Chapters 1–6

I was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen, and I knew it. In those early years in India, my reflection showed a thin, sallow face, a perpetually sour expression, and limp hair that matched my equally limp spirit. I lived in a state of constant, quiet tyranny, raised by an Ayah and a small army of servants who obeyed my every whim simply to keep me from screaming and disturbing my mother. My mother, a Great Beauty who draped herself in lace and lived for the next dinner party, had no room in her life for a sickly, ill-tempered daughter. I was a disappointment kept out of sight, a little desert of a person who had never been taught to love or be loved.

The change came with the cholera. It arrived like a silent, suffocating heat, turning the bungalow into a place of whispered horrors and sudden disappearances. I remember waking up in a house that had fallen unnervingly still. My Ayah was gone, the servants had fled or died, and I was left entirely alone in my nursery, forgotten by a world that was too busy dying to remember a "disappointment" like me. When the British officers finally broke down the door and found me playing with bits of wood in the dust, they looked at me with a pity that felt like an insult. They told me there was no one left—that my mother and father were dead, and the life I knew had vanished into the graveyard.

I was sent across the wide, grey sea to England, a country that sounded as cold and colorless as I felt. My destination was Misselthwaite Manor, the home of an uncle I had never met, Mr. Archibald Craven. The journey was a series of humiliations; I was mocked by the children of a clergyman for my "Pig-Stye" manners and eventually handed over to Mrs. Medlock, my uncle’s housekeeper. She was a woman with a face as hard and red as a winter apple, and she made it clear from the start that I was not to expect a warm welcome.

As we traveled toward the Yorkshire moors in a rattling carriage, the sky turned a bruised purple. Mrs. Medlock tried to describe the moor to me, calling it a wild, bleak place where nothing grew but heather and gorse, and nothing lived but wild ponies and sheep. To my ears, it sounded like a vast, heaving ocean of nothingness. She warned me that my uncle was a "hunchback" who lived in a permanent black mood and that I was to stay in my own rooms and keep to myself. I turned my face to the window, feeling a familiar sting of resentment. I was used to being unwanted, but the thought of a house with a hundred locked doors began to prick at my curiosity in a way nothing in India ever had.

When we finally reached the Manor, it loomed out of the darkness like a sprawling, low-slung monster. The wind howled across the moor, whistling through the stone corridors. I was led through galleries filled with portraits of grim-faced ancestors and finally shut into a room with a coal fire. It was the first time I had ever felt truly small.

The next morning brought Martha, a housemaid with a round, honest face and a Yorkshire accent so thick I could barely parse her meaning. She was a revelation to me. In India, servants were shadows that did as they were told; Martha was a person who spoke her mind. She told me about her mother and her twelve brothers and sisters, especially a boy named Dickon who seemed to possess a magical connection to the earth and its creatures. She expressed genuine shock that I couldn't dress myself, and though her bluntness made my blood boil, her stories of the moor began to pull me out of my lethargy.

Martha told me that I must go outside to play, as there was nothing for me to do in the house but wander and get into trouble. I went, not because I wanted to run, but because the house felt heavy with a silence that seemed to be hiding something. The gardens were vast and dormant, a labyrinth of grey stone walls and leafless trees. It was there I met Ben Weatherstaff, an old gardener as crusty and unsociable as I was. He pointed out the "closed garden," a place that had been locked for ten years since the death of my uncle’s wife. He told me the Master had buried the key and that no one was permitted to enter.

That secret became my obsession. I began to spend every hour outside, my sallow skin slowly turning pink from the biting moor wind. I was no longer the girl who sat in the dust in India; I was a hunter. I walked the perimeter of those ivy-covered walls, looking for a door that had been swallowed by time. I found an unlikely ally in a robin, a bright-eyed bird that seemed to understand my loneliness. He would hop along the walls, chirping at me as if he were mocking my inability to fly over the stone barriers.

As my body grew stronger, my "sourness" began to evaporate, replaced by a sharp, focused hunger—both for the plain Yorkshire food Martha brought me and for the truth about the Manor. One night, the wind moaned through the corridors with a sound that didn't belong to the weather. It was a high, thin, fretful cry. It was the sound of someone in pain, or perhaps someone as lonely as I had been. When I tried to investigate, Mrs. Medlock appeared from the shadows and forced me back to my room with a ferocity that confirmed my suspicions. She lied and said it was only the wind, but I knew better.

