing through it drawing loveliness out of the earth and the boughs with wands" (Burnett) - but the readers know that this miraculous transformation is only a result of the care of kid-gardeners holding spades, not wands.

Furthermore, if the transformations of Mary and Colin from waxy- and yellow-skinned brats into children full of life are so extraordinary as to be hailed Magical, we might deduce that Magic's power lies in those relationships that take one out of oneself. For it is only when Mary begins to care wholeheartedly for the well-being of the garden that she fully begins to heal; similarly, Colin gets better only when "new beautiful thoughts begin to push out the old hideous ones" - when he stops brooding on his own misfortunes and starts dreaming about everything around him.

In brief, I would say that the secret, and Magic, of life - and the garden - lies in the perpetual interaction of its beings with one another, and so long as that is denied, sickness and death reign.

*****

I agree that the garden is a “feminine entity.” The garden - Lilias's and as much a "sweet, pretty thing" as the lady was - embodies femininity, as is particularly apparent when it is juxtaposed with the massive and dominant Misselthwaite Manor, inheritance of the Craven male line.

Linking nature with femininity leads to the notion of "Mother Nature," as Professor Cooper noted in her lecture (Cooper). The garden takes on a maternal position in the lives of the motherless cousins and, like a mother, acts as a socializing agent. Before Mary and Colin come into contact with it, they are each selfish and disagreeable; then they venture, literally, into the outside world, where they learn how to live alongside others.

Furthering the idea of the garden as a socializing agent, I think it may be said that the garden raises the children into their respective gender roles.

Consider that, initially, Mary is “stony” and ugly, and Colin, weak and prone to bouts of hysteria, to which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "women [were] much more liable than men" (OED Online). Thus, both Colin and Mary are far from masculine/feminine ideals. Then, we see a shift in the two as they interact with the garden. Mary develops a nurturing knack, as evidenced by her handling of Colin and the garden. A direct link is made between her and Lilias when she bends down upon "a clump of crocuses" and kisses them - a feminine gesture formerly ascribed to Lilias. She becomes beautiful through the garden's influence. In short, she becomes a little lady. Colin, similarly, grows into a young man: he boyishly aspires to be an athlete and scientist, he grows strong and competitive, and yearns to prove himself – he even states “Now...I am a real boy” in chapter 25.

By the last chapter, Mary is a “pretty, sweet thing” herself, and Colin has risen to the title of “Master.” Therefore I would say that the garden plays a tremendous role in the upbringing and socializing of the two children; it nurtures them to healthy bodies and minds, just as a mother would.


SOURCES

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The Secret Garden. New York: The Phillips Publishing Co. 1911. Web. Release Date: December 26, 2005 [EBook #17396]. Produced by Jason Isbell, Emmy and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17396

Cooper, S. “The Secret Garden” lecture. Feb 13, 2010.

“hysteria, n.1” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. .

Notes on the Secret Garden

-anti-realistic
-Magic, supernatural
-culture specific elements, autobiographical elements, etc
-a sort of hybrid; not confined to any genre (eg fantasy)
-eg. dead wife speaking out across lands

“The Secret Garden”
-setting extremely important, as evidenced by title
-start by thinking literally about title
-literally: piece of land
-property – Archibald Craven (& Craven family) current owner (being owner of Misselthwaite); would be passed down to Colin = "landed gentry"
class, social structure, English culture (lots of references; eg Yorkshire dialect clue us
to that these aspects may be important)
-financially, socially, heritage of Craven male line
-what is being stressed/praised? Aristocracy or servants
-plants : ornamental flowers, for pleasure, not for survival really
*-tending/gardener
-brings us into thinking figuratively; who owns the garden?
suggests more to relationship of land than ownership; land is more than property
-therefore children would own the garden
Sidenote: I – it
I – you (cf. Them – us)
I - thou
-garden becomes a metaphor for symbiosis
-garden depends on humans for its existence and humans benefit by
having our desire for beauty satisfied
-heaven often likened to a garden
-health benefits (for body and mind)

nursery
-to gardener (place to grow plants) vs to parent ( place to grow children)
-mother nature; associated with the feminine
-Lilias initially owns the garden and is mother to Colim
-Mary finds it and brings it back to life; also becomes motherlike to Colin
-Susan Sowerby (“sow”); madonna, Mary, earth mother, etc.
-Dicken; also associated with nature but more dominantly with animals
-Ben Weatherstaff; robin does not lead him into the garden, doesn't give proper ownership
-seems to be a female inheritance

