Chapter Books

The Secret Garden

I wanted to note a few thoughts about Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, first published serially in 1910. As I noted in this post, Madeleine L’Engle speaks of it in Walking on Water:

The Secret Garden is probably the most successful and most read and reread of Burnett’s books; it is also Christian, though I don’t remember whether or not it ever mentions Jesus. And it is more successful that Little Lord Fauntleroy, for instance, because it is a better piece of story-telling, less snobbish, and the message doesn’t show, like a slip hanging below the hem of a dress. I think we can all recognize ourselves, at least to some degree, in Mary Lennox, who is as spoiled and self-centered a child as one can find, thoroughly nasty and unlovable, basically because she’s never been taught to love anybody but herself. The secret garden is as much the garden of Mary’s heart as it is the walled English garden, and we watch Mary’s slow growth into the realization of of other peoples’ needs, and then into love. Mary’s journey into love is, in fact, her journey into Christ, though this is never said, and does not need to be said.

To me, this seems high-handed and careless. But while I disagree with L’Engle on some points, as a Christian, I found much that was familiar to me in the story, and much that captured the winsomeness and joy of the Christian faith. I’ll get the quibbles out of the way first, then come back to the ways I find the book’s worldview to be close to, if not fully, Christian.

Much of this depends on what we mean by “a Christian story.” This is by no means a book that purports to teach anyone Christian doctrine. Barbara has a post delineating some of the differences here.

I would point out to Madeleine L’Engle that at times, the message certainly does show “like a slip hanging below the hem of the dress.” Colin’s “scientific experiment” in which he discourses on “Magic” is one example. Another is the beginning of the last chapter, which details how

One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.

As Barbara points out, this is straightforward Christian Science grafted onto the story, and many a child has probably yawned and skipped over this part. The brief and intense passages focusing on “Magic,” and the strange scene in which Colin leads his very English friends in a chant as they sit in a circle, seem not to be organic parts of the story at all.

The power of this tale lies elsewhere for me:

  • The solidarity, independence and good nature of the three children in their cloistered world of the secret garden
  • The recovery of a father (Mr. Craven) and a mother (Susan Sowerby) in a world bereft of both
  • The exact, loving description of nature by a writer who had clearly observed the flora and fauna of her locale and can report in detail on the specific plants, animals, birds, colors, odors, landscapes, and weather
  • The feeling of awakening spring that pervades the novel
  • One of the absolute best endings in all of literature

I remember learning in one of my graduate classes years ago that in the 19th century, enclosures were commonly used as mind symbols. Certainly the impossibly sprawling Misselthwaite Manor, as well as the secret garden itself, are opposing mind symbols in this story that represent two orientations in the world. The house with its darkness and endless labyrinths of unused rooms stands for the dangerous possibilities of a mind turned in on itself in brooding, unopposed pessimism; the garden, though its very landscape bears the marks of tragedy and abandonment, is still open to the influences of love and diligent care. Its walls mark the boundaries from the rest of the earthbound inhabitants and setting, but it is roofless, welcoming to the heavenly influences of sun, rain, and seasons. This is where the children’s hearts come alive in new ways.

Along with picturing the contrast between a mind absorbed in self vs. a mind open to spiritual influence, the garden is a compelling affirmation of a Christian view of Creation. It is good, we’re told in the Bible, and even after the Fall (as early as Job) God is deeply interested in it and involved in it. We’re told that the heavens declare the glory of God; that the rocks would cry out at Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem if no people did; that the Creation groans to be fully revealed under the obedient care of “the Sons and Daughters of God.” Of course the garden is Edenic as well, and Mary and Dickon are like the original Adam and Eve — an Adam who seems still mystically connected with the living world, and an Eve intruding where she has been expressly forbidden to go.

Burnett draws from several strands of religious philosophy, but whether she intended it or not, we can see in the kindling of the children’s belief in “Magic” a first stage of faith. They are recognizing that there is more to the world than meets the eye, and their response is to affirm it and make a habit of affirming it. Though as I said above, their method seems weirdly out of place, the underlying recognition of the importance of the mind is not far from the Christian view. We are exhorted many times in Scripture to renew our minds, to take thoughts captive, to dwell on the good, to memorize Scripture.  None of this has any meaning unless our thought lives are of central importance.

The children never really settle on calling the good power they sense “God.” At least, not in any final way. But in one scene, in which Ben Weatherstaff encourages them to sing the Doxology, they do recognize that this may be “a” name for what they believe to be at work in the world. None of them have been to church, as the story makes clear; Mary has lived in India and been exposed to eastern religion, and Colin has been too sick to go to church. Even Susan Sowerby, Dickon’s mother, isn’t willing to locate the “Good Thing” in “God.”

This keeps me from being comfortable calling the story, as L’Engle so confidently does, a “Christian story.” But I’m more comfortable calling it a journey in that direction. Mrs. Sowerby’s name for “the Magic” is “the Joy-Maker,” whose greatest treasures are the discoveries of love, joy, restoration. It’s hard for me to imagine anything other than God having these traits, least of all the impersonal “Magic” the children are always talking about.

In my years at a Christian college, an oft-repeated phrase was, “All truth is God’s truth.” This is one of the foundation stones of a Christian liberal arts education, in which students study all works of literature — not just Christian ones — from a Christian perspective. When it comes to The Secret Garden, I recognize the syncretism in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s perspective. But reading the story through the Christian interpretive lens that shapes my view of the world, I saw much that I could affirm and enjoy. In fact, sentimentality and all, the story inspires a longing for a time when children — and adults — were possessed of such a keen appreciation for, and knowledge of, the world around us. Nature is, after all, one of the three venues of revelation, along with tradition and Scripture. We need them all.

4 Comments

  • Barbara H.

    Thanks for the mention. :) I appreciated your delineation of the good as well as troubling aspects of the book. Some of the commenters on my review seemed surprised and hadn’t remembered some of the aspects of magic in the story. And I think I would have downplayed it as just a generalization of an unnamed “something” in the world if I had not read of the author’s background – then I saw all sorts of red flags. But I think it can be taken as just a charming story, the first steps of faith, as you mentioned, among children who had had no other background and teaching. But I’d disagree with how far L’Engle takes it as well.

    I agree also that there’s a degree of truth in the “positive thinking” aspects, though not as much as Christian Science and other people who emphasize that would claim. But Colin’s “healing” was less a physical healing as a reversal of all the negative things he had heard all his life about becoming a hunchback and not being strong and maybe dying, and then not using his muscles normally seemed to reinforce that. We’ve all had the experience of reading about an illness and then feeling like we have the symptoms. I can’t hear anyone even talking about throwing up without feeling nauseated. So learning it was not a foregone conclusion that he was going to die, getting some exercise and fresh air, and getting out of his own head all contributed to his transformation.

    I enjoyed reading your thoughts.

    • Janet

      Thanks Barbara! I really enjoyed having your thoughts and L’Engle’s in mind as I read the story. It’s the closest thing to a book discussion I’ve had in quite awhile.

  • Sherry

    This story reminds me a bit of Johanna Spyri’s Heidi with the cloistered, sickly child who comes alive in a natural healthy environment and the selfishness and sin that is brought out into the open eventually and also healed and redeemed. However, Heidi is unapologetically Christian and also a bit (or a lot depending on your perspective) preachy. The didacticism in Heidi never bothered me as a child or as an adult because I became a Christian myself at a young age, and I recognized the themes that Heidi preached as truth. As far as Secret Garden is concerned, I must have skipped over the “magical thinking” parts as a child when I read it because I didn’t remember anything about that magic circle when I read about it later as an adult.