The Secret Garden Essay & Project Ideas

The Secret Garden Ideas for Reports and Papers

1. Frances Hodgson Burnett liked happy endings so much that she called herself "Mrs. Romantick." She believed that it was possible to transform reality by thinking positively. How does positive or negative thinking affect the lives of Mary, Colin, Dickon, and Mr. Craven?

2. How does the garden function as a metaphor for the way Mary and Colin are at the start of the novel? Trace the ways this metaphor is realized or fleshed out in the course of the novel. In what ways does the garden's transformation into a mother figure that protects, nurtures, and teaches, alter this metaphor?

3. Some critics believe that the novel's shift from Mary to Colin makes it ultimately Colin's story. Others claim that the story is really that of Mary's triumphant transformation of herself and of Colin. Whose story is The Secret Garden? Why?

4. At the...
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