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The Secret Garden The Romantic child C20th Romanticism The New Thought beautiful thought (FHB) The leaders in this faith have had an intuitive belief in the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes as such, in the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervously precautionary states of mind (William James, Varieties of Religious Experience) One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughtsjust mere thoughtsare as powerful as electric batteriesas good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live. o Mind over matter Comic structure: disorder order; death and disease life and health Sick children When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. [B]y the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. Parental neglect: Her father had held a position in the English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to tea parties and amuse herself with gay people. Family values: family symbolizes state; domestic disorder social disorder God, king, squire, husband/father Colin is heir to Misselthwaite Manor Disorder is physically manifested; a symptom, not the problem Anglo-India and (anti?)colonial discourse Colonial ideology: English civilization vs. Indian tyranny Tyrannical children: the servants always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying Lack of human sympathy Tyrannical child cf. colonial stereotype of Indian despotism Colin = A young Rajah o Once in India I saw a boy who was a Rajah. He spoke to his people just as you spoke to Martha. Everybody had to do everything he told them in a minute. I think they would have been killed if they hadnt.

Imperial context suggests growing up is a matter of becoming proper English girl and boy. Colins illness Half that ails you is hysterics and temperjust hystericshystericshysterics If he had ever had any one to talk to about his secret terrorsif he had ever dared to let himself ask questionsif he had had childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge closed house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people who were most of them ignorant and tired of him, he would have found out that most of his fright and illness was created by himself. But he had lain and thought of himself and his aches and weariness for hours and days and months and years. Cf. Christian Science: Disease is mental not material. Mortals think sickly thoughts and become sick. The so-called laws of matter, and of medical science, have never made mortals whole. Truth casts out evil and heals the sick (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, 1875) Hysteria is gendered (disorder of the womb) Colin in bed is like the hysterical Victorian woman Marys Anglicization In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything. The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a little. =Orientalist geopolitics But note other positive associations with India (mystic Orientalism is part of Magic)

Nature and Gardens Marys Romantic education: Let her run wild in the garden. She needs liberty and fresh air and romping about. Cf. Colin:Do you think he will die? asked Mary. Mother says theres no reason why any child should live that gets no fresh air an doesnt do nothin but lie on his back an read picture-books an take medicine. Nature = cultural concept Romantic nature is benign; antithesis to chains of culture; identified with children; teaches social harmony Garden = cultivated nature Garden of Eden Rousseau (in Emile): the child should be given a garden to cultivate; the child is a young plant to be carefully tended Friederich Froebels kindergarten

o education is a leading out of nature under the skill of an intelligent gardener (System of Infant Gardens, 1855) She worked and dug and pulled up weeds steadily, only becoming more pleased with her work every hour instead of tiring of it. It seemed to her like a fascinating sort of play Secret Gardens The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. As each day passed, Colin had become more and more fixed in his feeling that the mystery surrounding the garden was one of its greatest charms. Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever suspect that they had a secret. Fairy-tale elements It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite. Bluebeard and/or Sleeping Beauty? Bluebeard? o Gothic locked rooms, cries in the night o It sounded like something in a book o Echoes of Jane Eyre o Gothic house vs. liberating garden o Value of curiosity Sleeping Beauty o Language of awakening o Gender: Colin and Mr Craven Gardening = nurturing; identified with mothering Mrs. Cravens garden maybe shes about Misselthwaite many a time lookin after Mester Colin, same as all mothers do when theyre took out o th world. They have to come back, tha sees. Happen shes been in the garden an happen it was her set us to work, an told us to bring him here. Hortus Conclusus (enclosed garden) ; motif in Renaissance art o sealed womb/ Immaculate Conception Dickon = Idealized Romantic Child there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him almost as if he were made of them

A boy was sitting under a tree, with his back against it, playing on a rough wooden pipe. And on the trunk of the tree he leaned against, a brown squirrel was clinging an watching him, and from behind a bush nearby a cock pheasant was delicately stretching his neck to peep out, and quite near him were two rabbits sitting up and sniffing with tremulous noses--and actually it appeared as if they were all drawing near to watch him and listen to the strange low little call his pipe seemed to make o Pan: Greek god of the woods Nurturing Moor + garden (ct. Mary) Sowerbys: idealized relationship with nature o Romanticized class politics o shes that sensible an hard workin an good-natured an clean that no one could help likin her whether theyd seen her or not o Dialect; orality Ending: Does it undercut Marys story? Garden heals; garden rejuvenates male ruling class? Lower-class boy + girl to cement position of position of upper-class boy? When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor Master Colin!