Bella’s Reviews > The Secret Garden > Status Update

”But the calm had brought a sort of courage and hope with it. Instead of giving way to thoughts of the worst he actually found he was trying to believe in better things.”

(p.283)

”…He had not been courageous; he had never tried to put any other thoughts in the place of the dark ones. […] A terrible sorrow had fallen upon him when he had been happy and he had let his soul fill itself with blackness and had refused obstinately to allow any rift of light to pierce through.” (p.276)

”While the secret garden was coming alive and two children were coming alive with it, there was a man wandering about certain far-away beautiful places in the Norwegian fjords and the valleys and mountains of Switzerland, and he was a man who for ten years had kept his mind filled with dark and heart-broken thinking…”

”To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live. ”

"Where you tend a rose, my lad,
A thistle cannot grow."

(p.274-275)

Mary: “[…] but I was thinking just then that it must have been very horrid to have had to be polite for ten years to a boy who was always rude. I would never have done it."

Am I rude?" Colin inquired undisturbedly.

"If you had been his own boy and he had been a slapping sort of man," said Mary, "he would have slapped you."
(p.228)

That last part made me laugh!

“Mary had indeed been rather like him herself and since she had been at Misselthwaite had gradually discovered that her own manners had not been of the kind which is usual or popular. Having made this discovery she naturally thought it of enough interest to communicate to Colin.”
(p.228)

”It was an agreeable idea; easily carried out, and when the white cloth was spread upon the grass, with hot tea and buttered toast and crumpets, a delightfully hungry meal was eaten, and several birds on domestic errands paused to inquire what was going on […]” (p.214)

There’s something about this scene that feels so cosy, I can just imagine it, it takes me back to when I was a kid.

"Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My father won't let people talk me over, either. The servants are not allowed to speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan't live. My father hates to think I may be like him."
(p.125)

“Mary had not known that she herself had been spoiled, but she could see quite plainly that this mysterious boy had been. He thought that the whole world belonged to him. How peculiar he was and how coolly he spoke of not living.”
(p.129)

We find out that Colin is ill and an “invalid” and he has spent most of his life indoors, he tells Mary that he’s going to die soon. Why and what kind of illness he has, that we don’t know. Also, he’s spoiled and used to getting what he wants.

"Everyone is obliged to please me. I told you that," he said. "If I were to live, this place would sometime belong to me. They all know that.“