The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Tasha Tudor
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Book Summary Information
Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett, Tasha TudorEdition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 1998-04-30
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 368
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Book Reviews of The Secret Garden
Book Review: A Strong Story, But a Lame Ending
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is one I've returned to annually since I was ten years old. It's almost embarrassing to admit, because everyone knows The Secret Garden is a "girl's book" -- the book's locked, walled garden and girl's coming-of-age are so good as Freudian symbols they're impossible to ignore. The book's even marketed as a "girl's book," always with a pretty pastel cover illustration of a pretty girl in a pretty dress in a pretty flower garden. But the book features many more male characters than female ones. Reading this as a boy, I looked to the different masculine archetypes presented by Hodgson Burnett as models. Although Mary dominates the beginning of the book, it was Dickon with whom I identified.
To my young-adult mind, Dickon was the same boy as Almanzo Wilder in Farmer Boy or Twain's Huckleberry Finn -- tough but not mean, sensitive but not weak, his moral authority derived directly from his relationship with the natural world. There are two adult men in the book -- Craven, who derives his power from violence and Ben Weatherstaff, who derives his power from gentleness. One man locks the garden in grief, the other climbs over the wall to tend the garden's roses for the same reason.
Reading this as an adult, the book's conclusion seems rushed and cliche -- especially in light of the strong beginning. What starts off as fairly dark, complex, and nuanced ends as moralistic bedtime story.
Until the last quarter of the narrative, about the time when Weatherstaff finds out the children have been letting themselves into the garden, the children have been like real children -- neither totally good nor totally bad, but wholly innocent in spite of the illness, abuse, and parental death they've experienced.
But then, Hodgson Burnett inexplicably changes the story's tone. Dickon and Weatherstaff -- who until now have been the earthy souls of the book -- get pushed into the background. Sick, spoiled Colin suddenly is healthy and suave, contrary Mary goes from strong to meek and docile, and cold, miserable Craven steps back into story transformed into Dear Old Dad willing to love his son -- at least now that his son's not a crippled hunchback after all.
Happy ending and fade out.
One is left with the impression that Dickon now is somewhere on the moor dumbly digging for peat and potatoes like a good peasant, Mary's been shipped off to finishing school now that she's pretty enough to land a husband, and Colin installed as the rightful Lord of the Manor.
We can only hope the garden was left to The National Trust
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