the secret garden a little princess frances hodgson burnett

Soon, she comes to enjoy the company of Martha, the gardener Ben Weatherstaff and a friendly robin redbreast. Mary becomes interested in finding the secret garden herself, and her ill manners begin to soften as a result. Lilias Craven died after an accident in the garden ten years prior, and the devastated Archibald locked the garden and buried the key. Over time, she becomes less temperamental and befriends her maid, Martha Sowerby, who tells Mary about Lilias, who would spend hours in a private walled garden growing roses. She dislikes her new home, the people living in it and, most of all, the bleak moor on which it sits. When escorted to Misselthwaite by the housekeeper Mrs Medlock, she discovers Lilias Craven is dead and that Mr Craven is a hunchback.Īt first, Mary is as sour and rude as ever. He lives on the Yorkshire Moors in a large English country house, Misselthwaite Manor.

She is soon sent to England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven, whom her father's sister Lilias married. She is discovered by British soldiers who place her in the temporary care of an English clergyman, whose children taunt her by calling her ' Mistress Mary, quite contrary'. After a cholera epidemic kills Mary's parents, the few surviving servants flee the house without Mary. She is cared for primarily by native servants, who allow her to become spoilt, demanding and self-centred. At the turn of the 20th century, Mary Lennox is a neglected and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in British India to wealthy British parents who never wanted her and made an effort to ignore her.

The secret garden a little princess frances hodgson burnett