Burnett's life
The Secret Garden

Burnett's Life and Work

    Burnett's life follows the course of her most successful children's novels: she was born to comfort, reduced to (near-)poverty, then restored to wealth in adulthood.  She was the middle of five children of a well-off family in Manchester, England.  When she was four, her father died suddenly, reducing the family's circumstances considerably.  Her mother maintained the family business for 10 years but the family moved increasingly into the ranks of the shabby genteel.  With the support of an American uncle, the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee in 1865; however, the new start does not appear to have reversed the family fortunes.
    Like Alcott, Burnett felt responsible for relieving her family’s financial condition and tried teaching and raising geese before selling two stories for $35 to Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1868, at age 19 (Bixler).  She was soon selling regularly to various magazines, and became a successful novelist 10 years later.  Her current reputation rests almost completely on three children's books: Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905 -- though she wrote two earlier versions, the novel Sara Crewe and a dramatic adaptation), and The Secret Garden (1911), the best known of her works.
    Biographical commentators note that her own romantic life was less successful than her novels.  Her mother died in 1870, increasing the financial burdens she faced.  She was married and divorced twice, and in 1890 saw her 15-year-old son sicken and die of consumption (tuberculosis).  She suffered from depression and was publicly attacked for her messy family life.  At 24 she married Swan Burnett, a doctor, and moved to Washington, DC; they lived near the White House and were friends with President James Garfield.  She had two sons by Burnett but they eventually divorced.  When Through One Administration was published in 1883, it was positively reviewed and Burnett was listed among the major writers of her time (Molson 35-36).
    Then came Little Lord Fauntleroy, the publication of which made her wealthy  and set off a vogue for sissified "Little Lord Fauntleroy" clothing for little boys both in England and America. A best-seller in England, it was quickly translated into more than a dozen languages, adapted by the author for the stage, and filmed starring Mary Pickford (1924).   The novel exemplifies the cult of the Beautiful Child which arose in the late 19th century and which makes most modern critics gag.
    She attempted to spread her wealth around; e.g., she bought a house in Manchester for some poor relatives and one in London for her former schoolteachers.  But the success of her children’s writing had its costs.  By 1900, her adult novels were no longer being reviewed, and by the time she died, her stature in the world of adult literature was sadly diminished.
    Molson discusses the Fauntleroy “curse,” which allegedly ended the careers of actors portraying Ceddie and of the first illustrator of the book -- they couldn’t be taken seriously afterward in their profession.  But

   the most important victim of the curse may have been the author herself, who never was able to disassociate herself from the ‘sweet Lord’ and whose writing after the publication of Little Lord Fauntleroy suffered from attempts either to duplicate the book’s success or to be as different from the book as possible. (39-40)

The Secret Garden

The appeal of The Secret Garden has always been primarily to a female readership.  Its emphasis on nurturing, on the importance of a mother figure and on the empowering role of the imagination in personal development repeats a series of narrative norms that have evolved. . . as characteristics of literature for girls.(Foster and Simons 174)

   Humphrey Carpenter says Burnett was "obsessed with a walled garden" near her adult home in England; she had to give up the home in 1907 when the lease ran out, and this along with the creation of a new garden at her Long Island home and memories of gardens from childhood led her to produce the novel (188).
    McGillis points out The Secret Garden’s extensive array of allusions - to fairy tales, to myth (Colin as Hermes, as well as as Pan), to Biblical texts (the snake that is Mary’s companion in chapter 1, the garden itself, the key females identified as Mary and Martha {though with roles reversed from those of their biblical counterparts}), and rich archetypal  manifestations of death in a story moving towards life and childhood.

The nature of the characters: "[The Secret Garden] is about a psychological miracle: the complete regeneration of two thoroughly unpleasant and self-centered children" (Lurie, 141). Mary is introduced as an unlikable child; far from being beautiful, she is specifically described as "the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen."   How does the text create sympathy for her?
   The Secret Garden focuses on the psychological process of socialization and regeneration from its initial scenes of death and disease to the restoration of physical and mental health (for Mary, for Colin, and to a lesser extent, for Archibald Craven) at the conclusion.  It is influenced by Friedrich Froebel (originator of the Kindergarten) in its emphasis on the mind/body correlation and the development of children “out of nature.”  The secret garden in which Mary rules becomes an emblem of female creative power and female authority generally, although as it is integrated into adult regulation, the girl takes on a less central position (in the novel and the garden) (Foster and Simmons 172-174).
    The concept of psychological regeneration had also underlain Little Lord Fauntleroy, although in that book the child Cedric was the agent of change in adults around him.  In The Secret Garden, the children themselves (Mary and Colin) are the ones in need of regeneration, and they reform themselves through their own actions, not through the intervention of any adult teacher or parent.  "The narrative of The Secret Garden can be seen as structured by the incompletion of the three characters - Mary, Colin, and Mr. Craven; we are led to suspect that their respective social failings - Mary's cultural ignorance, Colin's hypochondria, and Mr. Craven's chronic depression - will, one way or another, find resolution at the close of the tale" (Phillips 178-79).  They are in many ways worse than the usual child-heroes; Lurie comments that both are severely neurotic, with symptoms recognizable to modern psychiatry.
    Keyser argues that Mary’s “disagreeableness” is exactly what makes her attractive to the reader, and that interest in her lessens as she becomes less disagreeable.  In the same way, Colin is most memorable when he is confined to bed and whining; as he becomes more conventionally attractive, interest flags in both him and the book.
    The book's argument focuses on the importance of the mother figure to the healthy child (Dickon has a mom, Colin and Mary don’t; the garden is associated with Colin’s lost mom; etc.) and the boys’ characteristically female traits (Dickon is nurturing, protective, and tender, qualities usually associated with mothers; Colin is hysterical and frightened, qualities that were associated with specifically female pathologies at the time).
    The "cure" of Mary and Colin also reflects a growing movement to train urban children through exposure to nature and fresh air - a new and different sense of what constitutes a healthy lifestyle (Phillips 177-78).  Around the same time that this story was being written, institutions dedicated to getting children into the outdoors - the Boy Scouts and shortly afterward the Girl Scouts - were also emerging.  The children's devotion to the garden and the salutary effects it has on them reflects a general confidence in the moral influence of nature.
    Although Mary and Colin both have similar afflictions and both are cured through the same mechanism, it would be a mistake to see them as identical.  Mary, at least, already has a predilection for nature, as we observe when she makes her "first Yorkshire friend" of a robin and requests a garden of her own to amuse herself.  When Mary is nicknamed “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary,” it is not so much that she is ill-tempered as that she is trying to make something grow  -- in other words, a more positive view of her.  She is more imaginative than the narrator tends to give her credit for.  Colin, on the other hand, specifically rejects nature and lies in bed because he rejects the London doctor's advice to go outside and get fresh air.
    Mary's contrariness may be necessary for survival, as it was in India, or for self-renewal, as it is in England.  With Colin, her “contrariness” constitutes a plainspokenness and a refusal to coddle him which has a positive effect.  Martha and Ben Witherstaff also exhibit “contrary” behaviors toward Mary which help as a reality check for her (Keyser 1983 3-5).

Colonial/class issues: Mary is clearly superior on the social scale in India, inferior in England.  This sets up a contrast between Yorkshire and India. Phillips notes that the novel begins with Mary's radical "confusion of cultural values": she is coming "home" to England, but she has never been there - she is Anglo-Indian.  She comes to Yorkshire, a place "so unlike India," yet fails to understand the differences between the places, so that she treats the English servants as if they were Indians, etc.  She learns differently because Martha refuses to let herself be simply an instrument for the upper classes - she retains a sense of dignity and resists Mary's demands.  Martha herself expresses confusion about India, telling Mary that she expected her to be "black" (i.e., a native of India rather than an Anglo-Indian).
    In this regard, note that Mary adopts the Ayah role with Colin; however, he is seen as a "rajah", not a "sahib" - i.e., a native Indian prince, not a British colonial administrator.  So the entire English class system is displaced onto the East (Phillip 182).  Also see Colin's mother's comments on the ownership of the world - Phillips suggests that this can be seen as a rejection of the imperial ideal (186).  He notes too that a kind of "spiritual egalitarianism" contrasts to the strictly observed class structure of the house.

Mythic/archetypal motifs:  By far the strongest archetypal motif is that of the Waste Land or the Fisher King.  (But note that the waste land is cleansed first, then effects the cure of the Fisher King, rather than vice versa, as in the original myth  And who is the Fisher King - Craven or Colin?)
    Carpenter notes that the book is clumsily written, consisting largely of motifs borrowed from other books and peopled by poorly drawn characters; however, it "is lifted above all this by its choice of central image, the walled rose garden" (189).  He connects the dead garden to the Waste Land myth.  Murray notes, in regard to the garden: "This is not an Eden which redeems, or a wilderness which liberates.  The tangled garden must be cultivated - paradoxically, both domesticated and awakened into "natural" life - and the same is true of Mary herself" (35).
    All three of Burnett’s children’s works are versions of georgic pastorals (Bixler, “Idealization” 88); i.e., they associate idealized behavior with children in a more or less natural setting.  The idealized child then becomes the “agent of rebirth in others”; insofar as the georgic child may serve as an example even for adults, there is not a clear distinction or idealization of the child per se (86-87).
    The Secret Garden also employs elements well-known from fairy tales.  A common plot structure for fairy tales and romances is as follows: a character or characters experience a lack; they set off on a quest for fulfillment during which they must pass certain tests to show they deserve it; finally, they replace the missing thing, whereupon the narrative is complete. The Secret Garden appears to multiply this basic situation by three; i.e., there are three "incomplete" characters: Mary, Colin, and Mr. Craven.  How does the novel's plot work to make each of these characters "complete" - does this process adequately account for the path the novel takes from beginning to end?

Problematic of the ending: First Dickon disappears, then Mary (who is the sole focus of the first third of the novel) follows suit.  At the end of the book, there are only Colin and his father.  Is this just sloppy writing?  It is perhaps more understandable if we observe that the book is, after all, entitled The Secret Garden, not Mary Lennox.  That is, the central "character" is the garden itself, rather than Mary, and the garden's final act of healing is to restore the bonds of love between parent and child.  Still, Mary's erasure is troubling on a number of grounds, including its implications for the "feminist" plot of the story - the female empowerment noted by several critics and the general emphasis on motherhood.
    An initial close fit of narrator and character (both the teller of the tale and the chief actors are part of the child's world) breaks down at the end of the novel as an adult viewpoint is superimposed - this is associated with the cure of Colin, which also restores the supremacy of the social order to the natural order:

The first myth of The Secret Garden, the one we remember, is the romance of the vital, renewing, `wick' place which makes whole the broken heart.  The second myth of The Secret Garden, the one that we forget (that renders us forgetful?) is the real story of the patriarchal order - generationally coherent, socially hierarchic, reassuringly benevolent - whose restoration heals the hurts and calms the crises in the narrative. (Murray, 39-40)

The Secret Garden thus stands in the direct line of literature for girls that offers its readers provocative possibilities of excitement and adventure, only to withdraw the promise in the terms of their ultimate resolution. (Foster and Simons 189)

A. Waller Hastings
Professor of English
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD  57401

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