英文兒童文學-17－庭秀的部落格

English Children's Literature (Week Seventeen)

The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was initially published in serial format starting in the autumn of 1910, and was first published in its entirety in 1911. It is now one of Burnett's most popular novels, and is considered to be a classic of English children's literature. Several stage and film adaptations have been produced.

Plot summary

Mary Lennox is a very troubled, sickly, and unloved 10-year-old girl who was born in India to selfish, wealthy British parents who never wanted her and were too wrapped up in their own lives to love or care about her. She was taken care of primarily by servants, who pacified her as much as possible to keep her out of her parents' way. Spoiled and selfish, she is aggressive, surly, rude, and obstinate. Later, there is a cholera epidemic which hits India and kills her parents and all the servants. She is discovered alone but alive after the house is empty. She briefly lives with an English clergyman and his family and is then sent to Yorkshire, England, to live with Archibald Craven, an uncle she has never met, at his home called Misselthwaite Manor.

At first, Mary is her usual self, sour and rude, disliking her uncle's large house, the people within it and most of all the vast stretch of moor, which seems scrubby and grey after the winter. She is told that she must stay confined to her two rooms and that nobody will bother much with her and she must amuse herself. Martha Sowerby, a good-natured maid, tells Mary a story of the late Mrs. Craven and how she would spend hours in a private walled garden growing roses. Later, Mrs. Craven fell to her death when she sat on a tree branch that broke under her weight, and Mr. Craven had the garden locked and the key buried. Mary is roused by this story and starts to soften her ill manner despite herself. Soon, she begins to lose her disposition and gradually comes to enjoy the company of Martha, Ben Weatherstaff the gardener, and also that of a friendly robin redbreast, to whom she attaches human qualities. Her appetite increases and she finds herself getting stronger as she plays by herself on the moor. Martha's mother buys Mary a skipping rope to encourage this, and she takes to it immediately. Mary's time is occupied by wondering about the secret garden and a strange crying sound that can sometimes be heard around the house which the servants ignore or deny.

As Mary is exploring the gardens, she is alerted to some turned up soil by the inquisitive robin, and finds a key belonging to the locked garden, and, next day, the door into the garden. She chances to ask Martha for garden tools, which Martha has delivered by Dickon, her twelve-year-old brother. Mary and Dickon take a liking to each other, as Dickon has a soft way with animals and a good nature. Eager to absorb his gardening knowledge, Mary lets him into the secret of the garden, which he agrees to keep secret.

That night, Mary hears the crying again. She follows the noise and, to her surprise, finds a small boy her age, living in a hidden bedroom. His name is Colin and she discovers that they are cousins: he is the son of her uncle; his mother died when he was a baby, and he suffers from an unspecified problem with his spine. Mary visits every day that week, distracting him from his troubles with stories of the moor, of Dickon and his animals and of the garden. It is decided he needs fresh air and the secret garden, to which Mary finally admits she has access. Colin is put into his wheelchair and brought outside into the garden, the first time he has been outdoors in years.

While in the garden, the children are surprised to see Ben Weatherstaff looking over the wall on a ladder. Startled and angry to find the children there in his late mistress' (Colin's mother's) garden he admits he believed Colin to be a cripple. Colin stands up out of his chair to prove him wrong and finds that his legs are fine, though weak from not using them for a long time.

Colin spends every day in the garden, becoming stronger. The children conspire to keep Colin's health a secret so he can surprise his father, who is travelling and mourning over his late wife. As Colin's health improves, his father's mood does as well, and he has a dream of his wife calling him into the garden and a letter that Martha's mother wrote to him, makes him immediately pack his bags and head home. He walks the outer wall in memory but hears voices inside, finds the door unlocked and is shocked to see the garden in full bloom with children in it and his son running around. The servants watch as Mr. Craven walks back to the manor, and all are stunned that Colin runs beside him.

Major themes

Abandonment

At the start of The Secret Garden, Mary Lennox is nine years old. Nine! We're adding an exclamation point because, when you remember how young she is in that first chapter, it seems particularly ridiculous that no one remembers her when her parents both die and the servants flee the house due to cholera. In fact, the only reason Mary doesn't disappear entirely is because two army officers stumble upon her by accident when they visit the house after the death of the Lennoxes: "There is a child here! A child alone! In a place like this! Mercy on us, who is she!"

It's because Mary has spent all of her life being kept out of sight by her vain, self-absorbed mother that she turns into such a sour little kid. And of course, when we meet Colin, it's the same story all over again: His father can't deal with his grief, so he stows away his son at Misselthwaite Manor and spends as little time at home as possible. And this treatment makes Colin into a tantrum-throwing monster.

