'Representations of Illness and Recovery in ‘the Secret Garden’\r'

'â€Å"seek The secret garden’s confrontation of complaint and retrieval. ” The Secret Garden, written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, is a children’s story that has endu fierce enormous popularity since its publication in 1911. The brisk piths round a young and l peerlessly protagonist, bloody shame Lennox. bloody shame’s journeys in The Secret Garden- close to(prenominal)(prenominal) physical and spiritual- check been followed by child readers and untold remembered languish into adulthood.The text communicates to readers themes much(prenominal) as death, sickness, and recovery and it is largely because of this addressing of serious and mosttimes relatable issues that the novel has been considered such a signifi give the bouncet contri saveion to children’s literature. The notions that infirmity and unhappiness of on the whole resistants hatful be ‘ vul fucking buoyised’ by positive cerebration is a precept that runs through the text and is generally attri justed to the authors suffer picture in Christian science.Burnett was known to have give comfort in spirituality and this ‘New prospect’ ideology whilst bargaining with the deaths that occurred in her own disembodied spirit and the resulting depression from them. By exploring the re defendations of unwellness and recovery at heart The Secret Garden readers atomic number 18 able to complete the messages and lessons Burnett as an author was attempting to portray to children. From this, readers commode in addition gain a greater contextual judgment of the kind of society Burnett- and in figure, her subjects- would have existed within.In some(prenominal) works of children’s literature, it is common for p bental figures to each not be present or to be removed from the story in some way, to suspend the child protagonist to have their own ‘ mishap’ without adult supervision. The Secret Garden is an e xample of this, provided what stands apart from other children’s texts is the harshness of the emplacement that bloody shame as a example is immediately faced with. By the end of The Secret Garden’s premiere chapter, both bloody shame’s parents and any servants that provided care for her have been killed by an eructation of cholera.bloody shame Lennox is instantly encircled by death at the beginning of the story, and her sudden physical l sensationliness fitting now draws attention from readers to the fact that bloody shame was very much al peerless and uncared for in the beginning(a) place; as Burnett writes, as soon as in that respect is an outbreak, â€Å"…She was forget by eeryone. Nobody thought of her, nobody wanted her…” . Death and sickness are the themes that open The Secret Garden to readers and in turn give readers the showtime impression that these hemes are what largely define bloody shame Lennox as a protagonist. Be fore bloody shame is taken to jazz with her uncle in Yorkshire, she first stays in India with an English Clergyman and his family. What is raise about where Mary is taken when she must leave her first fundament is that she is besides seen as safe and away from illness when taken into a British setting- even if it is wholly made British by the people she is aliment with.It is decisions kindred this one made by Burnett that affirms to readers that India is seen to her as a ‘sickly’ place; the novel in fact opens with a paragraph stating Mary â€Å"had been natural in India and had always been ill in one way or another. ” It is important to consider that the first outbreak of Cholera is seen in the servants- those who are inhering to India- which is the cause of Mary’s parent’s death. India is frequently suggested to be an un sanitary place, especially in comparison to England, which as The Secret Garden progresses is shown to be the place w here percentage’s wellness improve.This ostensible view of an English writer seeing England as a place of good health, whilst a immaterial place to be somewhere that produces sickness and death, puts forward the question to readers of whether they are universe presented with an accurate perception of settings, or if they are reading the translations of someone who is importantly biased. Understanding this, adult readers should consider if child readers could be electronegatively influenced by the writer’s own opinions.The locked away and hidden garden in Burnett’s The Secret Garden is seen to be the symbolic centre of the novel even before its discovery. It’s first appearance through Martha, who tells Mary after some falter â€Å"One of th’gardens is locked up. No one has been in it for ten years. ” is one that creates the first real closed book of the text, something to occupy Mary’s thoughts while she begins deportment i n Yorkshire and stir curiosity in readers, suggesting to them that there are much secrets to be discovered than just the many shut away and forbidden rooms of the old manor dramatics.Although Burnett