The Secret Garden — Chapter 6

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 6 for an adult reading circle, attending to how Burnett structures the rainy day as a sequence of nested enclosures — cottage, library, corridor, cabinet, cushion — and how Martha's Dickon stories, the portrait gallery, the ivory elephants, the mouse nest, and the muffled cry each function as formal rhymes for Misselthwaite itself.

Discussion Questions

1. Martha's account of Dickon bringing home a half-drowned fox cub 'in th' bosom of his shirt to keep it warm' and taming a crow named Soot appears before Mary does anything in this chapter. Why does Burnett place Dickon, who has not yet entered the novel, at the structural head of Chapter 6, and what ethic of care is being stipulated — through Martha's voice, in a cottage of fourteen people — before Mary touches a single door handle at Misselthwaite?
2. Mary finds in one room a cabinet containing 'about a hundred little elephants made of ivory,' some carrying 'mahouts or palanquins,' and notes that 'Mary had seen carved ivory in India and she knew all about elephants.' What is Burnett doing by making the most India-inflected object in the English house a display of imperial artifacts shut inside a cabinet, and how does that object re-frame Mary's own status in the household?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide