The Secret Subtext

This is a review of the original book, and not of any later edition.

My first Gothic novel, original pagan sourcebook, and first favorite book that I can recall was the one my mother read to me when I had the measles at the age of six. At eight I read it myself. Its influence is inescapable; my reading habits have been permanently warped by the underlying STUFF in this novel. They say it is just a Christian Science - influenced fable about positive thinking, fresh air and exercise. HA! It is instead delightfully spooky and transparently pagan.

A spoiled orphan named Mary Lennox (think Jane Eyre with an attitude!) is sent to live with an uncle she seldom sees in a house on the Yorkshire moors featuring: one (1) voice crying in the night, two (2) hidden doors, one (1) forbidden corridor, one (1) Bird of Portent and many secrets. All the requisite Gothic material is here, including the well-chosen details, the vivid descriptions and the single supernatural (or perhaps psychic?) experience. Only one event is too much to be believed, and that is the length of the boy's first perambulation, which isn't supposed to be scary. Everything else is just fun.

Out on the moor Mary meets a pipe-playing boy named Dickon, a child's version of Pan, wise in the ways of nature. He should be: his mother, whose name is Susan Sowerby, is a (barely-disguised) fertility goddess. Between them they help Mary bring life back into Misselthwaite Manor. The novel begins in late winter and culminates in high summer, when Mary's uncle Archibald Craven (ALL the names are wonderful!) returns from his futile wanderings abroad to witness a transformation.

This is a book which indulges its readers with delightful shivers in a tradition dating back to Ann Radcliffe, and which evokes our love of Nature in a tradition far older than the written word. THE SECRET GARDEN is a tribute to the power of life itself, and is unreservedly recommended to children of all ages.

Also recommended, although very different, is A LITTLE PRINCESS, by the same author. I haven't tackled (!) LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY.