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The Secret Grden is a children's literary classic, more popular with girls than boys. There are several film depictions of Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved book, The Secret Garden. They generally follow the plot of the book with various adaptations. British-born Burnett of course is also the authoress of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Thevbook is the story of a little English girl leading an idealic life in India, but after her parents tragically die, returns to England as orphan, taken in by her widowed uncle who has a boy wjo is believed to be in ill health.
It is interesting to speculate if Mrs. Burnett was an American or English author. One of the purposes of this website is to try to see what social trends in different countries can be found by assessing clothing styles. Mrs. Burnettt is difficult to categorize as she was born in England but lived in America. She clearly wrote for an international audience; she crossed the Atlantic numerous times after immigrating to Tennessee as a child. She seems to have remained very British at heart. Little Lord Fauntleroy, of course, was based on her all American son, Vivian. Even so, her book and resulting teatrical production was an enormous success in England suggesting the story appealed to both American and English sensibilities. Some observers appear to categorize her as a clearly American author writing for an American audience. One observer opines, "I think her sentimentilizing of the `poor little rich boy' is more graphic in her Little Lord Fauntleroy. My question is, was she glamorizing the working class/farm boy Dickon and ridiuculing the infantile "lording" of Colin partly because she was an American?"
This is a story about people with troubles. Mary Lomax is unhappy because she was never loved. Colin is sick with a pyschosis phobia that he is ill and deformed and will die. This appears to be a result of adult sadness suffered by his father whose wife has died in tragic cercumstances. The branch holding her garden swing in her beloved Rose garden broke and bashed her on the head. The reason why it was shut up and not opened. The key was thgrown away.
A mixture of troubled people who start out with only thinking of themselves. Dickon and his sister come from a karge working class family with mum and dad. They do not have much material posesions but they have happiness. Dicken gets it from nature. His sister from being a hard working servant girl and little mother.
Into this environment comes Mary Lomax.
A horrible child who loves nobody. Strange things start to happen. The house on the Yorkshire Moors. The forbidden garden. A robin. A bad tempered gardener whose temperment is in tune with Mary's.
The good pour Yorkshire air is magic dust it starts to add colour to Mary's checks. She deveops a love of the out doors. A robin befriends her. Pretty soon it leads her to the garden and to where the key is buried. Once in the Secret garden Mary starts to care for it.
In the meantime Dickon's sister has become Mary's mentor and servent but not in the same sense as her servents in India. She becomes Mary's friend. It is her who tells Mary of Dicken. He helps her buy seeds and gardening tools. Eventually Dicken becomes Mary's helper in the garden.
Mary discovers Colin. He is her sick cousin. She is the one who tells him he is not dying and once he gets outside in the fresh Yorkshire pour air starts to develop a spirit. He has a bad temper and headaches and all sorts of conditions brought on himself because he is not loved in the right way. Now with Yorkshire's pour air. The heathy moorland and working in the secret garden restores the lad to heath. I think he falls in love with Mary but this is more in the film than the novel. Mary and Dicken help Colin to learn to walk. This is the biggest point about thinking of others and being friends. Giving love adds to the strengh Colin needs to fight 11years of thinking he is ill. Well he walks and Joyfully awaits the day when his father comes home to see him a normal heathly Yorkshire lad ful of life and strength from the good Yorkshire air.
The authoress was born in Manchester which is in Lancashire and being a Lancashire person who went to America and made her own secret garden on a rubbish tip clouded her judgement about the purity of Yorkshire air. Any Lancashire person woukld know that the Lancashire countryside and its healthy air is better for health and happiness than that which blows over the Eastern lands known as Yorkshire.
The point of the story is that love is necessary for happiness.
There are several film depictions of Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved book, The Secret Garden. They generally follow the plot of the book with various adaptations. British-born Burnett of course is also the authoress of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Thevbook is the story of a little English girl leading an idealic life in India, but after her parents tragically die, returns to England as orphan, taken in by her widowed uncle who has a boy wjo is believed to be in ill health. Colin's clothes change in the various film productions.
Frances Hodgson Burnett novel about an orphaned English girl and her experience in an English manor house where her uncle's sickly son (Colin) is dyeing. A spoiled little snob when she arrives, Mary masks her loneliness with bad temper. Then she discovers an abandoned, neglected garden and poor Colin. The two are transformed with the help of a gardener boy, Dickon. Reportedly a nice, but rather conventional presentation of the book. I haven't seen this version, but would like to as Colin is played by Dean Stockwell and Mary by Margaret O'Brien.
Another version, I'm not sure about the costuming.
Well-done new version of the Burnett classic. The film has a dream-like quality not found in the 1949 version. Girls will like it much better than boys. The costumes, however, is not very imaginative. Colin (Heydon Prowse) and Dickon (Andrew Knott) appears in rather ordinary knickers. I'm not sure to what extent Burnett describes the clothing in this book. Portions of the film are quite lovely. There is a strict housekeeper who tries to protect the repressed status quo. A reader writes, "It's a beautiful version of "The secret garden" with good acting, wonderful
scenery and music. Highly recommended in my opinion)."
A British reader tells us, "I read a criticism of this book recently. The author speculated that Dicken would have died in World War I and Colin would have survived and married Mary. Another story parady's this idea. Both Dicken and Colin survive world war I and enjoy a threesome relationship. I think the parady's relate to a a film which is a sequal to the Secret Garden. A Hallmark film made for the TV channel of the same name. The film "Back to the Secret Garden"."
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