The Secret Garden (1911) By Frances Hodgson Burnett

 

The Secret Garden is one of those novels that I should have read as a kid, but never did. Written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, it is technically children's literature, but works for adults too (sort of like Narnia). The Library of America has collected The Secret Garden along with two other children’s classics written by Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess into a single volume.

In Secret Garden, Mary Lennox, the 10-year-old daughter of English socialites in British Colonial India is neglected by them and primarily raised by the couple's servants. The servants must do whatever the girl commands, a sure formula for a spoiled rotten brat.  When both parents die in a cholera outbreak, Mary is sent back to England to live with her widower Uncle, Lord Archibald Craven, who it turns out is equally uninterested in children. 

Craven’s home is Misselthwaite Manor, a 100-room country house and estate located in the moors of Yorkshire. While there is a staff at the Manor – cooks, gardeners, etc – they are decidedly not “servants,” a point Mary has difficulty adjusting to.  She’s cared for adequately, and is warned that certain part of the estate are off limits to her.  Soon she begins exploring.  Following cries she hears in the middle of the night, she will discover there is a bedridden young boy living in the Manor, the existence of whom no one wants to acknowledge.  She befriends him and discovers his name is Colin, Lord Craven’s son.  He is bedridden because he has been told that he will have a hunchback and die young.

She will also discover a secret garden on the estate, which has been locked for 10 years by order of Lord Craven. She will also meet a young boy named Dickon, the brother of the young girl who brings her breakfast every morning.  Dickon, literally speaks to the animals, and knows everything about plants. Together they will discover a way to get into the long abandoned garden, and begin to bring it back to life. 

Mary in her conversations with Colin tells him about the garden.  He has no interest until Mary calls it a “secret" garden. Eventually, while Lord Craven is out of the country, Mary will convince Colin he must see the garden, and then with Dickon’s assistance will put Colin in his wheelchair and take him to the garden. To shorten the synopsis, the “secret garden” gives Colin the will to live and he will grow to health, and even begin walking, before his father returns to the Estate.

How his father finds all of this out, and reacts to it, are the concluding chapters of the book. 

In addition to reading The Secret Garden, I also watched or re-watched five of the many movie adaptations of it. (Yes, between Covid-19 shelter-in-place guidelines and horrible winter weather, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands).

The review of the movies has been interesting, all of them vary a little from the book narrative. I think my favorite would be the 1949 version (it has the best Mary and the best Dickon, in my opinion). It is primarily filmed in black and white; but gets the Wizard of Oz treatment when the kids restore the garden -- as they walk through the garden’s gate the filming changes from black and white to technicolor.

Movie Trailers

 2020 version

2017 industrial version

1993 version

1987Hallmark television version

1949 black & white version

Actor Colin Firth appears in two of the films, in the 2020 version he plays Lord Craven, in the 1987 Hallmark television version, he does a cameo as Colin Craven as a young adult (this is not in the book, nor is his marriage proposal). The script writers while mostly faithful to the details of the book, all take nuanced liberties with the set-up of the story’s concluding scenes – none of them match the narrative of the book.

The 2017 movie version is interestingly unique.  It is as if Charles Dickens wrote the script, keeping the storyline but changing the setting from an English country estate to Craven Industries in a factory district of London. The secret garden becomes a secret workshop, and the Dickon character is as if played by Oliver Twist.

Recommendation: Read the book.