The secret garden -

English Literature I
Suelen Sandrin

The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett

The secret garden was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett and published in 1911. It is considered Burnett’s most popular novel and a classic in English children’s literature.
It tells us the story of Mary Lennox, a rude, spoiled and disagreeable looking child who is unwanted by her parents and raised by servants. Mary is the only survivor of a terrible cholera which desolates her village in India. Alone, she is sent to live with her uncle in Yorkshire, England. There, she finds a different environment from the one she was used to see in India. The moor, scrubby and gray, and the huge manor where now she lives dislike Mary at first, but after a while she starts amusing herself with the help of her maidservant, Martha Sowerby. Martha tells Mary stories about a secret garden which once belonged to her aunt, Mrs. Craven, who was killed and that after her death Mr. Craven buried the key of the garden and nobody knew where it was. Mary becomes interested in the story and starts looking for the garden.
Whereas playing with the new rope she received by Martha, she meets Dickon, a magic boy, good natured, who talks to animals. Besides Dickon, she spends her time with the gardener and with a robin redbreast, a bird to which she attributes human qualities and helps her to discover where the key for the secret garden is. Mary finds the garden and after a while, reluctantly, tells Dickon where it is. They both start working hard on making the roses and the plants live again. Bit by bit, Mary’s mood and appetite improves and she gets fatter and happier: certain things do not bother her anymore.
Back to the house, Mary hears strange crying sounds at night. Intrigued, she goes looking for it and meets Colin, a boy her age, who looks sick and bad tempered. She discovers they are cousins and spends with him the spare time she has at house, mainly telling stories about the outside world,