The Secret Garden

And then she took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk to see if any one was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did come, it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could not help it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the door which opened slowly--slowly.

Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excitement, and wonder, and delight.

She was standing inside the secret garden.

I re-read this book by Frances Hodgson Burnett from time to time--like many of my favorite books, it's because it doesn't always work that I think I like it so much. The parts of the book that I love are the strange, magical scenes: the scene in India at the beginning where Mary Lennox finds herself abandoned by adults during a cholera epidemic; the wonderful, creepy Gothicky house in Yorkshire to which she's taken and her first meeting with Colin there; and of course her discovery of the secret garden itself.

The other stuff--wholesome Dickon and his family (and I do love the depiction of a working family, by the way), Colin getting better and his reconciliation with his father, and all the stuff about growing things--well, it's what the story is about, isn't it? The garden comes back to life as Mary and Colin heal themselves. (I just read yesterday, by the way, that Frances Hodgson Burnett was a Christian Scientist, which explains a lot of the mind-body stuff.) But I find the "healed" garden is just another pretty, manicured garden. It's disappointing. It's a safe, tamed garden with none of the wildness and mystery of the locked, secret garden.

Look at the potent images Burnett uses--the walled garden and the rose, both symbolic of the Virgin Mary and virginity in Christianity; and the rose, a symbol of eroticism in Kabbalistic and Islamic mythology. And above all, a wilderness of thorns, like the protective hedge that grew around the virginal Sleeping Beauty's castle. A pre-pubescent girl unlocks the secret of the garden, but we learn later that the garden killed Colin's mother--oh, no, she had sex (presumably) so she must die! On the other hand there's an idealized, fertile earth mother figure, Mrs. Sowerby (Dickon's mother), but I can't recall any mention of Dickon's father. All rather icky, isn't it?

I can't help wondering what happens to Mary, Colin, and Dickon when they grow up. I've always felt that Mary and Colin are destined for one of those marriages between cousins that the English upper-classes liked so much (keeps it in the family, don't you know). Dickon--not a chance, although I'm sure we could think of something to keep the three of them together.

Despite its peculiarities, I love this book for its richness of language, the wonderful descriptions of places and animals in particular. Your thoughts?

One-and-a-half-handed reading

For me the writing process started a long, long time ago, even if I didn't actually begin writing until fairly recently--rather like Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm (one of my favorite books) who claims that she's going to gather material and then, when she's fifty, write a book as good as Mansfield Park. I believe voice is something you accumulate from your experiences, culture, and above all, your reading. And since we've been talking quite a bit here about what books we read in our formative years that have stayed with us and made us into the filthmongers we are, I thought I'd share mine.

The dirty book of my generation was Lady Chatterley's Lover. Copies of it, pawed over so much they fell open at the "good bits," were passed around surreptitiously at my all-girls high school (a very old-fashioned place with uniforms, lesbian gym teachers, the lot). All those rude words! All that running around in the rain with flowers in places flowers don't usually go! Pics here are from the BBC's Lady Chatterley's Lover (1992) starring the lovely and talented Sean Bean and directed by Ken Russell, who also directed one of my favorite movies of all time, Women in Love. And here's a very Ken-Russell-like shot from the production. But seriously, who doesn't fantasize about naked men crucified with flowers while out on a quiet afternoon hack?

Trouble is, D. H. Lawrence got women's sexuality all wrong, in my opinion--poor old Connie doesn't have a "proper" orgasm until she allows the virile working-class gamekeeper into her mantrap. No kidding, he and Freud were responsible for a generation (at least) of Englishmen's incompetent fumbling. (Well, you didn't come because you're not a real woman. Of course they wouldn't admit to wanting to sleep with their mum...) On the other hand, you have to (almost) forgive someone who could write this (quoted by Alan Bates in Women in Love--you must see that movie):

The proper way to eat a fig, in society
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled, four-petalled flower.

Oh, wow. Read the whole poem, Figs, here. There's some wonderful stuff before he goes into a DHL-like rant, as he tends to, and apologies to those who've heard all this before from me.

As for other early influences, Jane Eyre, of course. All that...discipline. I do hope we'll talk about Jane Eyre later--it's worth at least one post and lots of discussion, but I'll share this with you. Last year, some letters came to light that suggested Charlotte Bronte barely escaped court action over her portrayal of Lowood School and Mr. Brocklehurst. You can read the whole story here.


And another book I've always loved, The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, is absolutely fascinating and I'll talk about that next time.

Thoughts, anyone?

And you do know the difference between erotica and pornography, don't you? If you need two hands to hold the book, it's erotica ...