The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden is a children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett first published in book form in 1911, after serialisation in The American Magazine (November 1910 – August 1911). Set in England, it is seen as a classic of English children's literature. The American edition was published by the Frederick A. Stokes Company with illustrations by Maria Louise Kirk (signed as M. L. Kirk) and the British edition by Heinemann with illustrations by Charles Heath Robinson.[1][4]
For other uses, see Secret Garden (disambiguation).Author
M. L. Kirk (US)
Charles Robinson (UK)[1]
Frederick A. Stokes (US)
William Heinemann (UK)[2]
United Kingdom
PZ7.B934 Se 1911[3]
Several stage and film adaptations have been made of The Secret Garden.
Themes[edit]
In his analysis of the narrative structures of "the traditional novel for girls," Perry Nodelman highlights Mary Lennox as a departure from the narrative pattern of the "spontaneous and ebullient" orphan girl who changes her new home and family for the better, since those qualities appear later on in the narrative. The revival of the family and the home in these novels, according to Nodelman, "is carried to the extreme in The Secret Garden," in which the garden's restoration and the arrival of spring parallel the emergence of human characters from the home, "almost as if they had been hibernating".[5] Joe Sutliff Sanders examines Mary and The Secret Garden within the context of the Victorian and Edwardian cultural debate over affective discipline, which was echoed in contemporary books about orphan girls. He suggests that The Secret Garden was interested in showing the benefits of affective discipline for men and boys, namely Colin who learns from Mary, understood as "the novel's representative of girlhood" and how to wield his "masculine privilege".[6]
The titular garden has been the subject of much scholarly discussion. Phyllis Bixler Koppes writes that The Secret Garden makes use of the fairy tale, the exemplum, and the pastoral literary genres, which lends the novel a deeper "thematic development and symbolic resonance" than Burnett’s earlier children's novels which only used elements from the first two traditions.[7] She describes the garden as "the central georgic trope, the unifying symbol of rebirth in Burnett's novel".[8] Madelon S. Gohlke understands the titular garden as "both the scene of a tragedy, resulting in the near destruction of a family", as well as the site of its regeneration and restoration.[9]
Alexandra Valint suggests that most of the novel's depictions of disability coincide with the stereotypical view of people with disabilities as unhappy, helpless, and less independent than people without disabilities. Colin's use of a wheelchair would have been understood by Edwardian readers as a marker of both disability and social status.[10]
Elizabeth Lennox Keyser writes that The Secret Garden is ambivalent about sex roles: while Mary restores the garden and saves the family, her role in the story is overshadowed at the conclusion of the novel by the return of Colin and his father, which may be seen as a defense of patriarchal authority.[11] Danielle E. Price notes that the novel deals with "the thorny issues of sex, class, and imperialism".[12] She writes how Mary's development in the novel parallels "the steps of nineteenth-century garden theorists in their plans for the perfect garden", with Mary ultimately turning into "a girl who, like the ideal garden, can provide both beauty and comfort, and who can cultivate her male cousin, the young patriarch-in-training".[12]
In his examination of The Secret Garden within the context of postcolonialism, Jerry Phillips writes that the novel "is not so much a discourse on the end of empire as an embryonic commentary on the possibility of blowback".[13]
Publication history[edit]
The Secret Garden may be one of the first instances of a story for children first appearing in a magazine with an adult readership,[32] an occasion of which Burnett herself was aware at the time.[19] The Secret Garden was first published in ten issues (November 1910 – August 1911) of The American Magazine, with illustrations by J. Scott Williams.[33] It was first published in book form in August 1911 by the Frederick A. Stokes Company in New York;[34] it was also published that year by William Heinemann in London, illustrated by Charles Robinson. Its copyright expired in the USA in 1986,[35] and in most other parts of the world in 1995, placing the book in the public domain. As a result, several abridged and unabridged editions were published in the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as a full-colour illustrated edition from David R. Godine, Publisher in 1989.
Inga Moore's abridged edition of 2008, illustrated by her, is arranged so that a line of the text also serves as a caption to a picture.
Public reception[edit]
Upon its publication in novel format, The Secret Garden garnered largely warm reviews from literary critics,[36][37] and sold well, with a second printing announced within a month after the novel's release.[38] In general, it was seen as an enjoyable novel, and was reviewed within the context of Burnett's previous works, including Little Lord Fauntleroy.[39] It sold well during the 1911 Christmas season, becoming a bestseller in the fiction category, and placing on critical "best of" lists, including that of the Literary Digest and The New York Times.[40] Its literary debut in a magazine for adults led the public to understand it as adult fiction; the book was marketed accordingly, "with some overlap in the juvenile market", which affected its reception by the public.[41] Of this time, scholar Anne Lundin writes that "The Secret Garden struggled to assert its own identity as a different kind of story that spoke to both the romanticism and modernism of a new century".[41] Burnett regarded The Secret Garden as her favorite novel, although she considered one of her novels for adults, In Connection with the DeWilloughby Claim, to be her Great American Novel.[42]
Tracing the book's revival from almost complete eclipse at the time of Burnett's death in 1924, Lundin notes that the author's obituary notices all remarked on Little Lord Fauntleroy and passed over The Secret Garden in silence.[43] Burnett’s literary reputation waned over the following decades, possibly as a result of biases towards books that garner a female audience.[44] Despite being largely overlooked by literary critics and librarians,[45] The Secret Garden enjoyed a considerable following among its readers.[36] It continued to rank well on readers’ polls for favorite stories. In 1927, it placed in the top fifteen favorite books of female Youth Companion readers, and in the 1960s, the readers of The New York Times ranked The Secret Garden as one of the best children's books. Surveys of adult readers in the 1970s and 1980s show that the novel was a frequent childhood favorite, especially for women.[46]
Burnett's literary reputation underwent a critical resurgence in the 1950s. Marghanita Laski's Mrs Ewing, Mrs Molesworth and Mrs Hodgson Burnett (1951) described The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy as the best of Burnett’s children’s books; Laski considered The Secret Garden to be the best of the three, with a capacity to reach thoughtful and self-reflective children.[44] Other British literary critics and historians began to take note of the novel, including Roger Lancelyn Green and John Rowe Townsend.[47] Thwaite's biography about Burnett, Waiting for the Party (1974), highlighted The Secret Garden for its depiction of unpleasant children that she felt was much closer to contemporary ideas about how children behave.[48] At the time that Thwaite's biography was published, children's literature was becoming a field of greater scholarly interest, and as a result, The Secret Garden began to garner more scholarly analysis.[49] The Secret Garden became accepted as part of the scholarly canon of children's literature in the 1980s.[49]
In the twentieth-first century, The Secret Garden continues to be well regarded among readers. In 2003 it ranked No. 51 in The Big Read, a survey of the British public by the BBC to identify the "Nation's Best-loved Novel" (not just children's novel).[50] Based on a 2007 online poll, the U.S. National Education Association listed it as one of "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children".[51][52] In 2012, it was ranked No. 15 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with a primarily US audience.[53] A Little Princess was ranked number 56 and Little Lord Fauntleroy did not make the Top 100.[53] Jeffrey Masson considers The Secret Garden "one of the greatest books ever written for children".[54] In an oblique compliment, Barbara Sleigh has her title character reading The Secret Garden on the train at the beginning of her children's novel Jessamy and Roald Dahl, in his children's book Matilda, has his title character say that she liked The Secret Garden best of all the children's books in the library.[55]
