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The Secret Garden: Chapters 1, 2 and 3

#59: Dec. - Jan. 2009 (Fiction)
Trish
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I don't feel that Burnett is all that political about racism and colonialism. I think she's states it as more matter of fact. I'm sure there were more offensive terms than "black" available to use, but she doesn't. Though I'm not going to assume though that Burnett believed in the equality of races (unless I read otherwise) even if she takes issue with the treatment of servants Indian or Yorkshire. I would say she concentrates more on rigid class divisions and divisions of traditional parent/child roles. Mary belongs to an upper class family and has the "right" to do and say what she pleases to servants, but her parents disregard her feelings in the same way. How can anyone learn empathy without being able to put yourself in an others' shoes.
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Robert Tulip

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Burnett is not calling for equality where equality does not exist, but for respect and for a dismantling of illusions. Unequals can have honest dialogue, but this is rare. An interesting line is where Mary complains that Indian servants use custom to justify behaviour and seem to view custom as the highest authority. You can see that Burnett is critical of the way hidebound traditional authority operates whether in India or in the UK. My impression is that the secret garden is a symbol of liberation through the recognition of true natural identity. The politics is not an ideological call for equality, but a call for human identity to be grounded in reality. The need for secrecy is a symbol of how unacceptable this natural vision is to broader society.
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Ophelia

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I did some research on Victorian child rearing especially in the upper class. Mary's situation is pretty extreme but probably not so far off from the norm. It was customary for children to be raised by carefully selected nannies and generally to be kept away from the parents most of the time. Family life was very formal and children usually only saw their parents at appointed times. In Mary's case, never. It's like she's dead the minute she's born. Does anyone think she's really as physically sick as the adults say she is? She is certainly not malnourished because she is obviously wealthy. It's certainly strange for a child living in India for 9 years to look like she's never seen sunlight. I think her outer appearance is really about her starvation for love and relationships and she's not really physically ill. Having read the book so long ago I know this issue is going to come up again. Out of all people to survive a cholera epidemic, the supposed sick child is left unscathed. I have a feeling one of the themes of the book is an indictment against prevailing parenting style in the late 19th/early 20th century: hands-off, rigid, formal, cold. On another thought, if I lived in a period of high infant mortality and I was intimately familiar with death by TB and cholera, is it a form psychological protection to not be so attached to one's own children?
Thanks for your post Trish. I agree with what you wrote.
I've read the first few chapters-- I can't help it , I always like those stories which take place in England in the old days, with those rich people's homes, the servants, butlers, and so on.
The narrator, as well as the housekeeper and other characters, always seem to mention the poor looks of the child and the mother's prettiness in the same sentence. From the little that is said the mother was interested in parties and clothes, not her child. I wonder if, on top of the views about bringing up children in that social class at the time, there wasn't the matter of the mother not wanting to look at a daughter who did not reflect her own beauty, and thus disappointed her. In other words, Mary might have got more attention, albeit of a superficial kind, if she had been a pretty little girl that her mother could have shown off to other people.
Ophelia.
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realiz

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the mother not wanting to look at a daughter who did not reflect her own beauty, and thus disappointed her.
A face only a mother could love is a common saying because Mother's love is supposed to be the one thing a child can count on and desperately needs in order to thrive. Mary is contrary, sad, and sickly because this one most important thing in her life has been missing despite her outward priviledges. She belongs to no one. I know this is a extreme case, but I have always felt the British upper class treatment of their kids was barbaric.
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Thomas Hood
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seespotrun2008 wrote:So what do people think of this book? So far I have read 7 chapters. It is racist.
Frances Hodgson Burnett was into Theosophy as were Aldous Huxley, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Franz Kafka, William Butler Yeats, George William Russell (AE), Owen Barfield, T. S. Eliot, Arthur Dove, George Lucas, Katherine Dreier, Robert Duncan, Marsden Hartley, Wallace Stevens, James Jones, Ruth Crawford-Seeger, Dane Rudhyar, Alexander Scriabin.

Theosophy advocated universal brotherhood, and Hindu were especially admired, so we can be sure that The Secret Garden is not racist, unless one takes the word "Blacks" in reference to Indian servants to be racist. Theosophists believed in the religious superiority of Indians, and Mrs. Burnett expressed that view:

"Eh! I can see it's different," she answered almost sympathetically. "I dare say it's because there's such a lot o' blacks there instead o' respectable white people. When I heard you was comin' from India I thought you was a black too."

Mary sat up in bed furious.

"What!" she said. "What! You thought I was a native. You -- you daughter of a pig!"

