The Secret Garden, by Francis Hodgson Burnett, published in 1911, is a story about a girl named Mary Lennox, who leaves her home in India after an outbreak of cholera (which her parents did not recover from), and is sent to her uncle’s estate in England. There, she explores a mysterious mansion, watched and tended by Mrs. Medlock, and the groundskeeper, Ben Weatherstaff, where rooms are forbidden and shut, and a ‘secret garden’ is closed off, with seemingly no entryway.
It is a story with many twists and turns, as Mary peels away the layers of the mystery of her uncle’s life (Mr. Craven), the mansion, the grounds, the ‘secret garden,’ and why it has been kept hidden. While she explores the estate, she befriends the family neighbors (the Sowerbys) who introduce her to the beauty of nature and gardening, and those other secrets which her uncle has kept hidden inside the mansion (no spoilers in this review).
The first half of the book has the reader exploring the mansion with Mary as she becomes familiar with the grounds, and learns about the other characters, as well as her family’s history. By the second half, as the mystery of her uncle’s past unravels, Mary begins to learn, through the restoring of the secret garden, how life can either be hindered, or it can flourish, when the old schemas of doubt and fear are cast away, and an outlook of hope and aspiration take shape.
When I first began reading The Secret Garden, I wasn’t sure how the story would unfold, but as a I read, it was like piecing together clues to a mystery that revealed why the characters in the mansion were so gloomy and despondent. By the end, it became clear how powerful certain beliefs can sour pessimism in our outlook, and that the only way to move forward is to face the sorrow and grief with courage and hope of the future.
Fallton Havenstonne 