The Secret Garden — Chapter 15

About This Passage

Burnett opens the chapter with a deliberate inventory — the sun, the garden, the boy, the fox, the rook, the crocuses, the rose-buds — so that the reader takes in all at once the world Mary has just been given. The word ‘splendor’ does heavy work: it claims for this ordinary sunrise at Misselthwaite something usually reserved for kings. The chapter's argument — that the commonplace and the holy are the same thing — is already being made in the vocabulary.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 15 as though you were telling a younger sibling: begin with the sunrise Mary sees from her window, move through her meeting with Dickon and his animals in the garden, the shared joy over the first crocuses and rose-buds, Ben Weatherstaff's robin building his nest, and the decision the two children make about Colin.

Discussion Questions

1. When Dickon tells Mary the robin ‘knows there'll be no meddlin',’ he is saying something specific about the relationship between wild creatures and well-behaved humans. What does that single phrase teach us about how Dickon understands his own place on the moor — and how does that understanding differ from the way Mrs. Medlock and Dr. Craven approach Colin?
2. Dickon says the robin ‘knew how to build tha’ nest before tha’ came out o’ th’ egg.’ What is he claiming about where useful knowledge comes from? How does this idea sit beside what the rest of the novel has been showing us about what children can and cannot learn from the adults around them?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide