The Secret Garden — Chapter 13

About This Passage

Burnett’s full diagnostic portrait of Colin: not a villain, not a simple spoiled child, but a boy whose entire ethical formation has been distorted by illness and over-provision. Note how Burnett stacks the gifts — splendid books, all sorts of wonderful things, anything he asked for — and then flatly records that he had never seemed to have been amused. The moral point is buried in the sequence.

Narration Prompt

In two analytical paragraphs, retell Chapter 13 in a way that foregrounds its two parallel revelations — what Mary learns about Colin and what Colin learns about the world outside his room — and consider which of the two discoveries Burnett treats as more consequential for the novel that follows.

Discussion Questions

1. Burnett frames Mary’s midnight expedition as the product of a ‘rebellious mood.’ In India, Mary’s rebelliousness produced tantrums and self-absorption; at Misselthwaite, it sends her toward the sound of another person’s crying. Analyze this reframing of rebellion as a moral category. What is Burnett claiming about the difference between rebellion that serves the self and rebellion that serves another, and how does she keep the two kinds of defiance visibly related in Mary’s character?
2. Colin and Mary, at the instant of their first meeting, each ask whether the other is a ghost. Examine the literary weight of this near-simultaneous question. What is Burnett doing by refusing to grant either child the position of ordinary reality first — and how does the symmetry of their question set up a relationship that will be, from the start, a partnership between equals rather than between a rescuer and a rescued?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide