#who so far had been sensitive and melancholy with no significant anger problem

[isfjmel-phleg]

I finally put my finger on why a lot of adaptations and retellings of The Secret Garden feel thematically off to me.

So many of these interpret it as a story about healing from grief and loss. Which is very true of Mr. Craven’s subplot, but not for Mary and Colin.

It’s about healing from emotional neglect.

This is mirrored in the neglected garden and how the children’s restoring it--giving it the love and care and attention that they themselves have lacked--heals them in turn. Forming emotional connections is the first step in Mary’s recovery, and the Sowerbys are crucial to the plot because they’re the first people Mary has known who take an interest in her emotional well-being. Colin meanwhile has his turning point when Mary confronts the root of the emotions he’s never been able to address to anyone. These are very different issues from those surrounding loss of a loved one. In fact, these children are the way they are because they’ve never had loved ones.

So to rewrite the story as centrally a tale of overcoming grief recontextualizes everything about the protagonists, and the characterization either makes less sense or needs to be altered accordingly.

Nothing wrong with stories about overcoming grief, of course. That’s just not the story Burnett was telling, and I’m not sure where the shift in interpretation comes from, or why it’s so prevalent.

#The Secret Garden #this stems from a recently published retelling I'm reading now #it's a beautifully written story #but the protagonist doesn't feel like a Mary parallel in anything other than similar story beats #she has lost two lovely parents whom she was close to #and is now heavily grieving them #so she has a very different set of traits from Mary's #there's a scene where she has a tantrum in front of the Martha analogue #and it just...felt more mandated by the intended connection to the original book #than a natural emotional progression for this character #who so far had been sensitive and melancholy with no significant anger problem