Friday, February 4, 2011

The Secret garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett


I just read this book and I am very impressed. Somehow it reminded me of the book ‘The little Prince’, the kind of book that has this childish appeal but can be very suitable for adults. The secret Garden tells us a charming story about friendship, magic, keeping secrets, nature and growing old.

The plot brings us Mary Lennox, a spoilt and sickly girl who lives in India. After the death of her parents who died from a cholera epidemic, she is brought to England to live in an enormous mansion which belongs to her uncle who she has never met before.

As she arrives at Misselthwaite Manor, the place where she is going to live in, she seems to get no sympathy from anyone, neither looks interested in making any friends at all. Her sallow face, thin body and her rude manners, common to a person who was used to have servants and treat them with a disdaining attitude, cannot help her being a so appalling figure.

Back in India, she used to have an Ayah, a person who used to be paid to take care of her, and Mary wouldn’t do anything by herself, neither to be dressed. Her parents would never speak to or take care of her themselves. She was brought up with many people obeying her demands and, although she never has thought about it before, she became a very selfish child. But things are going to change when she realizes that now she needs to take care of herself and that anyone would look after her in the same manner she was used to.

The mansion, as she was told, has many rooms; hundreds of rooms, which some could be visited and others don’t. Mrs. Medlock, the housekeeper, tells her about the place and about her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven. She says that Mr. Craven has lost his wife ten years ago and because of that he lives in a great sorrow and he hardly is at home; being the most part of the time travelling around.

Being in the mansion, Mary starts to talk to some of the staff and she meets Marta, whose mother has twelve children. Although Mary has her bad manner to treat people around, Marta seems to be a little interested in her, mainly because Mary comes from India, an exotic place that she has heard many things about but she has never been to. Mary gets interested in Marta as well because she has this mother with many children and a funny or rather peculiar accent from Yorkshire.

Marta is a maidservant who has this charming frankness and a rather approach to all aspects of life. She tells Mary to play outdoors over the moor and that would be good for her health as well as a good way to spend her time enjoying herself. Marta tells Mary that she can go everywhere and that the mansion has many gardens and space to play around.

Mary goes out every day and starts to enjoy being outdoors. She begins to grow fatter and stronger and be transformed in other kind of creature. Afterwards something very special puzzles her mind and makes her interest of being outdoors much bigger: the existence of a Secret Garden.

Her uncle’s wife had a garden just for her. She used to work on it, grow flowers and other plants and spend lots of time there. After her death, Mr. Craven decided to close this garden and bury its key. It was ten years ago and no one seems to have put a foot on there since then. Mary becomes fascinated with the idea of a secret garden that no one has been into and starts looking for it and finding a way to get into there. One day she finally gets her way to find the key with a little help from a robin and opens the door of the secret garden.

She is just astonished with the discovery and decides keep it in secret. When she steps in, she finds the place a little dead and worries about the situation. She wants the place to be lively again with many flowers and plants and green in it.

One day, while talking to Marta, Mary happens to know that the maidservant has a brother who has lived in the moor his entire life and seems to know everything about nature, flowers, plants and other growing things as well as living things that happen to live in the moor. Through Marta, she meets her brother, named Dickon, and shows him her secret garden and asks him rather he could help her bring it to live again. Dickon is delighted with the idea and starts helping her. He agrees with telling no one about it.

So they come every day into the garden spending the whole day inside its walls without anyone having notice. Mary gets to know a lot about gardening, animals and the moor from Dickon as she gets stronger and stronger in body. But suddenly, the weather stars to change and it begins to rain without stopping for long days.

In those raining days, she is obliged to stay at home because there is no way going out with this so heavy rain. While she is in the mansion she starts to hear some weird noises, something very similar to a child crying. She finds that very weird indeed as she knows that the only child in the whole mansion is herself. She asked to the staff but everyone says that maybe the noise is the sound of the wind through the windows and corridors.

Not satisfied with the wind theory, she begins to walk through the corridors and rooms trying to follow the crying. For her astonishment, one night she finds a room where the crying seems to come from. As she gets into the room she is surprised by a figure of a boy laying in the bed and crying.

This boy looks at her with amazement and with a puzzled face in the same way she is looking at him. The boy has not known about her stay and she neither about his existence. They both start to talk and know each other and Mary finds that this boy is Craven´s son and his name is Colin.

The Colin´s mother died while giving birth to him. Mr. Craven never sees his son because of his resemblance to her and because he thinks that the boy is very sick and would not live much longer. The family’s doctor says that Colin in fact very sick and keeps him in bed all day. The boy cannot walk and has a nurse to be with him during the day.

Mary and Colin start to meet every day and she tells him about stories from India and about the gardening stuff. Although she has the intention to keep secret about the hidden garden, she every day talk about it without telling him that she in fact has already found it.

Collin is a very imperious and gloomy and talks about die all the time. But somehow Mary likes him and tries to be friend of him. The idea of the secret garden seems to inspire the boy’s mind and Mary notices that.

After a while raining, the sun appears and Mary comes back to the outdoors activities. She promises being back at evenings to see Colin but she realizes that Colin is very mad about being alone without her during the day. After a big argument she decides to tell him about the garden saying that he in fact is not sick or hunchback, as everybody thinks, and he has to come and be outdoors with her. She says that he is weak because of being in the bed all day.

She asked to Dickon to help pushing Colin’s wheelchair and to bring him to the garden and Dickon comes the follow day to do this job. Colin demands that no staff should be around the garden while he is outdoors and that they should be left alone without any interruptions. It was his way to keep her mother’s garden in secret.

They three go to the garden and they spend all day there, almost every day. Colin finds that he can walk and all of them start take exercises and fresh air. With the spring on, the garden comes alive and they work on the soil and see the flowers and plants growing as well as the birds coming around. The place is full of life and energy and it affects directly Colin´s health transforming him into as healthy boy as anyone else.

Being now a different creature, he tries to hide that from everybody in the house. He wants to improve his health in a way that he can be considered as a strong boy and very different from to a sickly child. He wants to prove to his father that he is in fact well and he is not going to die anymore, being possible growing old. Colin wants be accepted by his father and have a father who would be proud of him. And because of that he doesn’t want anyone to tell his father before he is confident about his health.

Spending time in the garden they three built a strong friendship and it becomes a brand new world to Colin who starts to be more generous and not an appalling figure as before. They think that the garden has magic that transforms everything and they start a sort of everyday praying to this magic wishing better days and the improvement of their health. In the end everything is alright and their wishes seem to come true.

The secret garden is a charming, fascinating and touching book. It talks about many issues in human behaviour and about what a child needs to grow stronger in body, in spirit and in soul. Many things that are showed in the book are about natural religion, natural magic and positive thinking as well as love, determination and perseverance. The beginning of the last chapter shows clearly what kind of person Frances Hodgson Burnett might have been and what she had in mind while writing a so beautiful story.

“In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts--just mere thoughts--are as powerful as electric batteries--as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.”

I find that more profound than self-help ideas. It has to be with a high understanding of life, a language to be understood only by the heart. For me she had her point that children need a good environment and love to be brought up properly. And love is showed in the whole book and the transformations that love can do when it is cultivated.

“Where, you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”-The Secret Garden, Ch. 27

Frances Eliza Hodgson, Frances Hodgson Burnett , was born on 24 November 1849 in Manchester and died on 29 October 1924 in Plandom, New York.

The Secret Garden was first published in 1911 and it is currently in the public domain.

To find out more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Hodgson_Burnett

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Garden

http://librivox.org/the-secret-garden-by-frances-hodgson-burnett/ (unabridged talking-book)

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