claims the garden at Mary’s first sight of it to be â€Å"The sweetest, some mysterious place anyone could imagine”, the first description of the setting is decidedly centred round the fact that all the trees and flowers that were once there seem to no long-term be alive. Like the opening scenes of The Secret Garden, this forward-looking scene is one largely defined by death. The garden has been hidden away and unwanted, much interchangeable Mary herself in the beginning of The Secret Garden, however, the role is different in that pon discovery, someone wishes to care for it. Mary claims â€Å"Is it all a quite dead garden? I wish it wasn’t. ” These words from the protagonist could be seen as a kind of positive organic evolution in reputation; Mary is study to sense of smell compassion for other things. It could be argued that Mary’s wish to look after this garden stems from an inherent desire to ‘get transgress’ herself. Despite Mary’s inte bide in caring for the garden, it is believed to be smellless until Dickon is introduced into the text.Mary confides in him and brings him to the garden, and almost immediately he is able to find traces of life in the other than decaying surroundings, apprisal Mary it is â€Å"as wick as you or me. ” Dickon as a character seems to represent both record and health; Mary finds him surrounded by animals and the author describes him have â€Å"Cheeks as red as poppies”. The way he seems to portray both health and a close bond with nature suggests to readers that Burnett herself sees a strong connotation between butt with nature and good health.Nature is often used passim The Secret Garden to describe healthy traits; The set up at one point cl aims Dickon to be â€Å"as strong as a moor jigger”. Nature even outside of the garden or Moors is seen to be intrinsically linked with being healthy in the text; both Mary and Colin’s wellbeing seems to depend on the changing of the seasons. It is besides when spring arrives that Colin feels strong enough to sit up for breakfast with his cousin, claiming â€Å"I am breathing long breath of fresh air. It makes you strong. ” The two children’s health and progress seem to rely heavily on the matching progress of nature and the seasons outside.Considering this, readers could ask themselves if Burnett has mean this to be because of how she may see nature and health intrinsically linked- the two children must ‘bloom’ with the seasons and the flowers in the garden- or whether it is because she creates two characters so dependant on nature for their happiness. In the lonely, remote manor house with however any other children around to b lack ma rket with, nature and the garden are some of the only things for Mary and Colin to build an attachment to. Colin is a character who is introduced to the text after much mystery; he is the cause of the crying Mary has been hearing every night.His character of the ‘invalid hidden away’ is one that has been seen before in other works of fiction- a notable example to draw parallels to is the character of Bertha in Jane Eyre. Colin and Bertha represent the kind of characters that were created in a â€Å" straitlaced fascination with the â€Å"imaginative potential of disease” . distemper was something that could define a character and make it inte quietusing to readers; a kind of morbid fascination with things that were not yet wholly understood. Being under the weather in the straight-laced period was itself not seen as an entirely negative experience.Diane Price Herndl takes in Invalid Women that â€Å" Invalidism has historically offered women a way . . . to achieve a kind of power when no other means open up up”. This in theory could apply to Colin as a child character. Children, like women in the Victorian period, gained a kind of power from being unwell, as others are forced to attend to them and oblige to them for fearfulness of sickening them further. Certainly, being toughened for being unwell is the only kind of attention that Colin is able contract until later in The Secret Garden.The way Colin is treated for his illness seems to resemble the ‘rest bring to’ treatment, a method that was developed in the 19th century. He is confined to his bed and isolated from other people, told to rest and never over stress himself, isolated from anyone around him. Until Mary meets him, there seems to be no predictable time when he will ’get better’. Colin says to Mary when they first meet â€Å"If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan’t live. ”. Colin has essentially resigned to waiting in his room to die.Whilst Mary as a character strikes readers as having a fierce will to live, and a kind of innate desire to become to a greater extent healthy, at this point in the novel Colin seems to melodic phrase against her in that he does not see himself aliveness past childhood- as he has been told his entire life. However, commit for his improvement is created through the situation that he and Mary are first