-no clear cut allegory
-eg. may reinforce that men inherit the earth (at end: Master Collin); but the opposite can be argued

“The Secret Garden”
-secret: something a select few know
-at start, secret is held by the robin (nature itself), Ben Weatherstaff, Archibald Craven
-secret driven by Craven who wants to lock away his past/wife; locking up and hiding something painful
-others know that there was a garden, but doesn't know where it is
-Mary doesn't know of it at ALL, but slowly she gets into the secret
-then Mary becomes secretkeeper
-doesn't want it taken away from her
-she “wants a bit of earth” to call her own
-claiming a space, claiming an identity
-a fundamental notion in 19th c & 20 c. Lit, esp. Feminist lit (eg. Virginia W.); idea of
ownership for women
-also wants to bring it back to life; “I hope it's not dead”; gardening, nurturing quality coming out
-she has been self-absorbed initially; the garden takes her away from the I-it relationship
-for adults it is a reminder of death; Mary sees the possibility of life
-next, Dickon
-some degree of selfishness on Mary's part (she needs seeds, help, etc)
-then Colin
-Mary's motivation for telling Colin is exactly the same as her motivation with the garden
-trio; conspiracy of three children
-they want to keep the children as well as Colin's getting better, secret.
-can be analysed any number of ways
-psychologically: power struggle; sense of independence & superiority
-also increasingly Colin goes “its mine, mine, mine!”, claiming his birthright, and there seems very little denouncement of this; he starts to dominate the trio in a way
-while Mary gets better physically + emotionally, does Colin get better emotionally?
-ultimately adults are brought into the secret
-Ben Weatherstaff; then Susan Sowerby, then Archibald Craven

setting
-not just a backdrop, also influences themes
-literal (social, economic, political)
-figurative
-The Secret Garden is very specifically an English garden, even more spec. Yorkshire
-story opens in India. So wth!
-19th c. time of Brit. Empire's height, India being a colony
-The Jewel of the Crown (of the queen?)
-India is jewel of empire, highly prized
-{disease, snakes, climate = unhealthy}
-servants also unhealthy in that they give her anything she wants; but this could be attr. to mother
-criticism of mother; pretty, neglects child (possibly cuz the child is unattractive), active social
life rather than family life
-so obsessed with hob nobbing with high-standing people that she stays for a dinner party even having been warned about cholera outbreak
-could in fact be a self-portrait
-seems to blame whats wrong with the class system on ruling classes
-parents were encouraged to neglect children in this way, only to be brought in
nicely dressed to say “Hello” or whatever
-leaders, those in power are fundamentally (physically, morally, psychologically)unhealthy
-definitely doesn't seem to be in favour of the elite; health of individual, family, and society are messed up by the elite
-is she criticising the empire? Rajahs are representations of British colonial influence
-juxtaposes Yorkshire and India; Indian servants and English servants
-Anglosaxon as best attitude
-though many of the servants in England as well pretty much acquiesce in the same way that the Indian servants do

Characters
-compare age, gender, class
-names deliberately connote something
-“Mrs. Medlock” = keys
name indicates that she wants to keep things locked; wants to keep status quo; strict
-cf. Rachel Lynde; we do have a sort of ugly duckling thing going on as in AOGG
-Colin is also a secret locked away, Mrs. Medlock being one of the secretkeepers
-Colin is lead to think of himself as deformed, ugly (hunchbacked) thus why he wants
to be not seen; he's also led to believe he is fatally ill/dying
-she is part of the adult conspiracy to keep secrets
-likened to Gothic lit. (Jane Eyre, Bronte Sisters' Wuthering Heights) with sinister
conspiracy and secrets
-”Ben Weatherstaff”
-guide (cf. Wise man with staff), gardener etc.
-”Craven”
-coward
-Archie has run away from responsibilities after wife's death and most likely before he
met her as well
-Gothic idea: aristocratic family which has become increasingly inbred and ill and shut away
from light
-”Archibald” = brave, courageous
-suggests conflicting forces; he has the choice to be courageous or cowardly
-”Colin” = cub
-”Dickon” - corruption of “Richard”
-meaning ruler
-there was a St. Richard who was a saint of agriculture
-above all, according to Mary, he is associated with Magic
-more specifically with the magic of nature
-a bit of a Pan figure (nature deity, demi-god)
-plays pan pipes
-”Martha”
-in New Testament, associated with labouring domesticity
-”Mary”
-nursery rhyme, “Mistress Mary, quite contrary/how does your garden grow?”
-Mother Mary
-beloved (bitterly ironic)
-tied in with “mare”, word for sea => marine
-grows away from “Mistress Mary” to the beloved and Mother Mary type thing

