Imagination Analysis: The Secret Garden

“The Secret Garden” is full of wish fulfillment. The book makes you want to go live on the moor in a big, empty house, and plant a garden and watch it grow. The style in which it’s written invites you to imagine wide open skies and rich black earth. The story is about the way we can use our imaginations to bring about real change for the better.

Mary Lennox does not appreciate the beauty of the countryside when she moves to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her reclusive uncle. She hates the rain and the wilderness, and is a generally unhappy and unpleasant person. Colin Craven, her invalid cousin, also hates the outdoors. Both of them are used to getting their own way, and are not used to caring about people or having others care about them.  Then they find a way into Colin’s mother’s garden, which has been shut up for ten years, and when they bring it back to life they learn and grow and live for the first time.

Imagination is the key to the characters’ transformation. This story has very little mystical element. There are no dragons or fairies or anything that we normally think of when we consider imagination. Instead, the imagination in this story is much more subtle.

As soon as Mary hears that there’s a locked-up garden on her uncle’s property, she knows she absolutely has to find a way in. She imagines finding it and having it all to herself. She wants desperately to see what it looks like and hopes that there are still things alive in it. She eventually finds her way into the garden, through a few strange coincidences. The key to the garden had been buried, but a dog had just dug it up and Mary found it on the ground. Then a robin shows her the way to the door. It seems unlikely that this would really happen, but it gives a sense of magic to the story. It’s as if Mary was either meant to find the door. If it weren’t for her curiosity, and her imagination, she wouldn’t have been looking for the key, and she would never have found the door.

Colin has a similar reaction to hearing about the garden. He changes almost instantly from being bored and miserable to being fascinated. He has never wanted to see anything out of doors in his life, but now he wants to see this garden, because it’s a secret and because it belonged to his mother. Shortly after he starts going to the garden, he learns to walk, and regains his health. He insists that he was healed by the magic of the garden, and the magic of positive thinking.

The garden itself is probably not extraordinary. It must be a very pretty place, but it’s just a whole lot of pretty rosebushes and flower beds. But because Mary and Colin imagine it to be a magical place, it becomes one.  Colin decides that there is magic at work, and that he is being made well by the magic. The book implies that the magic is the power of positive thinking, but I think the real magic at work is the magic of imagination. Neither child would have come out of their shell if they hadn’t been captivated by the idea of growing a secret garden.