Because these children have been more or less abandoned (at least, until the Magic starts working to bring them into the Secret Garden), they have to find their own ways to connect with the larger world. Luckily for both of them, they meet the sensible Sowerbys, who put them on the right track toward nature-loving and good fellowship. But it's this theme of child neglect that makes The Secret Garden such a dark book at its heart.

The Home

The Secret Garden takes very seriously the idea that home is where the heart is: Mary lives in India for the majority of her life, but she doesn't seem to care at all when she leaves it behind. It's only as she starts to make friends and to care about the Secret Garden at Misselthwaite Manor that she finds any sense of home at all.

Similarly, Colin Craven lives his entirely life in the house where he was born, but it doesn't truly become home to him until he can find a way to connect emotionally with the grounds and with the ghost of his mother. So clearly, in this book home goes beyond the question of shelter or basic needs and becomes a matter of where you can find emotional support and care.

Isolation

Okay, Frances Hodgson Burnett might be rolling over in her grave at this comparison, but we think it works: Both Mary and Colin appear to suffer from the Batman problem in The Secret Garden. That is, they have both been left alone during important periods of their childhood, so they run the risk of turning into single-minded monsters. Of course, we're not suggesting that either of them are going to put on a bat suit and start fighting crime—for one thing, Colin wouldn't be physically capable of doing so when he first appears in the novel.

But the story of Batman is probably the clearest example we can imagine of what too much time alone can do to you: It can make you isolated, totally unable to integrate socially, and prickly and difficult to everyone around you. That sounds like Mary and Colin to us. Thank goodness they both find the Secret Garden and a group of friends.

Happiness

The Secret Garden really couldn't be clearer about its moral message if the book were called Happiness = Unselfishness. Basically, the secret to happiness in this book is to think less about yourself and more about the other people (and plants) around you. Mary and Colin are unhappy when they have nothing to think about but themselves, but Dickon and Mrs. Sowerby are both deeply happy because they have to bustle around taking care of the little Sowerbys.

While we really like this idea in general—yes, being selfish can make you unhappy and, alternately, thinking of others can make you happy—we do think it can come across as a bit pushy and overly idealized in this novel. Poor Mrs. Sowerby has twelve kids and no money; it seems a lot to expect that she should just enjoy her life all the time because she has so many other people to take care of. Surely people deserve to be selfish every once in a while.

Weakness

Who are the most powerful characters in The Secret Garden? We're definitely not talking about Archibald Craven, who spends most of his life running away from his responsibilities as a father, and it can't be Mrs. Medlock and Dr. Craven because they are both servants who aren't exactly dedicated or good at their jobs. No, arguably, the strongest character in the book is Dickon, with post-Magic Colin coming in a close second.

Dickon's ability to tame animals and befriend even the grumpiest of humans is like a superpower. After he starts discussing the Magic, Colin also becomes able to inspire Mary and even Ben Weatherstaff to participate in his kooky experiments.

And if strength for these characters comes from their interest in and love of the natural world, then weakness has to be the result of its opposite. When Mary and Colin first start off, they are both physically and emotionally weak. Mary can't dress herself, and Colin can't get out of bed on his own—so while they both have plenty of money, they are totally cut off from their natural interests. It's this sense of isolation from the natural world that leaves them both deeply weak; once they begin getting outside more, they recover the strength they should have had all along.

Man and the Natural World

If you take a minute to think about what a garden really is, you start to see some of the implied tension in this book between humans and the natural world. That is, a garden includes plants, so it is a part of the larger natural world. Importantly, though, a garden is also specifically arranged and kept up by humans. If humans leave a garden alone, it dies off and/or returns to its natural state.

So while a garden represents some kind of communion between humans and the world of growing plants, it also demonstrates our control over these plants and their growing patterns. And in fact, while The Secret Garden lovingly describes the spare, stark landscape of the Yorkshire moors, even that supposedly wild territory is absolutely under human control. Consider Dickon, who is constantly going in there and taming foxes and crows and ponies. Dickon is a great kid, but he is also regularly exerting human control over the natural world.

Now, don't get us wrong, we're not saying that any of this is a bad thing: We love gardens and tamed animals. But while Frances Hodgson Burnett writes often about the pleasure that her characters feel being outside in nature, all of these outdoor landscapes—and most especially the Secret Garden, with its walls—are carefully domesticated and kept under control. It's as though, for characters to feel most at home in the natural world, they have to bring it under their control. It's hard to image how this view of nature would adapt to include huge disasters like tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

Youth

The whole idea that childhood is a special time to be savored as separate from adulthood is basically a Victorian invention. Oh sure, humans have always had children (obviously), but we haven't always treated them as separate and distinct from adults. But in the Victorian and Edwardian periods (so, from the 1840s up until World War I), a whole new publishing industry emerged for fairy tales and novels like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan (which came out the same year as The Secret Garden, in 1911) that specifically emphasize the wonderful, imaginative time of childhood.

