The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodges Burnett

The Secret Garden is a fiction book about Mary Lennox. I loved this book and found this book to be very inspiring and loved the character of Mary Lennox and all the descriptions of the garden.

Synopsis: Mary Lennox is ten years old and is orphaned after her parents died of cholera and sent to live with her Uncle Archibald Craven, the husband of her father’s sister, Lilias, in England on the Yorkshire Moors in Misselthwaite Manor. She is born in British India to wealthy British parents. Mary is neglected and unloved by her parents and cared for primarily by servants.

She is very disagreeable and irritable at first, but as she started spending time exploring outside, she became happier and peaceful and more open and friendly. She became friends with Martha, her servant, Dickon, the brother of Martha, and Colin, the bedridden son of her uncle, who suffers from fevers and believes that he is unable to walk and is very spoiled. Mary tells Colin that she has access to the secret garden, and he asks to see it, and she takes him to it in his wheelchair. He goes outside for the first time in years.

Martha tells Mary about Lilias whom would spend hours in a private walled garden growing roses and that she died after an accident in the garden ten years ago, and after this incident Mary’s uncle locked the garden and buried the key. One day while exploring outside, a robin leads Mary to an area of soil, and she finds the key to the locked garden. She and Dickon begin to bring the garden back to life. After Colin is called a cripple by the gardener, he gets out of his wheelchair and figures out that he can stand, and Mary and Dickon spend every day in the garden with him and encourage him to try walking.

Finally, Mary’s Uncle Archibald returns to the manor and after returning home he finds the garden fully bloomed and Colin fully healthy and running.

Review:
“The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking about it.” She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was.”
“It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place.”
“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth.”
“He thought the world was full of magic, just waiting to happen. All you had to do was be kind to someone and the magic would happen.”
“Magic is always pushing and drawing and pushing things out of nothing. Everything is made of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people.”
I loved Colin’s descriptions of the outside world when he was able to experience the world for the first time. I also loved reading about the garden and how it came alive.