School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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Item'Gay, innocent and heartless': the ideal child in The Secret Garden( 2013)This thesis argues that the ideal child in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, The Secret Garden (1911), is ultimately not a child but a young man capable of leading Britain into the future. It examines the figure of the ideal child within the context of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. My methodology involves the use of J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911) to identify the investments that were made in the ideal child figure, and to identify what threatens these investments. These investments reveal the ‘adult-child dynamic’, or the power relationship between adult desires and constructions of children. The thesis investigates the influence of the adult-child dynamic in the condemnation of particular kinds of children. I then apply these insights to analyse the narrative representation of Mary Lennox, Burnett’s female protagonist, comparing it with that of Colin Craven, her sickly cousin. The thesis also applies Michel Foucault’s study of the panopticon to the novel to reveal the function of the child in the adult-child dynamic, examining how Mary, a failed child, is transformed through the English, adult gaze into an acceptable child. By revealing who is given the authority to use the adult gaze, the thesis connects the adult-child dynamic with national and imperial discourse of early twentieth-century England. An examination of the meanings of food and air in the mental and physical transformations of the two children is also included. The narrative use of food and air is studied for its support of imperial values and discourses, as seen in the difference between Mary and Colin’s transformed bodies and attitudes. This reveals the ways in which the expectations of the two children differ: while Mary merely becomes more pleasing, Colin comes to embody hope for his community at Misselthwaite Manor. This, I argue, demonstrates that the novel’s primary concern is not Mary but Colin. It is Colin who, like the Lost Boys in Peter and Wendy, is freighted with the responsibility of representing the English nation and its future.