Martha is the first person Mary grows slightly fond of, then Ben Weatherstaff, a grumpy gardener, and a robin he likes. Mary becomes acquainted with a handful of people one by one, and very gradually her circle of acquaintances, and not only that, of people she likes, widens. Even more mysteriously, the garden appears to have no door. He locked the walled garden and buried the key.

Craven could not bear the place, once his wife’s favorite spot. Craven’s late wife was badly injured when she fell off one of the garden’s trees. The garden has been locked for a decade, Mary learns-ever since Mr. Martha gives her a jump rope encourages her to seek out the gardens Mary does, and discovers the location of the “secret garden” Martha has mentioned to her. Martha, a young Yorkshire maid, serves Mary a bit, chattering and catching Mary’s reluctant interest.Īt first Mary is furious at being treated in such a way she is arrogant and expects everyone to kowtow to her (we’re told more than once that her Indian servants did her bidding with alacrity).Īs the days go on, though, Mary realizes she’ll have to find a way to fill up her time on her own. Medlock doesn’t suffer fools gladly she expects Mary to dress herself and amuse herself on her own (not wholly believable but I went with it), something Mary is unused to. Medlock, who picks up Mary in London and conveys her to her new home. Craven, her uncle, is largely absent and his household is run by his housekeeper, Mrs. Mary’s parents and her Ayah (nursery maid) die, other servants desert the house, and the orphaned Mary is discovered utterly alone by two soldiers who come in to see if anyone has been left alive.Īfter a brief sojourn with a clergyman’s family (the children of the household mock her stubborn, angry demeanor by dubbing her “Mistress Mary, quite contrary,”) she is sent to her uncle’s Yorkshire country house. Mary is a spoiled and surly child living in India (no more specific location is given) when her home is struck with the illness. The novel begins when nine-year-old Mary Lennox loses her parents to cholera. Some of my suppositions were correct The Secret Garden is considerably better crafted than Little Lord Fauntleroy. The stress and anxiety has made me more amenable to reading something simple and potentially heartwarming. The recent pandemic outbreak seemed like a good time to test that theory. For one thing, I remembered that the novel’s main character, Mary Lennox, was not an idealized, sugary, Marty Stu figure like Cedric, the eponymous Little Lord Fauntleroy. My expectations of The Secret Garden, my favorite Burnett novel in childhood, dropped at that time, but I thought that the book could not possibly be as bad as Little Lord Fauntleroy. Had I reviewed it here, I would have given it a big fat F. Sometime in the past couple of years I revisited Little Lord Fauntleroy and was stunned by how bad it was: quite possibly the most treacly book I have ever read, poorly researched, and racist. I looked forward to those broadcasts with bated breath and I still remember the song “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” which bracketed the radio readings of Little Lord Fauntleroy. I was introduced to Burnett via a serialized reading of Little Lord Fauntleroy that was part of a children’s hour radio broadcast I listened to as a young child in Israel (yes, I got my childhood programs from the radio as well as the television). It’s considered a classic novel and is the story of children beginning to blossom as they bring a locked, abandoned garden to life. Janine C- Reviews / D Reviews animals / bigotry / children / children's book / classic / Edwardian-era / England / gardening / India / racism / secret 28 CommentsĪs a child, I loved Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. JREVIEW: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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