On the death of her parents, Mary is sent to live with her reclusive uncle Archibald Craven at Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire. The Ayah tasked with caring for Mary and the other “native servants … always obeyed Mary and gave her her own way in everything.” She makes futile attempts at gardening, planting hibiscus blossoms into mounds of earth. Mary is “disagreeable”, “contrary”, “selfish” and “cross”. hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Burnett depicts India as a site of permissive behaviour, illness and lassitude: The book opens as nine-year-old Mary Lennox is discovered abandoned in an Indian bungalow following her parents’ deaths during a cholera outbreak.
#THE SECRET GARDEN STORY BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT MOVIE#
A scene from the new movie version of the book.
A new film, from the makers of Harry Potter and Paddington starring Colin Firth, Dixie Egerickx and Amir Wilson, updates the story in some ways for modern audiences. The Secret Garden has been read by generations, remains a fixture on children’s publishing lists today and has inspired several film versions. It also reveals anxieties about national identity at a time of the British Empire, drawing on ideas of Christian Science. The novel is, in fact, a sensitive and complex story, which explores how a relationship with nature can foster our emotional and physical well-being. In Celebrate, Editors Picks, Inspire, Movie Reviewsįrances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden has been described as “the most significant children’s book of the 20th century.” writes Emma H ayes,įirst published in 1911, after being serialised in The American Magazine, it was dismissed by one critic at the time as simple and lacking “plenty of excitement”.
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