(Author's Note: WARNING. Spoilers to the book and movie adaption are included.)
As an avid reader and someone who enjoys classic novels, especially children’s classics, I selected to read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I was super excited with my choice and Burnett did a splendid job with this novel. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the novel as it took me about two days to read (in the free time I had). I vaguely remembered the details of this story prior to this reading as I believed I had read it long ago when I was a child. However, from the moment I started reading, this book enthralled me. While some parts, the ending included, were a little predictable, she did a great job with this plot for writing this novel in 1911.
To be blunt, I (for the most part) disliked watching The Secret Garden movie. I selected the 1993 film adaption as it was the most recent and was the most popular of the other adaptions. It’s not particularly a horrible movie, but it doesn’t follow the book enough for my tastes. This adaption received great review (about 8.5/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) and is better as a stand-alone movie. Most of the main details of the story were included in the movie, but there was important characters and their development missing. On top of this, the details of the stories were out of place as many things did not line up with the event timeline of the novel.
To start the movie seemed alright. The parents of the main character Mary Lennox were given the same standoffish, bad parent vibe like the book gave them. However, in the novel, everyone in the Lennox household dies from the spread of cholera, whereas there was a deadly earthquake that killed off the people in the movie. Once everybody died, Burnett wrote that Mary stayed in her room, unaware of everyone’s death, only to be found by some officers. The movie skips over this completely, going straight to her arrival in England. As soon she has arrived, Mrs. Medlock fetches her to take her to Misselthwaite Manor, home to her uncle Archibald Craven. The movie follows the book with this.
After settling in Misselthwaite Manor, Mary is to meet Martha Sowerby the following morning. Martha is supposed to be tending to the fire and be someone who tells Mary how it is. When Mary expects to be waited on like she was in India and acts out because of her temper, Martha sort of puts her in her place, telling Mary how she ought to act her age. Martha seemed to be young, but much older than Mary; around her very late teens to early twenties. In the film, Martha is more persuaded and seems weak in the sense that she won’t put Mary in her place. Her character seemed to be very young in the film, she looked as if she was maybe 4-6 years older, much like a teenager. Along with this not-so-great character choice or development, the way the movie portrayed Mrs. Medlock was absolutely horrendous. Mrs. Medlock was supposed to be strict to certain extents as she is Mary’s uncle, Archibald Craven’s servant. Mrs. Medlock sees Mary as a troublesome child at first as Mary seems to be curious and stick her nose in places they shouldn’t be. While this is true at first, Mrs. Medlock becomes more friendly and likable as the story progresses as she sees the good in Mary and how she helps Misselthwaite Manor. In the movie, Mrs. Medlock is made out to be a sort of villain. She is portrayed in such a bad light and is not meant to be. The movie, at one point, has her locking up Mary in her room because she thinks that Mary is a “wild child” wreaking havoc in the manor. Mrs. Medlock also slaps Martha across the face in the film which NEVER happens in the novel. I was outraged in the way the movie approached in portraying Mrs. Medlock.
Another thing that really ground my gears, other than the things I already stated, was the way in the film did not follow the way in which Mary met Dickon. Burnett wrote Mary to meet Dickon after hearing about him from his sister, Martha, and after finding the garden. Mary was to have met him when he brought her seeds from the market per Martha’s request. In the film, Mary wanders through the garden and sees a boy running by who she ends up chasing due to her curiosity. (IT'S JUST ALL WRONG.) Mary was supposed to learn all about him from Martha and sort of form a feeling of animosity towards him before every encountering him. The movie did a horrible job with this as very little of the book was followed for this.
In the book, Dickon and Martha’s mother plays a role in aiding Mary’s character development. Their mother speaks to Mr. Craven telling him what he should do for his niece. She buys Mary a skipping rope that Martha delivers, and sends fresh bread and milk with Dickon every day for Mary and then Colin later on, as they are growing children, getting healthier and stronger as the novel progresses. I really liked the mother and the film DID NOT mention her at all. She made no appearance liked I hoped she would, but I at least expected them to at least talk about her since she is important. But no, they didn’t even mention her in the movie.
A more minor detail that was still sort of important to the story (in my opinion) is that Mary is supposed to meet her uncle Archibald Craven before she meets her secret cousin Colin. The scenes played out like the books for the most part, but the film switched these up, having Mary meet Colin first. If someone hadn’t read the novel beforehand this wouldn’t matter much, but as someone who read the novel before watching it this really bugged me.
The key to the garden, one of the most important pieces in the novel was not correctly placed in the movie. Burnett wrote that Mary finds the key because of the robin. Her curiosity and desire to enter the secret garden that was closed up for 10 years is what pushes her to follow the robin who seems to understand Mary's hope to find it. The robin then ends up at a hole outside the garden's wall that seems to have been dug by a dog. At first, Mary only notices that there is something shiny in the hole. It is after she pulls the shiny object out of the hole that she realizes its the key to the garden. However, the movie totally messed this entire discovery up. Mary wanders through the house through a secret door in her room (which wasn’t in the book either) and stumbles into the late Mrs. Craven’s room. It is while she snoops through Mrs. Craven’s belongings that she finds the key in a jewelry box. Not only does she find it inside rather than outside, this scene also occurs before she finds or even hears about the secret garden at Misselthwaite Manor. Mary doesn’t take the key, but she returns later to retrieve after she finds the garden. While this might seem frivolous to some, this is a KEY point (pun intended) in the novel and should be correctly represented in the novel.
Character-wise, the film did a mediocre job with the portrayal of the three main children, Mary Lennox, Dickon Sowerby, and Colin Craven. The actors they chose did a relatively good job in presenting their character and their character’s development in the film. However, for the most part, this movie was not close enough to the book and I would not recommend it to those who have read the book as it will be a major let down in that aspect.
