Editors Reads Verdict
The Secret Garden is one of the great children's novels in the English language — a story about transformation, the healing power of nature and work, and the capacity of a neglected child to become something remarkable.
What We Loved
- Mary Lennox is one of literature's great anti-heroines — difficult, selfish, and utterly compelling
- The Yorkshire moor setting is rendered with genuine sensory richness
- The transformation arc is handled with unusual psychological honesty
- The novel's themes — neglect, healing, the restorative power of nature — feel completely contemporary
Minor Drawbacks
- Some contemporary readers find the colonial attitudes in early chapters difficult
- The focus shifts from Mary to Colin in the final third in ways some readers find disappointing
- The quasi-mystical elements of 'Magic' may feel dated
Key Takeaways
- → Neglected children become difficult children — but difficulty can be transformed by care and engagement
- → Physical work in the natural world has psychological benefits that Burnett anticipated a century before research confirmed it
- → The secret garden is both a literal place and a symbol for the locked parts of the self
- → Transformation requires the right environment as much as the right will
- → Burnett was writing about mental health — Colin's invalidism is psychosomatic — with unusual sophistication for 1911
| Author | Frances Hodgson Burnett |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Puffin Classics |
| Pages | 336 |
| Published | January 1, 1911 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction, Classic, Children's Literature |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | Readers of all ages — particularly adults revisiting a childhood favourite and finding new depths, and anyone interested in transformation narratives and the psychology of neglect. |
The Most Difficult Heroine
Mary Lennox is not a likeable child when we first meet her. Spoiled, imperious, self-centred, and completely alone — her parents have died in a cholera epidemic in India, and she is sent to live with her reclusive uncle in a vast, mostly empty manor on the Yorkshire moors. She doesn’t know how to do anything, doesn’t know how to play, and doesn’t particularly want to know how to be kind.
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s decision to begin with such an unattractive protagonist is one of the most psychologically astute choices in children’s literature. Mary’s transformation is not from good to better but from genuinely unpleasant to genuinely alive — and we understand exactly why she was the way she was when we first met her.
The Garden
When Mary discovers the locked door in the garden wall, and the key, and the garden itself — overgrown, neglected, but alive — the novel finds its central symbol. The secret garden is both a real place and a representation of everything that has been locked up and left untended: in Mary, in her invalid cousin Colin, and in Archibald Craven, the bereaved and absent uncle.
Burnett’s treatment of the garden’s restoration is genuinely practical — she clearly knew about horticulture — and the physical work of digging and planting is never romanticised. It is effortful, directed, and healing precisely because it requires attention to something outside the self.
The Psychology Beneath the Story
The novel’s most striking aspect, read in the twenty-first century, is how clearly Burnett is writing about what we would now call depression, psychosomatic illness, and the effects of neglect on child development. Colin believes he is ill and is becoming more so. What cures him is not medicine but engagement, fresh air, work, and being taken seriously.
Our rating: 4.4/5 — A classic that gets deeper with every re-reading: psychologically astute, beautifully observed, and genuinely transformative.
Ready to Read The Secret Garden?
Check the current price on Amazon.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)Prices and availability are subject to change. See Amazon for current price.
Review last updated: