The Secret Garden, written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, who was born in poor Victorian slums in Manchester, was first published in 1909. When she was 16, her family moved from industrial England to rural America, where she could enjoy the benefits of a green and natural world. This kind of world became a central theme in many of Burnett's later works, including The Secret Garden, which is a readable novel containing magical and secret elements.
Those elements, which are shown as supernatural, have their origin in Christian Science and New Thought. Burnett tried to explain those magical elements that appear with the turn of the main protagonists - Mary Lenox and Colin Craven.
The little girl born in India to wealthy British parents made a tremendous transfiguration throughout the story. If we look deeper into the psychological level, her introduction as a selfish, ill- tempered and spoiled girl, has her hatefulness in her parents, who constantly refused her. Her native (Indian) servants gave her, her own way in everything, so she was “…as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived” (Burnett 8 ).
Almost the same sensations were presented with Colin Craven, whose mother died when he was born. As his father could not reconcile to wife’s loss he started refusing little boy. People who knew Colin felt pity for him and they thought he would die early. The power of their thoughts, including his father’s, were so strong that Colin never left the house in his whole life, and what is even worse, he never tried to stand on his own legs.
In those straitened circumstances Mary and Colin did not have any chance to grow up as healthy and happy adults. Their senses started to waken when they befriended each other. The garden was their source of positive thinking and energy. The narrator puts great value on positive thinking which is also one of the most important Christian elements. Believers reinforce their faith with good thoughts at prayers meetings. Christian Scientists’ idea affirms that no disease is caused by the body, but is in fact the result of morbid and negative thinking. Neither Mary or Colin were not loved and were surrounded with negativism, consecutive they felt anger and rejection to everybody and everything. But once they are thinking of the garden and nature they can no longer concern themselves with fear. They started to become healthy children, full of dreams. Their pale faces become more and more cheerful every day and their selfishness, which was caused by unfriendly relations in the past, started to disappear.
An important role in their transformation is played by strong and satisfied boy, Dickon Sowerby. His mother, Susan Sowerby is introduced as Virgin Mother in Catholic symobology. She lends Mary and Colin warm and support feelings that she gives to her own children. Susan understands how to deal with children, while Dickon knows how to understand animals and plants. Christian overtones can also be found in the scene in which Mary opens the window so that Colin may breathe in the air. Colin’s suggestion: “Open the window … perhaps we may hear golden trumpets!” (Burnett 184) recalls the golden trumpets that are believed by Christians to announce the entrance in paradise. Furthermore, when Mary opens
the window for Colin, she repeats Dickon’s words “… it [fresh air] makes him strong and he feels as if he could live forever and ever…” (Burnett 185). This clearly indicates the Christian belief that Paradise contains the promise of eternal life.
Unlike Dickon, who is already complete from the beginning, Mary and Colin start to feel life in their veins. The garden, which is the great secret among children, is represented as a holy place that helps transform them in the best possible way.
We can see Mary’s growing up from different views. After she moved from India to England, where she was given living plants in real garden, representing life and wakefulness in contrast with Indian unhappiness and sleepiness, she became more and more happy. When she moved to England, the narrator shows us four good things that happened to her: “…she had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for some one” (Burnett 49). Divine nature, a warm spring environment and her first friendship with the little robin, which was an orphan like she was, started to arouse feelings in her. She was afraid of company because she was not used to it. Although with her shamefacedness and fear she had an evident desire to be someone’s friend, as we can see how she befriended the gardener Ben: “She surprised him [Ben Weatherstaff] several times by seeming to start up beside him … the truth was that she was afraid that he would pick up his tools and go away if he saw her coming, so she always walked toward him as silently as possible” (Burnett 87). Furthermore, she makes friends with Dickon. I felt as they were in love. She constantly touches him, without knowing what she is doing.
Colin plunged his negative feelings in his hysterical tantrums. He was not ill at all; his disease was entirely a product of his mind. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who published Studies on Hysteria in cooperation with neurologist Joseph Breuer, researched that field. In his book he explains the reason that leads someone to hysterical outbursts. Freud distributes between conscious and unconscious part of mind. Human beings cannot accept all the ideas and acts that are unrolling in their head. He represses some of them in faith to forget or at least mitigate them, but when a person has an idea or fantasy that has been repressed (unconsciously) by the mind, it will find its alternative expression in the body. Colin’s negative thinking is let out through the body. For Freud, the majority of hysterics were women. Colin is therefore feminized – he is weak, frightened and shy. In contrast, Dickon is strong, masculine and vigorous.
The novel would be even more interesting if it was told in Mary’s words. It would be more personal and more touching than it is now, when it is told by an omniscient narrator, who offers extensive philosophical commentary on the novel's action and has access to all of the characters’ thoughts.
The major conflict in The Secret Garden is between each character and his own negative thoughts. Magic is provided as a parable of positive thinking and believing that can solve everything. The secret garden was the place for Mary and Colin to recover and to feel love that they never felt. This novel of ideas shows us life principles and the importance of positive thinking through young people (children), who helped each other and tasted the mercy and glory of life at the end.
Works cited and consulted
Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The Secret Garden. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
“Christian Science.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 8 november 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
“Sigmund Freud.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 8 november 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
“The Secret Garden.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 8 november 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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