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The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett Essay examples

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The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden, written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, was first published in 1910, tells a unique story about a 10 year old little girl Mary Lennox. The story goes through the transformation of main character Mary, Colin and the locked secret garden. Burnett uses many symbols during the process of these transformations. The power of nature is also presented as a magic in the story. The novel uses symbols to present different motifs like parallel lives of Mary and Colin, magic and secret.

The character Mary and Colin both have parallel lives. Both of the characters have many similarities: they are both ten years old,; they have both passed sickly, neglected childhoods and both have been …show more content…

But after meeting Mary, he becomes so full of yearning to be in the secret garden and his body slowly starts to heal. He becomes more cheerful, starts eating more and learns to walk.

The story of “The secret garden” is also full of magic. The first magic in the story is the growth of the secret garden. The locked secret garden is totally dead in the beginning. But when Mary starts planting flowers over there then the growth of garden seems like a magic. Author explain garden growth by saying that “it seemed as if Magicians were passing through it drawing loveliness out of the earth and the boughs with wands”(Burnett 51). Through the transformation of the secret garden Burnett presents the magic of nature. Colin who is very fragile and can’t walk. Everyone thinks he won’t live to grow up. But when he goes out into the secret garden. He feels transformation in his body and he learns to walk and starts to live like a normal ten-year-old boy. Colin says that “The Magic in this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a man.”(Burnett 251). According to Colin, the magic is a strength and power which he gets from the fresh air of garden’s fair fresh leaves and from strange feeling of being happy as he looked up through the trees at the sky. Colin is also convinced that “the Magic” can help him become strong and healthy again, and as he spends more time in the garden, he does develop strength that eventually enables him to walk again; he

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