A review by nolemdaer
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was actually quite sweet and won me over. It is very funny how a major plot point is that little Mary is so obstinate and misbehaved that she's able to counter spoiled Colin's tantrums and knock sense into him - and the way they're both continually described as sour, hysteric, bad-tempered, etc. is also quite funny - but the core of the story is uplifting and filled with all the warmth and sunshine of spring. The brutality of Mary and Colin's poor tempers turns into the joy of seeing them grow without losing their stubborn childishness, and there is so much tenderness here for the moving of the seasons and animals and the earth. Dickon-the-magical-Yorkshire-boy is a delight, of course. It was lovely but not saccharine, which is a real feat.

There are definitely people with more developed and informed perspectives than me on the colonial roots of Mary's upbringing and how the story interacts with British colonization of India, but for me those parts are indeed uncomfortable. The quasi-fetishization of the working-class Yorkshire was more funny than anything.