In some ways, Mary and Colin have to grow artificially into this idea of childhood as a carefree time. Martha describes Mary as "a queer, old-womanish thing" early on, before Mary learns to jump rope and have fun like a standard nine-year-old. And Colin obviously starts out as super-serious and difficult as they come, but then evolves into the boy running races in the Secret Garden who ends the novel. This characterization implies that Frances Hodgson Burnett is aware that children often don't fit into the stereotype of the angelic, fancy-free kid—but that she strongly feels that they should, if at all possible.

Contrasting Regions: India and England

Mary Lennox is an Anglo-Indian child, which means that her parents are both English but she was born in colonial India. This implies a whole set of hierarchical relations that are as rigid as any of the English class lines that keep Mary and Martha apart at the start of The Secret Garden.

By the time Mary makes it over to Yorkshire in Chapter 3, we know how she expects to treat "native" (that is, Indian) servants. Apparently, she has gotten used to beating and kicking her Indian nannies (called "Ayahs") without any kind of punishment at all. And the book clearly does not approve of Mary's behavior; her sourness is no excuse for abuse.

At the same time, the novel's portrayal of India contains a lot of subtle prejudice. The idea that these Indian servants would just sit and take Mary's nonsense (unlike good old English Martha Sowerby) because they "were obsequious and servile and did not presume to talk to their masters as if they were their equals" is a huge stereotype. Basically, Frances Hodgson Burnett is saying that these Indian servants were huge suck-ups who would never dream of disciplining Mary, while "we" English people would never stand for such treatment.

Not only is this premise totally racist, it overlooks the strong history of Indian resistance to British rule from the 1857 Rebellion of the Indian army onward. Mahatma Gandhi was already working for Indian liberation by the time The Secret Garden was published in 1911, for Pete's sake, and he was about as far from "servile" as it's possible to get.

Not only does The Secret Garden stereotype English people, but it also uses a lot of incorrect clichés about the Indian climate. As Mary adapts to England, she finds the weather itself to be fresher and healthier. She draws a contrast to India, where "she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything"

The idea that India itself helped to make Mary sick at the start of the novel is based on a lot of English assumptions about the tropics as a place of fevers and sickness. So again, offensive stereotypes are used to draw a contrast between where Mary starts (a hot climate with "servile" nannies) and where she winds up (a cool climate with friendly, straightforward servants).

As the novel continues, Mary continues to refer to the cultures of India that she saw as a child. She describes Dickon as an animal charmer and Colin as a "Rajah," a kind of young king. But these images are also deeply generic and say nothing of genuine depth about India or the people who live there. Mary's Indian references gives the novel an exotic touch according to the Euro-centric tastes of Frances Hodgson Burnett's contemporary readers, but none of those elements age well in today's political climate.

Main character

Mary Lennox - One of the novel's two protagonists, Mary Lennox is a ten-year-old girl who, after the death of her parents in India, is sent to live with her uncle in Yorkshire, England. Mary changes drastically over the course of The Secret Garden: she evolves from a spoiled, unloved and unloving creature to a girl who is full of spirit and surrounded by friends. She begins the book as its central character, but is later displaced by Colin.

Colin Craven - The other of the novel's protagonists, Colin Craven is Archibald Craven's ten-year-old son and heir. He was born shortly after the death of his mother, and his father could not bear to look at him because of his resemblance to her. It is feared that he will grow to be a hunchback like his father, and he has been treated as an invalid since his birth. Colin's childhood has been entirely bedridden, and his servants have been commanded to obey his every whim. As a result, Colin is extremely imperious and gloomy; when we first meet him, he is certain he is going to die. By novel's end, however, he too will have undergone a transformation: he will have become a vigorous optimist, and will have won his father's love. Both his and Mary's conversions are effected by the magical properties inherent in the secret garden.

Dickon Sowerby - Dickon is alternately described as "a common moor boy" and "a Yorkshire angel"; he is both. Two years older than Colin and Mary, Dickon has lived on Missel Moor his entire life, and has a uniquely intimate relationship with the land. He is described as looking like the god Pan (the god of ...): he has rosy cheeks, rough curly hair, and blue eyes precisely the same color as the sky over the moor; he even carries a set of pan-pipes. Like Pan, he has the power to charm both animals and people: all the creatures who come close to him are instantly tamed, and he counts a fox, a crow, and two wild squirrels among his pets. His power to tame creatures works on Colin and Mary as well, and is one of the central causes of their wondrous transformations. He is the brother of Martha and the son of Susan.

