Read The Secret Garden

Read online The Secret Garden.pdf PDF, EPUB, MOBI, TXT, DOC The Secret Garden I love children’s books that don’t underestimate children. I confess that I didn’t read many children’s books when I was a child myself, because a lot of the stuff I could get my hands on seemed asinine and too easy. There is an entire collection of lovely books published by the Courte Échelle publishing house that my mother bought me: they all took me a couple of hours to read at the most and then I never touched them again. I went and stole books for her shelves instead, which may or may not have been a good thing…I only started getting interested in children’s books in my late twenties. Weird, huh? I had seen the Merchant-Ivory movie adaptation of “The Secret Garden” when I was a teen, and while I would have never admitted it then, I was fascinated by it. Not to get into details, but the themes of abandonment and parents who are emotionally unavailable that we see time and times again in British children literature hit awfully close to home. Watching “The Secret Garden” was the movie equivalent of cutting: it hurt, but I needed it to hurt. I eventually worked up the courage to get a copy of the book.Of course it is predictable. Of course the characters of Mary and Colin are spoiled little brats – aristocratic British kids, for god’s sake! Of course the resolution is healing. Of course the morals of the story (love is important, nature should be cared for, working on one’s self will make us better people) are big no-brainers. But the writing is so beautiful and evocative. I felt for the children, I could taste their anger and their loneliness. I knew why they were mean and bossy. They were cold because they had never known warmth. And enters the metaphor of the garden.When Mary first steps into the garden, she is afraid it is dead because there are no leaves or blooms. She soon realizes that with a little care and the change of season, it can be just as glorious and lush as it was in her aunt’s days. It is very, very obvious that the garden is Mary’s heart: not really dead, but in serious need of caring. And if someone who knows how to pull the weeds to make room for the flowers can make the garden beautiful again, a heart can be mended and a person can be made whole and happy again. Once the garden is alive again, she brings Colin in and he eventually gets better too.“The Secret Garden” made me smile and cry, and it inspired me to work on myself, to make peace with a lot of bad things and to use these bad things as a base from which I could grow to be a stronger and happier person. It helped me get out of my shell, and let my colors shine brighter than they ever had before. I am not sure that Frances Hodgson Burnett meant for her novel to be a lifeline to a lonely girl in Canada, over a hundred years after she wrote it, but I am very grateful for this gorgeous book. I recommend it to everyone. by Frances Hodgson Burnett