Secret Garden (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

controlled space of the garden. As Dickon observes, the secret garden is not all “clipped an’ spick an’ span” (p. 87); there is plenty of room for “runnin’ wild an’ swingin’ an’ catchin’ hold of each other” (p. 87). But nature’s exuberance is disciplined by weeding and pruning, and contained within walls. Colin and Mary learn about planting and “nest-buildin’ ” (p. 126) as a prelude to healthy adult sexuality, but they must also be trained in restraint and decorum in order to take their places in upper-class society.
    In view of her progressive ideas about education and her openness to alternative medicine and new forms of spirituality, Burnett is surprisingly conservative in her representation of social class. Like the moorland breezes that carry the scent of gorse and heather into the secret garden, Dickon is an ambassador from a simpler, less civilized, and more openly sensual world. His unselfconscious friendliness seems at first to transcend class boundaries. As Mr. Roach, the head gardener, observes, “He’d be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a coal mine” (p. 159). But it is only in the enchanted space of the garden that Colin and Mary can meet with Dickon in full equality, and even there, through references to the invalid boy as a king or rajah, we are subtly reminded of Colin’s future position as the owner of Misselthwaite Manor and Dickon’s employer. As the novel progresses, it is Colin who increasingly becomes the main focus of both Mary’s and the narrator’s attention. A true product of the industrial age, Colin goes beyond Dickon’s simple acceptance of the magical healing power of nature, thinking instead of ways to harness and employ it: “I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us—like electricity and horses and steam” (p. 184). Unlike Dickon, who lives in a timeless present, he plans a future as a scientist and athlete in the world beyond Misselthwaite. In the final chapter, Colin, followed by Mary, runs out of the garden and into his father’s arms, leaving Dickon behind.
    One of the most striking features of The Secret Garden, and one that lies at the heart of its lasting appeal, is the extraordinary contrast between the psychological realism of the development of the two central characters and the fairy-tale setting in which they appear. While Mary and Colin are convincing and recognizable portraits of spoiled and troubled children, the characters that surround them appear to be drawn from nineteenth-century romance and fantasy. Dickon is a highly idealized figure, at once both a “common moor boy, in patched clothes and with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head” (p. 80) and a “Yorkshire angel” (p. 146), a version of Pan or the Green Man, complete with his pipe and animal familiars. As much as the roses and the robin, he is a part of the magic of the secret garden. Similarly, his mother, Susan Sowerby, is both an overworked peasant woman and a Pre-Raphaelite Madonna:
    With the ivy behind her, the sunlight drifting through the trees and dappling her long blue cloak, and her nice fresh face smiling across the greenery she was rather like a softly colored illustration in one of Colin’s books (p. 210).
    Other minor characters, such as Mrs. Medlock, the sour and secretive housekeeper, and Colin’s father, the misanthropic Archibald Craven, would be at home in the Gothic stories of Edgar Allan Poe. The Craven’s family home, Misselthwaite Manor, is furnished with all the requisites of Gothic gloom: tapestry-covered walls, suits of armor, family portraits, hidden corridors, and deserted chambers.
    In atmosphere and setting, The Secret Garden owes much to the Victorian romantic novels that Burnett devoured as a child. In particular, the novel has an obvious debt to the writings of the Brontë sisters: Burnett’s friend Ella Hepworth Dixon described it “a sort of