The Secret Garden — Chapter 2

About This Passage

Burnett renders one of the novel's most psychologically important moments — Mary becoming aware, for the first time, that she has never belonged to anyone — in quiet, unadorned prose. The fact that this revelation arrives through her own thought rather than through another character's speech is the chapter's pivot. Copying it teaches attention to how a novelist builds interiority through reported thought.

Narration Prompt

Narrate Chapter 2 with attention to its three settings — the English clergyman's house, the London hotel, and the train carriage to Yorkshire — and notice how each setting strips away a layer of Mary's old life while building the atmosphere of her new one.

Discussion Questions

1. Basil invents the nickname 'Mistress Mary, quite contrary' in a single afternoon. Analyze how Frances Burnett uses peer judgment — delivered by a younger child — to accomplish what adult judgment in Chapter 1 could not. What is Burnett's theory about the social education of children?
2. Mrs. Crawford says, 'Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face and her pretty manners oftener into the nursery Mary might have learned some pretty ways too.' Evaluate this causal theory of character formation. Where does the chapter endorse it, and where does the novel's later logic complicate the notion that 'pretty ways' are what Mary most needs?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide