The Secret Garden

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Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden Issues, imagery, symbolism 1 Burnett’s The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924): both British and American citizen. Author of other famous and influential books for children: Little Lord Fauntleroy, Little Princess. Between 1877 and 1925, Burnett published approximately 59 books and wrote 13 plays. 2 The Secret Garden (1911) Focused on Mary Lennox, an unattractive and spoiled little girl who is left orphan while living in India and is brought to live in the mansion of her misanthropic uncle, Mr Craven, in the Yorkshire Moors. Here she discovers that she has a cousin, Colin, who is kept in his room because he is sick and because his father doesn’t want to see him. When Mary finds the secret garden of the mansion, she starts a process of regeneration that will heal both her emotional wounds and Colin’s physical ailments. Crucial to Mary’s regeneration is her ability to build relationships with others: to become socialized. 3 Mary, ‘miss quite contrary’ At the beginning of the book, Mary’s disagreeable behaviour is emphasized: she shouts, gives orders, hates everything and everybody. Gradually, the reader learns that Mary has always been neglected, and that her behaviour is somehow dependant on this lack of love. Mary’s ‘healing’ in turn prompts the healing process in other people around her: not only Colin, but also Mr Craven and Ben Weatherstaff. They’re all like gardens: they’ve grown wild because their nature, unattended by the‘art’ of human love, has brought about ‘chaos’ 4 Mary, ‘miss quite contrary’ Mary’s ‘contrariness’ has two different connotations in the text. She is ‘contrary’: because of her disdainful disinterest in other people and of the irritability of her temper; because of a kind of emotional honesty, and of her intuitive reliance on her own judgement. The first kind of

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