Martha stared and looked hot.

"Who are you callin' names?" she said. "You needn't be so vexed. That's not th' way for a young lady to talk. I've nothin' against th' blacks. When you read about 'em in tracts they're always very religious. You always read as a black's a man an' a brother. I've never seen a black an' I was fair pleased to think I was goin' to see one close. When I come in to light your fire this mornin' I crep' up to your bed an' pulled th' cover back careful to look at you. An' there you was," disappointedly, "no more black than me -- for all you're so yeller."

Tom
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Not to be repetitive, but I think this lengthy quote of the book by Thomas just shows that racism is a more complex issue than, "A" is racist, "B" is not. Racism as a way of thinking in the culture that surrounds us is like a clear pollutant in the water that fish swim in. It's hard not to let any trace of it pass through your gills, but you can at least be mindful of it as you swim around, avoiding positively bathing in the larger toxic spills of it, or smearing it about unreflectively and denying it exists because it's transparent to you.

I think the author reveals it, portrays characters who are more or less exponents of it to some degree, but their perspectives are not necessarily the validated voice of the author in the text. I think she's straighforwardly showing how messed up the whole society of her setting is, in this, as in a lot of respects.

It is also possible to admire someone's religious sophistication and still hold other racist conceptions about their culture. In this passage it's clear that Mary is outraged and insulted to have been thought "black," but later she shows that she has a respectful grasp of the concept of the universe being contained inside of an Indian god's body, visible down his throat, which leaves her cousin cold and uncomprehending in his "common sense" British superiority. How can the universe be inside a person who is in the universe? Someone like Mary or her author can think this is a profound insight produced by Indian culture, widely uncomprehended in her own, and yet still think the culture that produced it is in other ways inferior to her own.

It reminds me of this woman I used to work with who talked to me about "the Chinese and their clever little hands" after seeing an exhibit of Chinese art. I understood this to be both "positive" in its intended judgment and annoyingly racist and condescending. (Both/and, Interbane!) She also used to say "namaste" to me in an effort to honor my heritage or something -- this is what is meant by the term "well-meaning white people." I suppose I could have replied, "Gutten morgen, Fraulein," and she might have gotten it. Or she might not. I didn't, so we will never know.
"Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words so that I can talk with him?"
-- Chuang-Tzu (c. 200 B.C.E.)
as quoted by Robert A. Burton
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realiz

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GR9
I think the author reveals it, portrays characters who are more or less exponents of it to some degree, but their perspectives are not necessarily the validated voice of the author in the text.
Yes, she reveals how much racism is based on ignorance.
Such as:

Book
"For!" cried out Martha. "Does tha' mean that they've not got skippin'-ropes in India, for all they've got elephants and tigers and camels! No wonder most of 'em's black. This is what it's for; just watch me."
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Thomas Hood
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GentleReader9 wrote: In this passage it's clear that Mary is outraged and insulted to have been thought "black," but later she shows that she has a respectful grasp of the concept of the universe being contained inside of an Indian god's body, visible down his throat, . . ..
Where is this about the throat, please?

I think the little girl from India symbolizes theosophical ideas.

Tom
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GentleReader9

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GentleReader9 wrote:

In this passage it's clear that Mary is outraged and insulted to have been thought "black," but later she shows that she has a respectful grasp of the concept of the universe being contained inside of an Indian god's body, visible down his throat, . . ..


Where is this about the throat, please?
Thomas, you caught me committing the Crime of the Irresponsible Reader. I haven't re-read this in a long time, but I have more recently watched 2 or 3 film versions and I think that scene came from one of them rather than the book. :oops: I am now sheepishly re-reading more rigorously before I post. If I find that the Krishna with the universe down the throat scene was in the book, I shall certainly post about it in the appropriate chapter thread, but in fact, I spoke of it before getting into the book that far on this reading. (Now I will be thought pedestrian by the truly careful readers. Oh well.)
"Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words so that I can talk with him?"
-- Chuang-Tzu (c. 200 B.C.E.)
as quoted by Robert A. Burton
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Thomas Hood
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GentleReader9 wrote:Thomas, you caught me committing the Crime of the Irresponsible Reader.
May thy sins be forgiven thee. But perhaps you are being a gently imaginative reader instead? I did find this:
"Yasoda was the first to became aware on Krishna's special powers when she chanced to look down his throat. She was stupefied to see the entire universe there."
http://www.themystica.com/mythical-folk ... ishna.html

And part of the Magic is that what is without (subtle influence of cosmic life) becomes within.

Tom
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