introduced to each other. Mary meets Colin at a point where she herself is starting to improve in behaviour and become more(prenominal) like a normal, healthy child.She is confused by the way that Colin acts, telling Martha later â€Å"I say he’s a very spoiled boy. ”; scarcely recognising that she herself was not very different to him before she came to Yorkshire. The fact that Mary has found Colin whilst in the process of becoming more healthy herself is encouraging to readers, as if Mary can improve from being a spoilt, ‘sickly’ child , thence it seems likely that Colin is able to as well. In addition, Colin appears in the text as Mary is slowly learning to want to are for things and nurture them, implying that Mary can in turn look after and uphold Colin become more healthy. Colin’s actual state of health in The Secret Garden seems debatable. in that respect is never an assigned name to the illness that keeps him from being mobile, other than being told that he may one day develop a hunchback like his father. His bouts of cold and fever seem to be forthwith related to how hysteric he becomes in his ‘fits’, his failing seemingly due to the fact that he has barely ventured outside of his bedroom during his lifetime.It is Mary who is the first character to dismiss the idea of his ‘sickness’ and in turn his unavoidable premature death, telling him â€Å"There’s nothing the matter with your horrid back- nothing but hysterics! ”. It is almost as if Colin’s own belief in his ill health has been created through the negative beliefs of others, and Mary as a character who is spic-and-span and unfamiliar with these negative presumptions if the only person who can see past them.This concept that Colin is not rattling unwell, but made to think he is and because acts as if he is disabled in some way, seems to align itself with Burnett’s own beliefs in Christian science and New thought ideology. It also suggests to readers at this point in the novel that Colin is a character who can become better; he has willed himself into ill health, so there is no reason wherefore he cannot similarly will himself into becoming more healthy.Despite the authors own apparent perceptions of sickness being establish on Christian Science beliefs- that sickness can be cured through positive thinking- it has been suggested by some that real forms of illness are present in some of the characters in the text. Mary and Colin are seen as neurotic figures; Maryâ €™s stolidity to death and her solitary games have seen her diagnosed as pre-schizoid, whilst Colin’s obsession with his own imaginary hunchback has been seen to menage him as a hysteric.Burnett admits herself that â€Å"Perhaps they were both of them thinking strange things children do not usually think”. She as an author seems to understand that the child characters she has created do not act as normal, healthy children would. though the possibility of Mary and Colin’s mental illnesses are just theories, it brings the question to readers of whether the treatment, or rather lack of treatment, being provided to each child is entirely appropriate. later on all, each child has dealt with a great deal throughout their short lifetimes.Mary has practically witnessed the deaths of all that she first knew, whilst Colin has been confined to one room for his entire life; perhaps most importantly, neither of them have ever had loving parental figures present, so wo uld surely be psychologically affected by this in some way. Modern day readers must consider that treatment of illness was in the time Mary and Colin would have existed in, very different to what is used now- for example, the ‘rest cure’ of enforced confinement and bed rest has since been disgraced as a treatment to any condition.Whilst jobber with nature and other children obviously shows signs of improvement in Colin and Mary’s wellbeing, readers might ask themselves if this would be the case of ‘real’ children in the character’s places, and if by the finishing chapters of The Secret Garden, Mary and Colin can be considered entirely ‘cured’ of their past problems. member count: 2,383 Bibliography * Lawson, Kate, The Victorian Sickroom in L. M. Montgomerys The Blue fortification and Emilys Quest : Sentimental Fiction and the Selling of Dreams, record 31, Number 3, 2007 (http://muse. jhu. edu/login? auth=0&type= sum-up&am p;url=/journals/lion_and_the_unicorn/v031/31. lawson. html) * Gohlke, Madelon, Re-reading The Secret Garden, vol 41 no 8 (JSTOR) * Carpenter, Angelica, In the Garden: Essays in revere of Frances Hodgson Burnett (http://chapters. scarecrowpress. com/08/108/0810852888ch1. pdf) * Hunt, Peter, An introduction to children’s literature, 1994, Oxford University Press * Hodgson Burnett, Frances, The Secret Garden, Puffin Classics, 1911 * (http://www. sciencemuseum. org. uk/broughttolife/techniques/restcure. aspx) (definition of rest cure) ——————————————†[ 1 ]. Gohlke, Madelon, Re-reading The Secret Garden, vol 41 no 8 [ 2 ].\r\n'