The Secret Garden

Mary has always been drawn to gardens when she felt troubled. When cholera first struck her home in India, and she had no one to look after her, she played in the garden, putting flowers in piles of dirt. She also tried to make little gardens when she stayed with the missionary family before being sent back to England. Those gardens didn’t grow because Mary didn’t know how to plant them properly. Only here at Misselthwaite Manor has she finally begun to learn how to make life grow both in the ground and in herself.

When Mary tells Dickon about the garden, she describes it as unloved, unwanted, and dying because one cares for it. Her tears reveal she is not just talking about the garden but also about herself. This is the first time Mary has expressed out loud that she feels she is dying from a lack of love. Because Mary identifies with the garden, resurrecting it is a way of resurrecting herself.

When Mary asks Dickon whether there are flowers shaped like bells, she is defying the people who tried to shame her into being the kind of person they thought she should be. Instead, she embraces the contrary part of herself. She can do this because she has discovered she likes Ben, even though he is as contrary as she is. In many ways, her contrariness gives her strength. Being contrary gives her determination, stubbornness, and a refusal to let other people push her around. Those qualities become especially important when she meets Colin and stands up to him to keep him from bossing her around and dominating her.

When Mary thinks that Dickon seems like a wood fairy, she recognizes that he symbolizes nature’s spirit. When she first sees him, he plays on a wooden pipe surrounded by wild animals listening to him play. In that scene, he is like the nature god Pan, who plays the pipes and watches over small animals. Dickon’s physical description is also similar to that of the sprite Puck, another nature spirit with a turned-up nose, round face, and curly red hair. Dickon’s similarity to those nature spirits fits perfectly with his ability to speak to and understand animals and make plants grow.

Dickon describes Mary as being like a missel thrush with a nest, which indicates that he regards her as one of his wild things that needs protection. He is the first person Mary has met who thinks she is important. All the new people in Mary’s life see something different in her, and they are all correct. Ben sees his crotchety nature in her. Martha sees her as a little sister to be looked after and taught to look after herself. Dickon is the only one who sees the small, precious, fragile growing thing, and he is the one who will help that part of her grow into something deep and powerful.

Work is an important idea in these chapters. First, Martha is excited to go home and work alongside her mother on her day off. Because those tasks are important to her, she enjoys doing them, especially at home, surrounded by people she loves. Mary is learning that she also enjoys working when doing something meaningful.

Upon meeting Mr. Craven, Mary finds that the description of his supposedly hunched back has been exaggerated. People speak of him as physically “crippled,” but because Mary understands sadness, she can see that his trouble is in his heart, not his back. Like the garden, Mr. Craven is not completely dead inside. He only needs a little care to bring him back to life.

In a different story, if Mary were a different kind of little girl, she would restore him just by being good and sweet. However, Mary is not that kind of little girl, and in real life, just being good and sweet rarely makes other people better. Only when Mary has restored the garden will the spirit of Colin’s mother be strong enough to heal Mr. Craven’s heart. Mary plants the first seed by reminding Mr. Craven of his wife, who loved gardens. He doesn’t say so, but Mary probably looks like her aunt. Lilias was Mary’s father’s sister, so there would naturally be a resemblance.

Mary hasn’t been completely honest with Mr. Craven. If he knew she was talking about his wife’s garden, he would forbid her to take it, so she doesn’t tell him what she has in mind, much less that she has already begun. However, because Mary reminds him of his lost wife, he speaks the words he would have said to Lilias: “When you see a bit of earth you want, take it” (77). Mr. Craven is talking about Mary choosing a place on the manor grounds for a garden, but his words could also be seen as advice to Mary about life in general: Don’t be afraid to carve out a place for yourself in the world.