Misselthwaite Manor was a puzzle of locked doors and hidden lives. Between the garden that was forbidden to the living and the voice that was forbidden to be heard, I found that I was no longer a "disappointment" waiting to be managed. I was a girl with a purpose, standing at the edge of a secret that was just beginning to breathe.

Comparison of Mary's Early Arc

Chapters 7–17

The wind off the moor had a way of scouring the soul, though I was too stubborn to admit it at first. By the time I reached those middle weeks at Misselthwaite Manor, the sallow, sickly girl who had arrived from India was beginning to fade, replaced by someone with a ravenous appetite and a mind sharpened by a single, obsessive mystery. I had become a creature of the gardens, a seeker of secrets, driven by the legend of a door that had been locked for ten years and a key that had been swallowed by the earth.

It was the robin who finally gave me the secret. He was a jaunty little soul, chirping and flirting his tail as he hopped along the flowerbeds where Ben Weatherstaff had been working. I followed him, my heart hammering against my ribs, as he led me to a place where the ivy hung in thick, matted curtains. There, in a patch of fresh-turned earth, I saw a ring of rusty iron. I pulled it from the soil, my fingers trembling. It was the key.

The next day, the wind was particularly fierce, whipping the ivy about like tattered banners. The robin was there again, perched atop the wall, whistling as if he were cheering me on. A sudden gust of wind caught a heavy fold of ivy and swung it aside, revealing a round door handle that had been hidden for a decade. I did not hesitate. I slipped the key into the lock, turned it with a gritty protest of metal, and stepped inside.

The garden was a world of grey and brown, a forest of tangled roses that looked like Victorian lace turned to stone. It was silent, mystical, and utterly mine. I spent those first hours clearing the grass from around some tiny, pale green points poking through the earth—crocuses and snowdrops struggling to breathe under the weight of the winter debris. I felt a strange, fierce protectiveness over them. If the garden was alive, I would be the one to keep it so.

But a garden needs more than a girl with no tools and soft hands. I needed help, and my mind turned to Martha’s brother, Dickon. Martha had told me he was a "common" boy who could charm the moor itself, and when I finally met him, I saw she had understated the truth. He was sitting under a tree, playing a rough wooden pipe, surrounded by a squirrel and a crow that seemed to listen to him as if he were a king. He had round blue eyes and a face that looked like it had been carved from the very heather of the moor.

I trusted him instantly—a thing I had never done with anyone in my life. I showed him my secret. Together, we began the work of "wakening" the garden. Dickon brought tools and seeds, and his hands moved with a sure, gentle magic that made the dead wood seem to thrum with potential. He told me the roses weren't dead; they were just "wick," a Yorkshire word for alive. We worked in a shared, blissful silence, two conspirators against the gloom of the Great House.

Yet, as the garden grew greener, the house grew heavier. The crying I had heard on my first nights returned, more insistent and fretful than before. One night, unable to bear the mystery any longer, I took a candle and slipped out of my room. The corridors were vast and terrifying, filled with shadows that seemed to reach for my hem, but I followed the sound until I reached a tapestry-hung door.

I pushed it open and found myself in a room filled with silk and velvet, and in the center of a massive bed lay a boy. He was thin and ivory-pale, with enormous, frightened eyes that seemed to take up his entire face. This was Colin Craven, my cousin—the "hidden" master of the manor. He believed he was a hunchback, destined to die before he grew up, kept in the dark by a father who could not bear to look at him and servants who feared his hysterical tantrums.

Our first meeting was not one of pity, but of mutual shock. We were two spoiled, lonely tyrants suddenly faced with our own reflections. I told him about India, and he told me about his fears of the "lump" on his back. I found that I wasn't afraid of him, nor did I find him pathetic; I simply found him as disagreeable as I had once been. I told him he was not going to die, and I told him—in a moment of great risk—about the garden.

