It might be a silly question, but what do you think about that serval adaptations(1993 film and the 90s musical) giving Mary heaving Lily's eyes instead of Colin? I'll admit I'm not a fan of it. I feel like that while I get it is to add depth or explain Mr Archibald's softness toward her it's contradicts the way he is in the book. One of the reasons he avoiding Colin and even alienated from him it's because Colin is "so similar yet so different" from Lily. (Forgive me, I don't remember the precise wording and I'm used to the translation version since English is not my first language) one of the reasons Archibald neglect his son is the fact he reminded him her, but not act like her. (Wich of course is not excuse and I personally see it more as a example of ho Archibald really need to work hard to improve his parenting skills and understand his son is a individual and his own person, but that for another post)
I feel like that changing it makes Archibald more sympathetic than he is and removes one of the messed-up perceptions of reality he had that influenced his son and actually just restored the cycle of his son not being what he wanted, so he's avoiding him and by that damaged Colin's mental state even more and then avoids him more and that just unending cycle.
I'm really curious to read your take and opinions!
not a silly question at all!
i'll admit i'm not the best secret garden fan to ask when it comes to the craven family dynamic; this may be a hot take, but i think that whole aspect is the least interesting element of the novel. that said, i do agree that giving mary lilias' eyes as opposed to colin considerably does away with the complexity of his and his father's relationship.
on the other hand...while i mostly prefer fidelity to the source material, I do understand why writers of these adaptations might want to give mary more of a connection to lilias, and, thus, the family she will become apart of and help redeem. having mary inherit lilias' eyes serves as a visual signifier (important in films!) that bolsters the source material's connection mary has with lilias--both of them being people who love (or loved, in lilias' case) to make things grow.
i also think that particular adaptational choice stems from anxiety about mary's lesser significance during the second half of the story. i read one peer-reviewed academic analysis years ago that always stuck with me that posits that there's an in-text confusion over who exactly is the protagonist of the secret garden because burnett not only focuses on mary and colin's development in near-equal measure, but also that the text has an obvious preoccupation with dickon that colors the whole story. i'm probably butchering the essay's thesis (i read it over ten years ago and i'd have to really hunker down and search the jstor library or whatever to find it again), so don't quote me on that. regardless--i remember not necessarily agreeing with it, but i did find it fascinating.
if you have any sort of scholarly (or just critical i guess) interest in tsg you've probably come across the argument that burnett forgoes mary's protagonist status in favor of colin. i resonate with that claim, though i've also read at least one (unfortunately fuzzy) counterargument to it. since filmmakers want to focus primarily on one character, that being the main character mary, it makes sense that they'd transplant one of colin's traits onto her. it not only makes her seem more "special," but connects her more thoroughly to the craven family, which makes the resolution of the story (which prioritizes colin and archibald) more relevant to her. like i said, i think it's a shame to remove one of the more emotionally complex elements of burnett's depiction of their relationship, but i also can understand the (probable) reasoning for it.
i also wonder if it's a side effect of values dissonance. male characters having their mothers' eyes aren't unmasculine by default (harry potter, for one famous example), but that plus colin's more "effeminate" qualities--his passivity, primary residence in the domestic sphere, his "hysterics"--might lead filmmakers to unconsciously tone down colin's similarity to his mother so not to alienate audiences. probably not, but, like, maybe?
thank you for the ask, i hope this answers your question! please feel free to send more!
a fake documentary-style adaptation of tsg would be perfect. how else are you going to capture mary and dickon giggling and bonding in the foreground before zooming in on colin glowering at them in the background. then he registers the camera’s on him and glowers at that too
I have been meaning to review this book for a couple years now, have reread it a couple times, and for whatever reason have found writing a review inexplicably difficult. So I'm going to make it easy on myself and just do lists of what worked for me and what didn't so much.
The Secret Garden Rewilded by Anthea Simmons is a contemporary retelling of The Secret Garden. When Mia's influencer parents die in an accident, Mia is sent to live with her uncle (her mother's brother) and her cousin, who has a serious heart condition and doesn't get out much, at their home in Devon. There, she learns to adjust to a healthier, more outdoor way of life and discovers a locked garden that belonged to her late aunt. With the help of Daniel, a local boy with a passion for ecology, and her cousin Christopher, she sets out to restore the garden to a natural state that best suits the local flora and fauna.
What this retelling does well:
It maintains the basic points of the original story. Most of the major events of The Secret Garden occur in this story too. It is definitely its own thing by the end, but it doesn't mutate into something thematically inconsistent.
It emphasizes nature and animals and daily life, which is in the spirit of the original story. The approach to the natural world is a distinctly twenty-first-century one, in keeping with the new setting, and rather educational.
Daniel, the Dickon equivalent, is the heart of the narrative, as he should be. He's a good kid who's the glue keeping the three-way friendship together.
There's an emphasis on "local color," with Devon rather than Yorkshire, that feels in keeping with the original story. Mia has to learn the vocabulary and customs of her new home, and while locals' dialogue isn't written in the confusing, dated style in which Burnett writes Yorkshire accents, the word choices make their speech stand out.
It keeps the emphasis on the children rather than the adults. All the parents are minor characters. Important to the plot, sure, with development proportional to their roles, but this isn't their story. This is firmly a middle-grade novel.
The children's characterization is mostly similar to their equivalents' in the original. Watered down a bit, but they're all recognizable.
What was less effective for me:
The absence of a sense of mystery or atmosphericness. This is the least gothic version of The Secret Garden that I have ever encountered. It's more likely for an adaptation or retelling to take it too far the other direction, so this was surprising. Mia's uncle's house is just a very nice rural residence. She is aware of her cousin's existence from the start. There don't seem to be high stakes in keeping the garden secret. Everything felt very ordinary and down-to-earth all the time. Which the garden and the (equivalents of) the Sowerbys should be, but it needs to be offset by the mysterious messed-up-ness of everything else for the story to feel like The Secret Garden.
It's not overly plotty, which has been part of why this book has been difficult to review. Of course the original isn't always big on plot either, but the bulk of this book is simply engaging with nature and animals. Which is nice, but major emotional moments from the original are either absent or very toned down. There are things like an animal death, a misadventure while horseback riding, and an injury for one of the children (not the one you'd think). But not a lot of suspense.
The garden itself and the secret around it are deemphasized--nature facts and the importance of rewilding and other ecological concerns take center stage, which is not bad (see above list of what was done well), but it gets to the point of reading like exposition of facts more than a story sometimes.
Most of the adults are quite sanitized compared to their equivalents in the original. Mia's parents are often absent and definitely emotionally neglectful, but she does have relationships with them, and she's clearly grieving them after they die. To offset her parents' absence, she has positive relationships with the staff who look after her. Her uncle is also often absent, but he is far more present and involved in Mia and Christopher's lives from the start than his equivalent in the original. There is no equivalent of Mrs. Medlock. Instead, the children are most often around equivalents of Martha and Mrs. Sowerby (who here are Daniel's mother and grandmother respectively). Most of the adults are eternally patient and empathetic and understanding of the children and seldom firm. This is nice, but not always believable (even the kindest adult in real life is still a human being and not always going to act like a model of contemporary gentle parenting ideals). And as tragic as it is, a lot of the point of TSG is that these children have been failed by their adults and need to experience love for the first time. Here, Mia and Christopher act rude and difficult even when surrounded by adults who are kind to them, which is a rather different scenario.
(The Ben Weatherstaff equivalent is still cranky, which is refreshing, but he quickly warms up.)
The Colin equivalent has a much softened situation. He has a lot of anxiety after having to live with the effects and restrictions that come with a heart condition, but at no point does it ever seem that he's had a deeply messed-up upbringing, beyond being kind of spoiled. And it fits the very toned-down approach of this story, but it does make for a completely different circumstance.
A minor thing: There are lots of references to websites, apps, phones, etc. in keeping with the contemporary setting, but sometimes specific sites/apps are named (YouTube, TikTok, and so on), and it's distracting.
Verdict: It's a charming middle-grade book with a strong emphasis on ecology and a decent interpretation of the story it draws from. Ultimately, I found it very toned down in comparison to the original story, and not a lot about it tended to stick in my head between rereads. But as contemporary retellings of this story go, it's serviceable and definitely better than most.
Hi! I love this blog😍 I wanted to ask if you've seen the Secret Garden movie from 2017? It's a steampunk/factory re-imagining, and seems to have worked on a pretty low budget, but is quite fun. I wasn't paying very close attention when i watched it😅 but it seemed quite interesting😁
hello! thank you so much, i'm so glad you enjoy my blog! i did watch about half of the 2017 movie, but i remember my interest waning pretty early. i think a steampunk adaptation of tsg doesn't really work at all, to be truthful. the original book is so occupied with the natural world that an adaptation that asks, "but what if the garden was actually synthetic the whole time?" just seems like it fundamentally misunderstands the source material. so yeah, i didn't enjoy it much, but i'm glad you liked it!
thank you for sending this ask, feel free to send more!
I can't believe I never noticed the biblical connection of two primary female characters being named Mary and Martha. I wonder if it was intentional. It does fit--Martha is very practical, while Mary's got a dreamier side to her.
Mary finding Colin locked away in a bedroom even though no one told her he existed is a repeat of when the officer found her in her parents' house even though he never knew she existed, and it makes me feel things.
The Sowerby family really are the heroes of this story. These weird, pampered Victorian Gothic children are saved by contact with normal, working-class people.
(Mrs. Sowerby went to school with the housekeeper? I feel like there are some class nuances I'm missing here).
This really is The Gaskell Theory of Mental Health: The Novelization
say what you want about the dinky direct-to-video animated adaptation, they did put in the effort to change mary and colin's designs as they grow healthier over the course of the story
re: the 2020 version i was so waiting for the fact that misselthwaite is "fully electric, sometimes" to be a chekhov's gun somehow. or at least have some sort of meaning. i guess it's a convenient hand-wave that acknowledges that despite it being 1947 the characters are still using old-fashioned lamps (which could conveniently cause a fire later, ho ho). anyway i thought that was a cool detail that could have possibly been more significant than it actually ended up being. another example of the changed time period not really affecting the story at all
well i watched the 2020 adaptation again and my feelings haven’t changed. in fact i think i’ve become more bitter about it upon this viewing. it occurred to me this time that the script really is on-the-nose and a lot of the dialogue is very unnatural.
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