The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson-Burnett

The reception of the book

• While The Secret Garden is now catalogued as Children's Literature, it was originally serialised in a magazine for adults before being published in its entirety in 1911.

• Marketed to both young and adult readers, it had lukewarm success and became little more than a footnote in Burnett's prolific career.

• Her other novels, such as (Sara Crewe) or A Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy, were far more popular at the time of her death in 1924.

Childhood

• The 1900s introduced what Reynolds (2011) terms, a ‘spate of lively girl characters’

• The girls may have had their own stories, but they included particular ideas about girls.

• This session will conclude by looking at ‘Anne’ from Anne of Green Gables (1908) – to consider how ‘Mary’ is very different to such girls as ‘Anne’, ‘Pollyanna’ and ‘Rebecca’ (Sunnybrook Farm).

Nature

• From the beginning of the 20th Century, Anglo –American books for children depicted childhood as associated with nature.

• Dickon is the embodiment of ‘Pan’ and Rousseau’s ‘Emile’.

• The desire to gain entry into the garden is somewhat Edenic, except that the garden in question has been responsible for Mrs Craven’s death.

Looking for the Garden

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uz1ksanKbE&list=PL574F732B785C442C

The Gothic

• The novel does not always offer comfortable ideas about childhood and nature.

• The ‘queer’ and the ‘sick’ combine to produce ‘secrets’. This suggest connections with earlier novels about childhood – like Jane Eyre and Estella in Great Expectations.

• These secrets are about parentage, inheritance and secret rooms.

Collin

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZKBRF1rY_w

A feminist text?

• It has been argued that this novel is an example of feminist children’s literature, Carroll (2011) because Mary is able to influence events.

• She is also headstrong and given freedom.• But there is the question of the ending of the

novel.

Collin is able to walk

• There is no explanation of his illness – but, there is the suggestion that the power of nature has cured him.

• The time between Mary finding the garden and Collin’s return to health is nine months.

• The garden is a symbol of the mother, but the restoration of the Craven lineage is about the father. Why do you think this happens?

Class and restoration

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v66HanUvK-0