The Secret Garden in The Insecure Writer's Support Group Book Club

From the Bookshelf of The Insecure Writer's Support Group Book Club…

The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Start date: June 1, 2017

Finish date: July 31, 2017

Why we're reading this: This book will demonstrate characterization.
[close] This book will demonstrate characterization.

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Jun 18, 2017 Bish Denham rated it really liked it

Shelves: children-s-lit

When writing a "review" I always take into account when a story was written, particularly a classic like The Secret Garden. Are there a some racial over-tones that by today's standards would be considered in bad taste? Yes. Does the omniscient POV and jumping around from head to head (even the occasional animal's) get (at times) a bit tiring? Yes. Is the poor family of 14 living in a tiny house too saccharinely wonderful and happy and overly romanticized? Yes. Does the story become Colin's with When writing a "review" I always take into account when a story was written, particularly a classic like The Secret Garden. Are there a some racial over-tones that by today's standards would be considered in bad taste? Yes. Does the omniscient POV and jumping around from head to head (even the occasional animal's) get (at times) a bit tiring? Yes. Is the poor family of 14 living in a tiny house too saccharinely wonderful and happy and overly romanticized? Yes. Does the story become Colin's with Mary becoming a secondary character? Yes. Does Martha disappear entirely? Yes. Is Dickon just too good to be true? Yes. Are the tropes predictable? Yes. Are there chapters and pages that could have been cut entirely or greatly edited? Yes.

So what is it about The Secret Garden that it remains worthy of 4 and 5 stars? I first read it when I was 8 or 9 which is almost more years ago than I can count. I remember being enthralled.

I believe what makes it special is the Magic. A gloomy mansion, with gloomy servants, two spoiled, neglected and miserable children, a grouchy gardener, a terribly depressed man and a dead garden are born again, are reborn, are transformed, are brought out of the darkness and into the light.

"It is," as Mary explains to Colin about what the spring is like, "the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine."

Burnett's "Magic" makes the world a beautiful place.

"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing ... and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun... One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one's eyes."

I know I've had those moments.

"I am sure there is Magic in everything," says Colin, "only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us -- like electricity and horses and steam... Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden -- in all the places... The Magic works best when you work yourself."

The Magic can be called by any name you like, God, Jesus, Buddha... It's all the same.

There is a bit a humor too as when Ben, the grouchy gardener says, "The world's full o' jackasses brayin' an' they never bray nowt but lies."

If you decide to read The Secret Garden, read it with an open heart. Read it for the beauty of the descriptive passages of the moors, the gardens, the rooms within the gloomy mansion, read it for the Magic and maybe the Magic will work it's Magic within you. ...more

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