The Secret Garden — Chapter 8

About This Passage

This is Burnett's quietest and most important paragraph in the chapter: the diagnostic one. She names what was wrong with Mary in India (too hot, too waited-on, too 'languid and weak to care') and she names what is healing her (mysterious closed rooms, appetite, wind). Copying it slowly lets a Pathfinder notice the parallel clauses and the theory of health Burnett is tucking into a children's novel.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 8 in full, keeping the chain of cause and effect clear. Begin with the morning after the key is found, move through Martha's return and the gift of the skipping-rope, Mary's stiff thank-you, Ben Weatherstaff's teasing in the kitchen-garden, the robin on the wall, the gust of wind at the ivy, the buried door and the key, and end with Mary standing inside the secret garden.

Discussion Questions

1. Burnett says Mary's 'inactive brain' is beginning to work and her imagination is 'awakening.' What does the chapter suggest is the relationship between Mary's body (skipping, fresh air, food) and Mary's mind (thought, imagination, noticing others)?
2. Martha's mother, who has 'four places to put every penny,' gives up two pence for a skipping-rope for a child she has never met. What does this gift reveal about Susan Sowerby's moral economy, and how does it contrast with the money-world Mary was raised in?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide