During the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, Frances Hodgson Burnett stood apart from the astounding writers surfacing in Britain. She was most greatly recognized for the romantic themes that were woven delicately into her enchanting stories and her ability to portray spoiled stubborn children as strong heroic characters, which were greatly inspired by a lonely and sufferable childhood.
“Burnett had an ability to recapture universal aspects of childhood and transform them into realistic stories containing elements of the fantastic or fairytales” (Resler 1). Although she wrote many novels, Burnett’s major works were children’s novels, such as The Secret Garden and A little Princess. In her novel The Secret Garden, Burnett paints young Mary Lennox as a young child who is pushed aside and then abandoned as plague hit her home country. After being transported to her distant uncle’s house in an entirely new country, Mary grows from a selfish stubborn child into a caring and loving young lady. She learns to see the world in a new perspective after turning an abandoned locked-away secret garden into something beautiful and living and thriving.
The transformation and growth inside the garden symbolizes the way Mary grows and matures. It also symbolizes the changes in Mary’s personality in the way that as the garden grows and becomes beautiful and lively, so does her personality. In the beginning, she was nasty and ordinary and mean, but by the end of the book, she is loving and caring and gentle. The changes within the garden also symbolize another character, Colin. Colin is a disease-ridden child who spent his days either in bed or in his wheelchair. That is, until Mary Lennox moved to Miselthwaite Manor. Af...
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...rpenter, Angelica S., ed. N the Garden: Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett. N.P.: Scarecrow, 2006. Print.
“English Literature.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 07 April 2014. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/188217/English-Literature.
“Frances Hodgson Burnett.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 07 April 2014. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/85631/Frances-Hodgson-Burnett.
Resler, Johanna Elizabeth. Sara’s transformation: a textual analysis of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Sara Crewe and a Little Princess. December 2007. MS Department of English: Indiana University.
Thwaite, Ann. Waiting for the Party: The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1849-1924. New York: Scribner, 1974. Print.
On the other hand, the garden itself within The Secret Garden can be classified as a cultivated natural therapeutic landscape. What makes the garden truly remarkable as a therapeutic is its role in Mary’s coming of age, considering that prior to Mary’s exposure to the garden she was raised without an appropriate adult role models but nonetheless reached emotional maturity. In addition, the garden is considered a true therapeutic landscape due to its role in healing not only Mary, but also Colin and Archibald
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000. Print.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton anthology of English literature. 9th ed., A, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. Pp
Jokinen, Anniina. "Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature." Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature. N.p., 1996. Web. 9 Nov. 2013. http://www.luminarium.org/
...cultivating the garden lets the group of characters keep away from the unfair world in which pessimism is present, while cause and effect are easily measurable in the garden.
Weldon, Fay. From Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen. Taplinger Publishing Co. Inc, 1984 in Readings on Jane Austen. Ed. Clarice Swisher.
The first images of the garden are seen through the exaggerated imagination of a young child. “” are as “ as flowers on Mars,” and cockscombs “ the deep red fringe of theater curtains.” Fr...
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979)
In Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden nature and its fantastical elements are crucial in making their novels the iconic children literary tales they are presently. However due to these fantastical elements both authors criticized for their romanticized view of nature and idealized depictions of childhood within nature. Scholarly critics Jacqueline Rose and Humphrey Carpenter argue that in creating idealistic narrative worlds both authors lose their ability to represent childhood in a realistic way and instead let their works become escape outlets rather than true depictions of childhood. In doing so these books are no longer true children’s literature, but simply ideals born out of an authors
Gertrude Stein is one of the most celebrated authors and patrons of the arts. She encouraged, influenced and aided many literary and artistic figures through her support, investment and writings.
Stillinger, Jack, Deidre Lynch, Stephen Greenblatt, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D. New York, N.Y: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print.
Abrams, M.H. and Greenblatt, Stephen eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Seventh Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001.
Innocence is something always expected to be lost sooner or later in life, an inevitable event that comes of growing up and realizing the world for what it truly is. Alice Walker’s “The Flowers” portrays an event in which a ten year old girl’s loss of innocence after unveiling a relatively shocking towards the end of the story. Set in post-Civil War America, the literary piece holds very particular fragments of imagery and symbolism that describe the ultimate maturing of Myop, the young female protagonist of the story. In “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, the literary elements of imagery, symbolism, and setting “The Flowers” help to set up a reasonably surprising unveiling of the gruesome ending, as well as to convey the theme of how innocence disappears as a result of facing the harsh reality of this world.
Moss, Mary. “The Novels of Thomas Hardy.” Atlantic Monthly 98 (Sept. 1906): 354-367. Rpt. in Twentieth Century Literary. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 143. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 April 2014.
Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, eds. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 3. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1977.