The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden is often seen as a story about girls’ and boys’ gender roles, which are beliefs about the activities, behavior, and feelings that boys or girls should have. Most stories for girls at the time the book was written idolized good, kind, and loving girls who sacrificed themselves to care for other people, such as  Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggins and Pollyanna by Ellen H Porter. In both those stories, orphaned or unwanted girls were sent to live with disagreeable relatives, but Rebecca and Pollyanna were both so good and kind and happy that they transformed the unhappy people around them. On the other hand, Mary is angry, assertive, selfish, and insensitive to other people’s feelings. She has never learned to sit quietly and read or knit or sew, which are the kinds of things girls were expected to enjoy.

When the story was written, one of the common stereotypes or beliefs about women was that women—especially upper-class women—were frail and frequently ill. However, all the women in The Secret Garden are physically and emotionally strong. Most of the men, on the other hand, are weak and sickly. For example, all the reader knows about Mary’s father is that he was sickly. Colin’s father is described as a “hunchback,” and Colin is believed by himself and everyone around him to be too feeble to grow up. Mary and Colin show the different ways in which the author disapproves of female stereotypes; Colin’s weakness and frailty are unattractive and unmanly, while Mary—though she is not a very pleasant person to begin with—is much stronger and more interesting than the ideal little girls in other stories.

Mary begins to teach Colin how to be more traditionally masculine. First, she shouts at him for becoming hysterical over his imagined illness. She refuses to submit to his threats and manipulation. By standing up to Colin, Mary teaches him when and how to assert himself. He can’t get what he wants from her by screaming, crying, or threatening, so he must learn to control himself. Colin starts to take on a more active personality by literally standing on his own two feet. By having Mary be the one to teach Colin to be more “masculine,” Burnett suggests that traits seen as “feminine” or “masculine” are really just traits that everyone needs to have.

Dickon shows the balance between the traits considered “feminine” and “masculine.” He is physically strong, emotionally independent, and confident in himself—traits considered masculine. However, he is also gentle and nurturing. He surrounds himself with baby animals that he feeds and raises like his own children. Although those are traits associated with women, they don’t make Dickon seem any less masculine. Mary and Colin show that the traits that make up a well-balanced and happy person are the same for both boys and girls.