The Secret Garden — Chapter 5

About This Passage

Burnett slips in one of the novel's central metaphors almost casually: the wind is blowing cobwebs out of Mary's brain. The image implies that Mary's mind was not empty or broken — it was simply unused, and disuse grows cobwebs like any neglected room. The passage also quietly diagnoses the original damage as climate and habit: India was hot, Mary was languid, no one expected her to care about anything.

Narration Prompt

Summarize Chapter 5 in seven to nine sentences. Trace the arc from Mary's first habit of going outdoors, through her second encounter with the robin, her realization about the locked garden's location, Martha's account of Mrs. Craven's death, the wuthering wind, and the crying sound that Martha tries — unconvincingly — to explain.

Discussion Questions

1. Burnett writes that Mary's fight with the wind was 'stirring her slow blood and making herself stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from the moor.' The narrator frames physical exertion as an unnoticed medicine. What is the pedagogical theory hidden inside this sentence, and why might Burnett insist that Mary 'did not know' this was the best thing she could do?
2. When Mary finally asks Martha 'Why did Mr. Craven hate the garden?' Martha begins with 'Mind, Mrs. Medlock said it's not to be talked about.' She then tells the whole story anyway. What does this exchange reveal about Martha as a moral agent — about her priorities as a Yorkshire servant when a rule from Misselthwaite's housekeeper conflicts with a lonely child's question?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide