These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. In its focus on processes of socialization the story of The Secret Garden follows a regenerative path, with pervasive images of death and debility transformed to those of life and energy.
Unlike earlier texts, however, the moral emphases are subordinated to a more searching psychological dimension. Like The Wide, Wide World and Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden focuses on the experience of juvenile isolation and alienation and follows the adaptation of a young girl to a new and initially disturbing environment. The fantasies of female power which the novel projects so powerfully remain, however, tantalizingly unresolved as the tensions in the text between authority, gender and social class gradually become more pronounced, and the achievements of the heroine correspondingly marginalized. 9 out of 10.Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911) takes up the subjects of orphanhood, illness and the autonomous world of childhood, which characterize a number of fictions for girls in the late Victorian period. This is one that takes you in and doesn't let up till the final very satisfying frame. But these quibbles aside, some movies one can get immersed in afresh with each viewing. The only flaw was the settish nature of the scenes, even the gardens are "back lot". The black and white filming adds a morbid darkness with the colour sequences in the garden contrasting beautifully. There is a teeming cast of well known names to add to the flavour of the film: Dame Gladys Cooper as the housekeeper Elsa Lanchester as the maid Reginald Owen as the mysterious gardener. Unhappiness reigns in the Manor House headed up by Herbert Marshall playing Colin's father - a brilliant performance. Mary has her own issues, feeling ugly and unloved due to her past in India.
The son, Colin, played by a very young and handsome Dean Stockwell, in turn reacting with tantrums and hate to the world around him. The characters are multi-dimensional, a wounded father flailing against the world and projecting illness on to his son. This movie is quite a perfect replica of the book, apart from the injection of a totally unnecessary "crime" element. The book on which this film is based by Frances Hodgson Burnett, was my favourite book as a child and I've given many copies to children over the years. Along the way she finds love in friendship, a love that was never shown to her by her parents. Margaret O'Brien is just about perfect in the part of Mary Lennox, an orphan who finds herself in a house full of strange people.
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