Summary and Review: The Secret Garden

Title: The Secret Garden
Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Summary and Review by: Hyacinth S. Faune [SJSaranghae]

Reviewed in Yahoo on: November 18, 2007

The Secret Garden is the 5th book I borrowed from the Caridad Trillo-Elumba Library of English. In fact, just the title fascinates me already. Just the first few words already strikes me into reading it. In fact, I can hardly put this book down.

………………………………Review……………………………….

Mary Lennox is a sickly, sour-faced little girl who was born in India to wealthy British parents She is mean and sour and a selfish brat who doesn’t care about other people. Unwanted by her parents, she is thrust into the care of a subservient Ayah from her birth and told to keep out of sight lest her unsightly sallow appearance upset her mother and father. Even her Ayah disliked her so much because she was a very “disagreeable child”. Mary treated their native maids so badly that she even sometimes call them “Daughter of a pig”. She was a pale, yellowish, cross girl and her hair is so thin and stringy and she is very weak and thin. When a cholera epidemic makes her an orphan, she is sent to a poor clergyman’s house which had 5 children who refused to play with Mary. They keep on calling her “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary” and they often dance around and tease her:

“Mistress Mary Quite Contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And marigolds all in a row”

From India, where she lived, she was sent to Misselthwaite Manor, an isolated country house in Yorkshire, England. It is across the moor and the huge house(or mansion rather) is 600 years old and it has nearly 100 rooms all shut up. There she is again left mostly to her own devices – this time by her mother’s brother-in-law, Archibald Craven, a widower still mourning his beautiful young wife, who died ten years before. In hopes of escaping his painful memories, he travels constantly, leaving the manor in the charge of his housekeeper, the stern Mrs. Medlock. The only person who has any time for the little girl is a chambermaid, Martha, who tells Mary about a walled garden that was the late Mrs. Craven’s favourite. No one has entered the garden since she died because her grieving husband locked its entrance and buried the key.

While exploring the grounds, Mary discovers the key, which had been turned up by a robin digging for worms. Soon after, she finds the hidden door. Once inside, she discovers that although the roses seem lifeless, some of the other flowers have survived. She resolves to tend the garden herself. Although she wants to keep it a secret, she recruits the assistance of Martha’s brother Dickon, who has a way with plants and wild animals. Mary gives him money to buy gardening implements and he shows her that the roses, though neglected, are not dead. When Mary’s uncle visits the house briefly for the first time since she arrived, Mary asks him for a bit of earth to make a flower garden, and he agrees. Thanks to the invigorating Yorkshire air or the moor air (fresh air) and her new-found fascination with the garden, Mary herself begins to blossom, and loses her sickly look and unpleasant manner. She begins to get fatter and her hair becomes thick and healthy. She also lost her being contrary. Martha always talks to Mary about the moor, her house in the moor which is a cottage, which has 12 children in it. Martha talks about her mother and her brother Dickon. In fact, Mary says she likes 5 people. These are Dickon, Martha, Mrs. Susan Sowerby (Dickon & Martha’s mother), Ben Weatherstaff (the gardener), and the red-breasted robin. Mary also learned new words in Yorkshire because Martha speaks Yorkshire while relating to her experiences and stories. Examples are:

Yeller—-means Yellow
Wick—–means Alive/Lively
Wuthering—-means Rushing of the Wind
Tha’rt—-means Thou Art or You are
An’—-means And
O’—-means of

One time after Martha’s day-off, she brought back to Misselthwaite Manor a skipping rope for Mary. And this is what Mary used everyday to practice jumping to about a hundered skips.

One night Mary hears someone weeping in another part of the house. When she asks questions, the servants become evasive and say they cannot hear anything. Shortly after her uncle’s visit, she goes exploring and discovers her uncle’s son, Colin, a lonely, bedridden boy as petulant and disagreeable as Mary used to be. His father shuts him because the child closely resembles his mother. Mr. Craven suffers from mild kyphosis (he is a hunchback), and is morbidly convinced that Colin will develop the same condition. This fear has communicated itself to Colin, who, for purely psychological reasons, has never learned to walk. The servants have been keeping Mary and Colin a secret from one another because Colin doesn’t like strangers staring at him and is prone to terrible tantrums. Colin, however, accepts Mary and insists on her visiting him often.

As spring approaches, Colin becomes jealous because Mary is spending more time out in the garden with Dickon than indoors with him. One day he voices his resentment and, when Mary resists, he throws a tantrum. To the surprise and amusement of the servants, Mary continues to stand her ground. That evening, Colin has a hysterical fit, brought on by his fear of dying young. Mary goes to him and, again taking a firm, no-nonsense stance with him, calms him down. When he asks if he can visit the garden with her, she agrees, as she and Dickon had been planning to suggest it themselves, feeling that it would do Colin good. Colin’s doctor, (Mr. Craven’s brother and Colin’s uncle) agrees to have Dickon and Mary take Colin outside in a wheelchair. Colin is delighted with the garden, and visits it with Mary and Dickon whenever the weather allows. As the garden revives and flourishes, so does he.

The first person to discover what the children are doing is the old gardener, Ben Weatherstaff, who was a favorite of Colin’s mother. Since her death, he has been visiting the locked garden once or twice a year by secretly scaling the wall with a ladder. When he visits the garden for the first time since Mary’s arrival (having had to miss several visits because of rheumatism), he is angry with the children until he sees how improved both the garden and Colin are. Colin orders him not to tell anybody, and he agrees. Colin resolves that the next time his father returns from abroad he will be able to walk and run like a normal boy. He accomplishes this through a combination of simple physical exercise and positive thinking. He refuses to think of himself as crippled, and he invents a kind of mantra to keep himself in the right, or “magic,” frame of mind. He makes great progress, but keeps it hidden from everyone but Mary, Dickon, and Ben, wanting it to be a surprise. Colin’s state has been improving day by day and they pretend that he was still ill so that other servants won’t find out. Colin desired to be an athlete because he felt he is growing stronger. So, Mary, Colin and Dickon kept doing exercises and indeed Colin became well. He gave out lectured on Magic and from a limp, helpless, selfish, disagreeable Rajah-like boy, Colin was now The Athlete, The Lecturer, and the Scientific Discoverer who was a laughable, lovable, healthy human being. They all believe Magic was present inside the Secret Garden and they chanted : The Magic is in Me! The Magic is in Me! It’s in Me!.

Mr. Craven has been traveling throughout Europe but hurries home after seeing a vision of his dead wife, imploring him to come to her “in the garden!” When he receives a letter from Martha and Dickon’s mother (who also knows the secret) saying “I think your lady would ask you to come if she was here”, he decides to return home. He arrives while the children are outdoors. He goes out to see Colin for himself, and finds himself drawn to the secret garden, where he is astonished first to hear children’s voices and then to find Colin not only racing Mary and Dickon around the garden, but winning. They take Mr. Craven into the secret garden to tell him everything. Afterward, they walk back to the house where the servants are astonished to see two miracles: Colin walking and his father looking happy again.

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If I rate this book from 1-10, I would give it
a

9.8

This book is amazing!
Truly inspirational and heart-warming!
You can hardly afford to put the book down, I guarantee!!!
One of the best books ever written!
You’ll be wanting more and more!
Every chapter is a look-forward to!
Love the characters!
It sets out your spirit!

Read this because it is a MUST READ and in this book,
You’ll discover the -=MAGIC=-!!!!!!!