Archibald Craven
-becomes one parent left in the book (of both Mary and Colin) after Mary's parents die
-horrible parent; eg. He kinda forgets Mary's existence; eg. he only deals with them when Susan S. nudges him
-most self-absorbed, seemingly; how do you forget a child??
-of course he is dealing with grief and in those days people were very preoccupied with grief
-however book implies that Craven's grief has gone beyond healthiness into something morbid and destructive, preventing him from taking care of himself and his son

another mother figure: Lilias
-not dead, but her spirit is in the garden
-that is why children need to be there to be nursed back to health
-therefore the garden nurtures the children!

-initially Mary likens Archie Craven to a fairy tale figure, opening up more fairy tale interpretations
-a place surrounded by roses – Sleeping Beauty
-Lilias's spirit sleeping in the garden (figuratively having “fallen asleep” there)
-even Mary seems to channel her spirit in that she takes on those roles

Mary
-Mary alone dominates story for the first half of the book
-literal journey: Mary coming to England
-figurative journey, a quest for a piece of earth
-initially stunted developmentally (can't dress herself, etc.)
-through Martha, Ben and robin, she becomes aware of how much she is ignorant about
1) -Martha treats her with equality; Mary's not used to being paid attention to, but she's also not used to being spoken bluntly to
-Martha also tells her stories about her own life at home, stories of other children
-tells her about moors (free and untamed space, even today)
-Mary says “there's nothing there,” Martha shows her that there are, so that Mary starts to see
things differently
-also tells her about her life at home getting Mary thinking about other people
-interesting to note that even in India when she was bored she attempted to make a garden but the conditions were not right
-when she meets Colin, one of the ways she gets him interested in life is by telling him stories about India and Martha's family
2) Ben is also like Martha in that he is blunt with her
-teaches Mary things by doing them, Mary watches and learns from that
-shows that Mary is lonely, she seeks out friends
-Ben and Robin can be read figuratively
-Robin is associated with spring, and rebirth, redemption & ressurection (thus why he's on xmas
cards a lot)
-perhaps Mary's greatest accomplishment is that she doesn't just heal herself; she heals another as well
-her triumph is that of any parent: she makes Colin what he is, and then he leaves her in the dust

Colin + Mary
-both at the start completely unlikeable
-quite unprecedented at the time to have protagonists so unpleasant and misbehaving
-damaged autonomy => healed autonomy
-twice with male and female characters shows possibility in both
-more realistic (cf. Dickon who is almost more of a fairy tale figure)

Colin
-his room in the manor is as unhealthy for him as India was for Mary
-cut off from air and light
-mother is reduced to an object
-(cf. Robert Browning's “My Last Duchess” - Colin doesn't like that fact that his mother smiles too much)
-indirectly caused her death as well; branch falls ten years ago, shock caused mother to go into
premature labour which caused death
-calls himself a “scientist,” does “experiments” on Magic
-a bit jarring:
-up to this point, nature associated with nurture, natural cycles
-science and experiments seem at odds with that; Colin seems to want to control nature, rather
than work with it; wants to analyse, control and dictate what happens
-he is also associated with Magic
-cf. Dickon's magic, which is not spoken, seems to transcend human language etc.
-Colin wants to write things down, figure things out
-priest of the garden (which is a temple)
-”I shall live forever and ever”
-athlete
-last image: running a race and winning = into competitive sports
=dominance
-though Mrs. Medlock says “The world is like an orange, and Mary's gonna teach Colin which quarter is his” - problem is that the book suggests otherwise!
-autobiographical elements
-death of her son – author sorta rewrites it with a happy ending
-Christian Science
-matter is not real; you can conquer death and sickness by realizing it isn't real; everything's an
illusion
-”I can live forever and ever” - quite literal
-definitely seems to clash with some other elements of the story, but then again she was struggling

-book is about three damaged people getting healed
-portrayal of their healing in the book doesn't necessarily imply christian science element; one can read it
completely without that element
-idea of a decade in which nothing has been happening right (growing of garden and the children)
-other times she uses threes: Mary hears cry three times, etc.
-roses = love

SOURCE
Cooper, Susan. Class Lecture on The Secret Garden. ENG2110: Children's Literature. University of Ottawa, Ontario, CA. 13 Feb 2010.