Martha Sowerby - Mary's friend and maidservant, Martha is distinguished by her charming frankness and levelheaded approach to all aspects of life. Her simplicity and kindness are a great help to Mary upon the latter's arrival at Misselthwaite. In her very ordinariness, Martha represents the goodness of all the people of Yorkshire.

Ben Weatherstaff - Ben Weatherstaff is a gruff elderly gardener who is only permitted to stay at Misselthwaite because he was a favorite of the late Mistress Craven. He introduces Mary to the robin redbreast, and helps the children keep the secret of the garden. Ben himself clandestinely tended the garden during the ten years in which it was locked, out of love and loyalty for the Mistress Craven. Although he is rather rough, Ben's essential kindness is fundamental to his character.

Archibald Craven - The master of Misselthwaite Manor, who suffers from a crooked spine and general ill health. He has been in a crushing depression ever since the death of his wife, ten years before the novel begins. Archibald spends most of his time abroad, since he wants to see neither his house nor his son, Colin, because these remind him of his late wife. At novel's end, he undergoes a change of heart after his wife comes to him in a dream. Master Craven comes to embrace his son when he realizes that this latter is in perfect health.

Lilias Craven - Archibald's late wife, who died ten years before the outset of the novel. Her spirit is associated with both roses and the secret garden. Her portrait hangs in her son's room beneath a rose-colored curtain, and she is described by all who knew her as the gentlest, sweetest, and most beautiful of women. She represents an absent ideal.

Susan Sowerby - The mother of Martha and Dickon (as well as of twelve other children), Susan Sowerby functions as a symbol for the concept of motherhood itself. She is all-nurturing, all-knowing, and appears dressed in a hooded blue cloak like that of the Christian Virgin Mary (the mother of Jesus Christ). Both Mary and Colin express the wish that she were their mother; stories of her sustain each of them before their respective transformations.

Mrs. Medlock - The head of the servants at Misselthwaite Manor, Mrs. Medlock is distinguished by her punctilious obedience of all of Master Craven's odd rules. Beneath her rigid exterior, she, like all the people of Yorkshire, is basically kind. She and Susan Sowerby were friends in their girlhood.

Dr. Craven - Archibald's brother and Colin's uncle, he tends to Colin during the latter's illness. He is a bit stuffy and officious, and both Colin and Mary laugh at him at every opportunity. Described as a weak man, he half-hopes for Colin's death so that he might inherit Misselthwaite.

The Secret Garden (1993 film)

Director: Agnieszka Holland
Writers: Frances Hodgson Burnett (book), Caroline Thompson (screenplay)
Stars: Kate Maberly, Maggie Smith, Heydon Prowse |

The Secret Garden is a 1993 British drama fantasy film directed by Agnieszka Holland and starring Kate Maberly, Heydon Prowse, Andrew Knott, John Lynch and Maggie Smith. It was written by Caroline Thompson and based on the novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Young Adult Fiction

(a) Problem novel

(b) Initiation and Quest (Journey)

(d) Fantasy/Adventure (genre) 幻想/冒險

(e) Detective fiction (懸疑/推理小說)

Young adult fiction or young adult literature, often abbreviated as YA, is fiction written, published, or marketed to adolescents and young adults. The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) of the American Library Association (ALA) defines a young adult as someone between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Authors and readers of young teen (YA) novels often define the category as literature traditionally written for ages ranging from sixteen years to the early twenties, while Teen Adult Fiction is written for the ages of ten to fifteen. The terms young adult novel, juvenile novel, young adult book, etc. refer to the works in the YA category.

The subject matter and story lines of YA literature are typically consistent with the age and experience of the main character, but YA literature spans the spectrum of fiction genres. YA stories that focus on the specific challenges of youth are sometimes referred to as problem novels or coming-of-age novels. According to 2013 statistics by the speculative fiction publisher Tor Books, women outnumbered men by 68% to 32% among YA submissions to the publisher, a gender distribution converse to that observed in adult science fiction and most other fantasy.

“The Everlasting Childhood in a Picaresque Bildungsroman: Understanding

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,”-by Sun, T. S.

