Novel Study Guides: The Secret Garden

• Orphans and Orphanages
• Great Britain - History - 19th century
• Strong Female Character
• Gardens
• Physically Disabled Children

Frances Eliza Hodgson was the daughter of ironmonger Edwin Hodgson, who died three years after her birth, and his wife Eliza Boond. She was educated at The Select Seminary for Young Ladies and Gentleman until the age of fifteen, at which point the family ironmongery, then being run by her mother, failed, and the family emigrated to Knoxville, Tennessee. Here Hodgson began to write, in order to supplement the family income, assuming full responsibility for the family upon the death of her mother, in 1870. In 1872 she married Dr. Swan Burnett, with whom she had two sons, Lionel and Vivian. The marriage was dissolved in 1898. In 1900 Burnett married actor Stephen Townsend until 1902 when they got divorced. Following her great success as a novelist, playwright, and children's author, Burnett maintained homes in both England and America, traveling back and forth quite frequently. She died in her Long Island, New York home, in 1924.

Primarily remembered today for her trio of classic children's novels - Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911) - Burnett was also a popular adult novelist, in her own day, publishing romantic stories such as The Making of a Marchioness (1901) for older readers.

Good Reads

Born in India to a wealthy British family, Mary Lennox is a selfish and solitary 10-year-old girl who has been spoiled by her servants and neglected by her parents. When a cholera epidemic kills her parents and the servants, Mary is orphaned.

After a brief stay with the family of an English clergyman, she is sent to Yorkshire, England, to live with her widowed Uncle Archibald Craven, who lives an isolated existence at his sprawling estate, Misselthwaite Manor. Frequently abandoned by her uncle, who travels frequently to escape his depression and any reminder of his beloved dead wife, she is left in the care of the head housekeeper, the fastidious Mrs. Medlock. Mary finds the English moors bleak and depressing and despairingly different from the life she was accustomed to in India. Used to her orders being obeyed, Mary is astonished by servants who actually answer back.

However, she is soon intrigued by her chambermaid, Martha, and the tales the latter tells about her life at home in a large, poor family and about her 12-year-old brother, Dickon. When Martha mentions the late Mrs. Craven’s walled garden, which was locked ten years earlier by the uncle upon his wife’s death, Mary is determined to find it despite orders from Mrs. Medlock not to explore the manor.

As spring approaches, Mary spends more time outdoors, skipping among nature, and talking to the elderly gardener, Ben Weatherstaff. When her uncle comes home briefly, she asks him if she may have a bit of earth to care for, and while tilling the soil she finds the key to the locked garden, which she proceeds to explore. Her interaction with nature spurs a transformation: she becomes kinder, more considerate, and outgoing. Mary also uncovers the source of the strange sounds she hears in the mansion: they are the cries of her supposedly sick and crippled cousin, her uncle’s son Colin, who has been confined to the house and never allowed outside. Mary discovers that Colin is not sick at all but has simply been denied the opportunity to grow.

The three children explore the garden together, plant seeds to revitalize it, and through their friendship and interactions with nature grow healthier and happier. When her uncle returns and sees the amazing transformation that has occurred to his family in his absence, and his formerly abandoned garden now in bloom, he embraces his family, as well as their rejuvenated outlook on life.