The Secret Garden — Chapter 6

About This Passage

This paragraph is a small social portrait: Burnett pans away from Mary's inner life to show us the household economy of Misselthwaite. A neglected child supplies the cover under which the servants live well; Mary's invisibility is their luxury. The passage rewards transcription because its long, comma-piled sentences enact the abundance they describe — shining brass, pewter, four or five abundant meals, lively romping — so the student copies a scene in which both the syntax and the content are crowded.

Narration Prompt

Summarize Chapter 6 in three paragraphs: Martha's stories of Dickon, Soot the crow, and the fox cub on the rainy morning; Mary's self-directed exploration through the corridors, the gallery of portraits, the cabinet of ivory elephants, and the mother mouse with her six babies; and the second crying heard through the walls, Mrs. Medlock's intervention, and Mary's determination on the hearth-rug.

Discussion Questions

1. Burnett introduces Dickon in Chapter 6 entirely through Martha's stories — the half-drowned fox cub, the tamed crow Soot, the rainy-day seeing. Why does Burnett present Dickon secondhand before Mary (and the reader) ever meets him? What does this delay achieve that a direct introduction could not?
2. Mary speaks aloud to the portrait of a stiff little girl in a green brocade dress: Where do you live now? I wish you were here. This is the first sentence Mary has ever spoken to someone who cannot possibly answer. What does this moment tell us about where Mary is in her development, and why is Burnett careful to place it in a gallery of portraits — images of people who are gone?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide