The Secret Garden
Mary Lennox
The heroine
A lonely, sour-faced girl sent from India to a Yorkshire manor, who finds a locked garden and slowly becomes curious, kind and strong.
Mary Lennox begins the story as a neglected, tyrannical child in a bungalow in India, used to servants who do whatever she says. When cholera strikes, everyone leaves or dies and she is left behind. Sent to her uncle's Misselthwaite Manor, she is called the most disagreeable-looking child anyone has ever seen. She is blunt, stubborn and used to being alone.
Yorkshire changes her. The moor air gives her an appetite, a skipping rope gives her something to enjoy, and a robin makes her want a friend for the first time. Mary is curious, brave and honest, and she will not be bossed or frightened by anyone, including a screaming invalid cousin.
“I am inside... and nobody knows.”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Mary follows the robin to a buried key and finds a hidden door in the ivy. She cleans and tends the neglected garden, and shares it with Dickon. She asks her uncle for a bit of earth, and he says yes. Hearing crying in the night, she finds her cousin Colin, and tells him about the moor and Dickon.
She stands up to Colin's tantrums, proves to him that he has no lump on his back, and brings him into the garden. By the end, she and Colin are running races in the garden, and Archibald Craven comes home to a healthy son. Mary has gone from the sour child nobody wanted to the friend who helped everyone come back to life.
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