Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

One of the most awkward questions I am asked every year is why I re-read books.  Granted, being a teacher / teacher-librarian, students always feel they have the right to ask about anything: a new haircut?  Be prepared to discuss that.  A picture of that summer’s reading in the start of year slideshow?  They want an exact number.  I can answer those questions (yes, I got my hair cut, or 28, or 18, or 34 books, depending if I’m on reading committees) but why I re-read one book so often is a question I can’t immediately explain.  It’s a different answer for each book.  Therefore, I would like to address one book, the one most asked about.

Dear students,

Yes, I have read The Secret Garden every year since I was much younger than you.  Yes, that does mean I’ve read it over 25 times, and no, I’m not giving you the exact number.  Don’t think you can trick me into giving you my age.  

Now that I’ve answered your incredulous looks, let me make it clear that The Secret Garden is my second favourite book of all time, and I do not want to get distracted by discussing which one is first.  No one is locked in an attic (technically, Colin’s not locked in, but there’s a whole other issue there), or secretly buried in the backyard.  Deaths are off the page, and only the arrival of a snake, the only other creature alive in Mary’s bungalow in India, is the only clue everyone else is dead or has run to the hills.  Sorry, if you’re looking for some great mystery, this isn’t the book for you.

Mary Lennox is a horrible person when the book begins.  She’s rude, demeaning, and entitled, because that’s all she’s ever known.  Her parents ignored her when they were alive, and the servants were, well, servile.  Mary Lennox is what many of you would be if asked to raise yourselves.  As much as anyone wants to pretend otherwise, an unloved child with too much time, and too many things, rarely turns out as a stellar example of humanity.

Colin Craven is equally as reprehensible.  How would you feel if you’d been stuck in bed for most of your life for a medical condition that doesn’t exist?  Yet it’s still satisfying when Mary gives him what for, after he throws a tantrum.  They’re good for each other: Mary learns what it’s like to be treated like she did her servants, and Colin learns when he throws pillows at people, they are able to walk away.  By being horrible to each other, they become better people.

I’d hate to know either of them in real life.  I’d dread having either in my class, and would look at Dickon, the lone voice of sense, and be grateful someone remembered to raise her child right.  Then again, Mary and Colin both learn that even with neglectful parents, they can find some sort of happiness and balance.

That is the adult in me talking, but the kid in me knows what it’s like to be in Mary’s place.  Anyone who has found themselves in an unfamiliar situation can understand.  I didn’t have the money, or the neglectful parents by any means, but In 13 years of public education, I went to seven different schools.  Every other year or so I would be dropped into a new group of kids who were together from Kindergarten, and trying to find a place. I had “thin hair, a thin face… and a sour expression.” I couldn’t throw a pillow at the new faces, or run off to a walled garden, but I knew what that felt like: an angry, scared outsider, in need of a friend, even if that friend was as angry and scared as I was.

Mary isn’t Sara Crewe from Hodgson’s arguably as famous, A Little Princess.  Almost everyone loved Sara.  She had a well of optimism and hope I couldn’t muster.  Mary is where I was, and a part of me still cringes a little about how Colin becomes the focus in the last few pages of A Secret Garden. A thousand times in my head, I wanted to throw a pillow back at him.  The story is Mary’s.  She’s the one I understand, even if I don’t understand how to correctly enunciate the Yorkshire accent of Dickon or Martha.

I even love the copy of the book I’ve had for those 25+ years.  There’s a typo on page 176 where Colin’s name is spelled with a double-l.  I forgive the book the mistake.  It’s part of what makes it mine, and how I wish everyone would treat mistakes: the story still goes on.

I love how the illustrations of Mary show the change from the sour, scrawny child, to the happy and healthy one.  I can’t replace my copy, as so many of the other editions have illustrations I either can’t stand, or don’t want to like because it’s not the same.  It’s not my copy.