The Secret Garden — Chapter 10

About This Passage

These are Mary's first passionate words in the novel — the first time she speaks aloud for something rather than merely against someone. Burnett lets Mary defend the garden without calculation ('I don't care, I don't care!') and then punishes her for it with tears she does not know how to stop. The paragraph's last line — Dickon's 'Eh-h-h!' that meant 'both wonder and sympathy' — is Burnett's way of having the moor answer a child's first real cry for something. Copying this passage lets a Pathfinder feel how quickly Mary's anger and grief turn into a plea for help.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 10 with attention to the chapter's three scenes: the week of Mary working in the secret garden and becoming more intimate with Ben Weatherstaff, Mary's long conversation with Ben about the roses and the lady who once loved them, and Mary's meeting with Dickon in the wood that ends with her showing him the secret garden.

Discussion Questions

1. Burnett writes of the bulbs in the secret garden that they 'began to cheer up under the dark earth and work tremendously' — as if the plants were moral beings responding to Mary's care. What argument is Burnett making by using this kind of language for flowers, and how does it connect the garden's recovery to Mary's own?
2. Ben Weatherstaff tells Mary about a 'young lady' he used to work for who loved roses 'like they was children — or robins.' Given what we already know about Mrs. Craven and the locked garden, what is Burnett doing by letting this information slip out in Ben's ordinary Yorkshire speech rather than in a dramatic revelation scene?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide