The Secret Garden

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1910

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-18

Chapters 19-21

Chapters 22-24

Chapters 25-27

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 25-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 25 Summary

The first part of Chapter 25 is an account of the children’s activities from the point of view of the robin and his mate, who are caring for a nest of eggs. The robin is puzzled by the children’s activities—especially Colin, who does not seem to be able to walk very far without sitting down to rest. Then the robin remembers when he was learning to fly and could only go short distances before resting. He explains to his mate that their eggs will probably behave the same way when they learn to fly. However, he assures her the eggs will not do anything like the strange flapping and bending exercises the children do every morning under the plum tree.

On rainy days, when they cannot go into the garden, Mary and Colin explore the house. Mary notices that Colin has opened the curtain that hung over his mother’s portrait. He tells her it no longer makes him angry to see her laughing; he now feels that she is laughing because she is happy he is there. He thinks she might have been a magic person.

Mary remarks that he looks so much like his mother that she sometimes thinks he is “her ghost made into a boy” (174). Colin wonders whether, if that were true, it would make his father love him.

Chapter 26 Summary

One morning, as they work in the garden, digging and weeding, Colin straightens up suddenly, and the other two stop to look at him. A rush of belief and realization pours through him, and he announces, “I am well” (176). Colin wants to mark the moment somehow, and Ben suggests singing the doxology. Colin doesn’t know it, so Dickon sings: Praise God from whom all blessings flow, / Praise Him all creatures here below, / Praise Him above ye heavenly host, / Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Just as they finish the song a second time, the door in the garden wall opens, and a woman enters, wearing a blue cloak. She stands and listens, framed by the ivy-covered wall. Her affectionate eyes seem to take in everything.

“It’s mother,” Dickon cries, and he runs toward her. Mrs. Sowerby walks with them around the garden, tells them the story of every bush and tree, and gives them a warm feeling. She seems to understand the children in the same way that Dickon understands his animal friends, and she speaks to the flowers as if they also were children.

Colin asks if she believes in magic. She replies that she doesn’t know it by that name, but it has many different names. It doesn’t care what people call it; it just goes on making worlds and making joy. Before she leaves, Colin catches her cloak and tells her she is just what he wanted and wishes she were his mother. She takes him in her arms and tells him, “Thy own mother’s in this ‘ere very garden” (182).

Chapter 27 Summary

The author explains how the “science” of magic works: thoughts are as powerful as electricity and as good or bad as sunlight or poison. A sad thought can make you ill, and a happy thought can make you well.

While the garden and the children are coming alive, Archibald is traveling in Norway and Switzerland. His mind has been full of dark thoughts for 10 years, and he hasn’t dared to replace them with happier ones. One day, he sits beside a stream, looking at blue forget-me-nots. As he contemplates the beauty of the color, he suddenly realizes that he feels almost as if he were alive. At that very moment, thousands of miles away, Colin enters the secret garden for the first time and cries out, “I am going to live forever and ever and ever!” (184).

Over the summer, as the garden grows and Colin grows stronger, Archibald finds himself coming alive as well. One day, seated by the edge of a peaceful blue lake, he drifts off to sleep and dreams that he hears his wife’s voice calling his name. In the dream, he leaps to his feet and asks where she is, and she answers, “In the garden.”

When he wakes, a servant brings him a letter from Susan Sowerby, telling him that he should come home and that his wife would ask him to come if she could. He leaves for England at once. When he arrives at the Manor, Mrs. Medlock tells him Colin is in the garden, and Mr. Craven remembers his wife’s voice saying, “In the garden.”

On his journey home, Mr. Craven wonders if it is too late for him to be a father to his son, whom he remembers as weak of both mind and body. Approaching his wife’s walled garden, he hears the children's laughter, and just as he reaches the door, it flies open, and Colin hurtles into his arms. Colin has just won a race with Mary and Dickon. Colin recovers from his surprise and straightens himself, saying, “Father, I’m Colin.” He sounds so normal and healthy that Mr. Craven trembles with disbelief and joy.

Autumn has reached the garden, and the late-season lilies bloom everywhere, turning the garden into a temple of gold. Sitting down under the plum tree, Mr. Craven listens and laughs as Colin tells the whole story. Colin concludes by announcing that he will never use the wheeled chair again. He and his father walk back to the house together with the servants staring, astonished, from the windows.

Chapters 25-27 Analysis

The account of the children’s activities from the robin’s point of view is an example of personification. The author describes the thoughts and feelings of the robin as if it were a person. The all-encompassing importance of eggs reflects the importance that Mrs. Sowerby sees in the children’s need to grow and mature. She recognizes that everything else in the world is secondary to that need.

The color blue represents divinity because it is the color of the sky, and the sky is associated with heaven. Artists traditionally painted Mary—the mother of Jesus—wearing a blue cloak to signify her holiness, so when Mrs. Sowerby appears in the garden wearing a blue cloak, the author means for the reader to recognize her as the embodiment of the mother goddess—not just Mary, the mother of Jesus but also Mother Nature or the Earth Mother. The children feel her motherliness and believe she understands them as no other adult does. In her fairy godmother role, Mrs. Sowerby writes to Archibald, telling him it is time to come home, and her letter’s arrival coincides with Lilias’s spirit calling out to him from the garden.

Classical mythology often divides the Mother goddess into three people or aspects: the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. With Mrs. Sowerby’s arrival, all three aspects of the goddess are in the garden at once. Mary is the young goddess (the Maiden); Mrs. Sowerby is the Mother; the spirit of Lilias represents the Crone—who signifies death as a natural part of the cycle of life. Because they are three aspects of one goddess, their roles sometimes overlap throughout the story. For example, Lilias is present in the garden, which represents life, although she also represented death when she stood watch over her son in the underworld. Mary, the Maiden, also acts as a mother to Colin, guiding him out of the underworld and into the garden.

As Mrs. Sowerby departs, Colin tells her she is the mother he always wanted. She replies that his mother is there in the garden. She has no similar interaction with Mary, although Mary is also an orphan. Mary, however, feels no need for a mother. She is already a manifestation of the Mother Goddess.

The heavenly nature of the color blue reappears in Chapter 27. Archibald is always contemplating something blue when he is at his closest connection to what is happening in the garden. He is looking at blue forget-me-nots when he feels Colin enter the garden and dreaming beside a blue lake when he hears Lilias calling to him. The lilies in full bloom when Mr. Craven arrives in the garden are a reference to Colin’s mother. Her spirit is at its greatest strength now that the garden has reached the height of fertility.

Colin is largely motivated to heal himself by his desire to win his father’s love. His desire is misguided. The weakness is in his father, not in Colin. Mr. Craven has not been able or willing to be the father Colin needed. On his journey home, Mr. Craven finally faces his failure and contemplates whether there is still time for him to make up for his weakness. He arrives home to find that Colin has healed himself. Mr. Craven has been rescued from his own weakness. In effect, Colin has become an adult in his father’s absence, and they return to the Manor side-by-side as equals.