For the first time in his life, Colin stopped thinking about his impending death and started thinking about the world outside his windows. We spent hours together, my visits kept secret from Mrs. Medlock. I realized that Colin’s illness was a sickness of the mind, a product of the dark rooms and the terrifying whispers of the adults around him. He needed the moor wind; he needed Dickon; he needed the garden.

The tantrums did not vanish overnight. There was a night when his screams echoed through the entire wing, a "hysterics" fit that sent the servants into a panic. I marched into his room, unyielding and furious, and shouted him into silence. I told him there was nothing wrong with his back but his own imagination. It was the first time anyone had ever dared to defy him, and the shock of it saved him. He let me look at his back—it was as straight as my own, only wasted from disuse.

The climax of our secret plotting came when the spring finally arrived in full force. The garden was no longer grey; it was a riot of green and gold, shimmering with the promise of roses. Dickon and I decided it was time. With the help of a specially made wheelchair, we conspired to smuggle the "Rajah," as I called him, out of the house.

The moment we pushed him through the hidden door and into the sun-drenched sanctuary of the garden, the world changed. Colin looked up at the swaying trees and the curtains of blossoms, his pale face catching the light for the first time in years. He didn't look like a dying boy anymore; he looked like a king reclaiming his kingdom.

We sat in the grass, the three of us—the sour girl from India, the moor-boy who talked to animals, and the cripple who had forgotten how to live. Ben Weatherstaff eventually discovered us, climbing over the wall in a fit of curiosity, but even his crusty anger melted when Colin, driven by a sudden, miraculous surge of will, stood up on his own feet to prove he was no hunchback.

As we stood there in the golden afternoon light, surrounded by the "magic" that Dickon insisted was just the way the world worked, I realized that the garden hadn't just been wakened. It had wakened me, and in doing so, it had given me the power to waken Colin. We were no longer the ghosts of Misselthwaite; we were its future, rooted in the dirt and reaching for the sun.

Chapters 18–27

The transformation of Misselthwaite Manor did not happen in a single burst of thunder; it happened in the way the grass grows—quietly, relentlessly, and under the cover of a secret. By the time we reached those final ten chapters of our shared history, I was no longer the yellow, sour-faced child who had arrived from India. My skin had turned the color of a wild rose, and my heart, once as hard as a dried seed, had begun to crack open to let the light in.

We had brought Colin into the garden. That was the Great Turning. For years, he had been a captive of his own fear, buried alive in a velvet-draped room, convinced that his back was curving and his death was imminent. But the garden did not care for his hysterics. The garden only cared for the sun and the rain. When we wheeled him through that hidden door, the sight of the ivy-draped walls and the pale green veil of budding leaves acted upon him like a physical medicine. I watched him transform from a tyrant into a boy.

Our days became a ritual of "Magic." That was the word Colin chose for the life-force that made the seeds swell and the robin build its nest. We would spend every waking hour behind those high stone walls. Dickon, who seemed to be made of the very earth itself, showed us how to "wick" the garden back to life—clearing away the dead wood to make room for the new. I remember the feeling of the cool soil under my fingernails and the way the air began to smell of damp moss and wallflowers. We were no longer three separate children; we were a small, secret tribe dedicated to the resurrection of a forgotten world.

Colin’s recovery was the greatest Magic of all. He began by simply standing. I remember the breathless silence as he pulled himself up from his chair, his thin legs trembling like a newborn foal's. He leaned on the strength of the garden, and eventually, he leaned on us. We kept it a secret from the house. We wanted the miracle to be complete before the world saw it. To the servants and Mrs. Medlock, we were still the difficult, peculiar children who spent too much time outdoors. They noticed our appetites grew ravenous—we were eating enough for six children thanks to the milk and buns Dickon’s mother, Susan Sowerby, sent to us—but they did not suspect that the "cripple" in the wheelchair was actually running races across the grass when no one was looking.

As the summer deepened, the garden became a riot of color. The delphiniums shot up like blue spires, and the roses—the "Great People" of the garden—cascaded over the walls in floods of white and crimson. My role as the narrator of this story changed during this time. I was no longer the protagonist seeking a door; I was a witness to the joy of others. I watched Colin’s eyes lose their hollow, haunted look. I watched him find his father through the beauty of the flowers his mother had loved.

Ben Weatherstaff, the crusty old gardener who had once been the only person to talk to me, became our silent accomplice. He would climb his ladder to look over the wall, his face softening as he watched Colin work. He told us stories of the garden’s past, of the woman who had planted the roses and the tragedy that had locked them away. We realized then that we weren't just growing flowers; we were healing a wound that had been bleeding for ten years.

While we were blooming in Yorkshire, a man was wandering the dark valleys of the Austrian Tyrol. My uncle, Archibald Craven, was a man possessed by a black dog of misery. He had spent a decade running away from the memory of his wife and the sight of his son. But the Magic we were practicing in the garden was not confined by distance. He began to dream. He heard the voice of his wife calling him back to the garden, telling him that she was "in the garden."

His journey home was a mirror to my own arrival. He traveled across the grey sea and through the dark moor, but this time, the moor was not a place of desolation; it was a place of homecoming. When he finally walked through the doors of Misselthwaite, he was met with a house that felt different. It was no longer a tomb.

The final afternoon was a gold-drenched scene I will never forget. We were in the garden, and Colin was leading a race. He was running—actually running—his hair streaming back, his face glowing with health and triumph. He was no longer the "Master" of a sickroom; he was a boy of the earth. He ran straight into the arms of a man who had just stepped through the hidden door.

My uncle stood frozen. He saw his son, whom he had left as a dying infant, standing tall and strong amidst the roses. The silence that followed was not the heavy, suffocating silence of the house's locked corridors; it was the quiet of a prayer being answered. They looked at one another, and in that moment, the ten years of darkness evaporated like morning mist.

I stood back with Dickon, watching them. I felt a strange, quiet pride. I had been the one to find the key. I had been the one to hear the crying in the night. But I realized that the garden didn't belong to me anymore, and neither did Colin. They belonged to life.

As we walked back to the house—Colin and his father side-by-side, with Dickon and me following behind—I looked back at the high stone walls. The ivy was thick and green, hiding the door once again. But it didn't matter if the door was hidden, because the secret was out. The "Secret Garden" was no longer a place of confinement; it was a state of being. We had learned that where you tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow. My sallow, lonely childhood in India felt like a dream belonging to someone else. I was Mary Lennox, and I was finally, truly, at home.

Structural Summary of the Novel's Resolution

Character Summaries

In The Secret Garden, the characters are not static figures; they are mirrors of the garden itself, shifting from dormant, "winter" states of bitterness and grief to vibrant, "summery" states of health and connection.

The Children of the Garden

Mary Lennox

At the start of the novel, Mary is the "most disagreeable-looking child ever seen." Raised in India by parents who didn't want her and servants who were forced to obey her, she is sallow, thin, and tyrannical. Her journey is the emotional heart of the book. As she discovers the moor and the secret garden, her "sourness" evaporates. She transforms from a self-centered orphan into a girl of empathy and vigor, proving to be the catalyst for everyone else's healing.

Colin Craven

Colin is Mary’s cousin and a "hidden" mirror of her former self. Confined to a dark bedroom and convinced he is a fragile cripple destined to develop a hunchback and die young, he is a boy-dictator. His "illness" is largely a product of his father's neglect and his own paralyzing fear. Through Mary’s bluntness and Dickon’s connection to nature, Colin discovers the "Magic" of positive thinking and physical activity, eventually becoming a strong, healthy boy.

Dickon Sowerby

Dickon is the soul of the Yorkshire moor. A twelve-year-old boy who can charm animals—from foxes to crows—he represents the wild, healing power of nature. He is the only character who begins the book "in bloom," possessing an innate wisdom and kindness. He serves as the bridge between the sheltered world of the manor and the life-force of the garden, teaching Mary and Colin how to nurture both the plants and themselves.

The Adults of Misselthwaite

Archibald Craven

The master of Misselthwaite Manor, Archibald is a man physically and emotionally bent by grief. Following the death of his beloved wife, Lilias, in the secret garden, he locked the door and fled into a decade of wandering and depression. He is a "hunchback" not just in body, but in spirit. His arc is one of return; he must learn to face his home and his son to find his own restoration.

Martha Sowerby

Martha is the housemaid who first shatters Mary’s shell. With her thick Yorkshire accent and blunt honesty, she refuses to treat Mary like an Indian princess. She represents the sturdy, common-sense warmth of the working class. Her stories of her brother Dickon and her mother Susan provide the "hunger" that drives Mary to venture outside.

Ben Weatherstaff

An elderly, crusty gardener, Ben is the only person who secretly kept the garden alive by climbing over the wall once or twice a year. Like Mary, he is initially "sour" and unsociable, but he hides a deeply loyal heart. He becomes an unlikely mentor to the children, witnessing and validating Colin’s miraculous recovery.

Mrs. Medlock

The formidable housekeeper of Misselthwaite Manor. Representing Victorian discipline, she is a woman of "red cheeks and sharp eyes" who initially views Mary as a burden. While she appears stern and repressive, she acts primarily as a guardian of the house’s secrets and her master’s privacy.

Susan Sowerby

Though she appears less frequently than the others, Martha and Dickon’s mother is the "Earth Mother" archetype of the story. She is a woman of immense wisdom and limited means who recognizes that the children need fresh air and milk more than medicine. It is her letter to Archibald that ultimately brings him home.

Character Archetypes & Growth

Analysis

In The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett constructs a narrative that is less about a physical place and more about the interior landscape of the human soul. Through a sophisticated use of symbolism and Victorian psychological theory, the novel argues that our environment and our thoughts are the primary architects of our well-being.

Central Symbolism

The Secret Garden as the Human Mind

The most potent symbol in the book is, of course, the garden itself. When Mary first finds it, it is overgrown, locked, and seemingly dead—a perfect reflection of her own neglected and "sour" internal state. As she and Dickon weed the flowerbeds and prune the "dead wood," they are metaphorically performing surgery on their own psyches. The garden’s "awakening" in spring mirrors the children’s transition from stagnant misery to vibrant health.

The High Stone Walls and Locked Doors

The walls surrounding the garden and the "hundred rooms" of Misselthwaite Manor represent the emotional barriers erected by grief and neglect. Archibald Craven’s decision to bury the key is an attempt to bury his trauma. The novel suggests that while walls may offer a temporary sense of safety, they eventually become a tomb; true life requires the courage to find the key and open the door to the outside world.

The Robin Redbreast

The robin serves as a bridge between the wild moor and the human world. He is the "common thread" that connects Ben Weatherstaff, Mary, and the hidden garden. Symbolically, the robin represents Intuition and the Unconscious. It is the robin who shows Mary the key and the door, suggesting that nature (or a higher instinct) guides us toward healing when we are ready to find it.

Literary Techniques

The "Intrusive" Omniscient Narrator

Burnett utilizes a third-person omniscient voice that acts as a moral guide. The narrator frequently pauses the action to explain the "Magic" of the garden or to contrast the "black thoughts" of the children with the "sunlight" of their recovery. This technique transforms the novel from a simple children's story into a philosophical treatise on the power of the mind.

Parallelism and Doubling

The novel relies heavily on the "doubling" of Mary and Colin. Both are orphans (Mary literally, Colin emotionally), both are physically stunted by their environments, and both are tyrannical "rajahs" in their own right. By having Mary encounter Colin, Burnett allows the protagonist to see her own "disagreeable" nature reflected in another, which is the primary catalyst for her growth.

Pathetic Fallacy

Burnett uses the weather and the landscape of the Yorkshire moor to reflect the characters' internal shifts. The "wailing" wind of the early chapters mirrors Mary’s loneliness, while the "shimmering blue" of the summer sky matches Colin’s eventual triumph.

The "Moral of the Story"

The central moral of The Secret Garden can be summarized as: "Where you tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow."

The novel posits that the human mind is like a garden; if left untended, it will fill with the "thistles" of bitterness, fear, and selfishness. However, through the "Magic" of positive labor, connection to nature, and the opening of one’s heart to others, even the most dormant spirit can be brought back to life. It is a proto-psychological argument for the Power of Positive Thinking. Burnett suggests that health and happiness are not just matters of luck, but are skills that can be cultivated through deliberate "gardening" of the soul.

Comparison of States