在《湯姆歷險記》裏，我們看到無論孩童主角(child protagonist)湯姆和他的死黨哈克或是反角(antagonist)印第安喬，都是主流社會下的弱勢族群，呼應了小孩原本在智識體能和經濟權威方面的無力。這也是許多兒童文學經典的共同點：這些主角們不是孤兒單親就是窮苦無依，要不然就是些極度孤絕的心靈，舉凡像哈利波特(Harry Potter)、《綠野仙蹤》的桃樂絲(Dorothy)、《秘密花園》的瑪麗(Mary Lenox)、爸爸命喪隔壁Mr. McGregor 菜園的彼得兔(Peter Rabbit) 、《小婦人》中的馬爾屈女孩(March girls)或是《漫遊奇境》的愛麗思(Alice)。小孩子最怕的荒涼和孤單，不被認同與沒有反應(unfair and ignore)，這本小說也多所著墨：譬如第三章「戰爭與愛情」中被冤枉打破糖罐的湯姆，「遠離那些男孩常聚集的地方，故意走到人煙罕至的荒涼處，以配合他當時尋求孤獨的心情。」或是在第七章「壁虱之戰與失戀」中自覺被湯姆背棄的蓓琪

Sherlock Holmes, the world's most famous literary detective.

Fictional character created by the Scottish writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The prototype for the modern mastermind detective, Holmes first appeared in Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887. As the world’s first and only “consulting detective,” he pursued criminals throughout Victorian and Edwardian London, the south of England, and continental Europe. Although the fictional detective had been anticipated by Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin and Émile Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq, Holmes made a singular impact upon the popular imagination and has been the most enduring character of detective fiction.

Dystopia

Dystopian novels depict a repressed society controlled by a select group, masking itself as an ideal society. The thing that fascinates me about dystopian novels is the tenacity of man’s free will that cannot be subjugated by anyone. Authors have taken different angles in tackling dystopian societies. To date, “ The Giver” remains to be my all-time favorite. However, I must say that “ The Hunger Games” trilogy took the dystopian genre to a whole new level.

Divergent

In the novel Divergent, the society is split into five different factions. At first, it seems like the five factions can all live together peacefully in a perfect society. Each faction has a role in society. Eventually, factions disagree and they go to war, showing that the society is not really a perfect one.

The Giver

The Giver is evident; as such novels often emphasize socialist values as a key aspect of their societies while showing the thin line between an orderly society and a repressive, dystopian one.

The Hunger Game

Collins portrays the government in The Hunger Games as a dictatorship, in which President Snow controls the entire country of Panem. This exposes governmental flaws that Collins writes in an exaggerated method, making the Panem government appear controlling of all sources of life, restricting freedom and inflicting misery to all citizens living within the government’s boundaries. By creating the hunger games, the government is able to monitor every single district and as Katniss states, “Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch—this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy” (Hunger Games 18). Collins creates this view of the government to reveal weaknesses in society’s government although not as extremely controlling as the Panem government. The actions and influences the Capitol has on the country reveal the dystopian views of government systems as a whole by mocking the amount of control a government system can have on their citizens.

The catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. A controversial novel originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage angst and alienation. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major languages.Around 250,000 copies are sold each year with total sales of more than 65 million books. The novel's protagonist Holden Caulfield has become an icon for teenage rebellion. The novel also deals with complex issues of identity, belonging, loss, and connection.

The novel was included on Time 's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923 and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, it was listed at #15 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

The Wisdom of Wilhelm Stekel

On page 188 of The Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Antolini shares the following quote with Holden: "'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.'" Say whether you agree or disagree with this definition of maturity, and give an example from real life that shows why you think this.

Popular child protagonist books we've learned!

pre/pri-beginning

primary school (n)小學

prior (a)在前的

prefix (n)字首

preschool (n)幼稚園

prewar (a)戰前的

prepay (v)預付

prefrontal (n)(a)額前骨;前額葉的

中間名的煩惱

外國人的中間名Middle name通常是父親的名字。以美國人的姓名為例，first name (given name) 只有一個字，middle name 可以多過一個，通常是一個中間名、Last name (family name) 通常是一個字。

對於中國人來說，這是個很大的問題，因為中國人沒有中間名，first name卻通常有兩個字，有些姓氏也有兩個字。香港的慣例是將兩個字合在一起，例如司徒，Szeto。但是，有些中國或者台灣譯名，將這個姓寫成兩個字，例如Si Tu。姓氏方面的問題不大，只要將兩個字合在一起，就不會有混亂，最慘是first name。

有些外國人會有 middle name，但 middle name 可用可不用，通常不見得要寫出來，寫出來時也常用一個字母縮寫代替，如 Wendi B. Heinzelman 表示其 middle name 是 B 開頭的某個名字。如果 first name 和 middle name 皆縮寫，就會成為 W. B. Heinzelman 或 Heinzelman, W. B.。

補充:上述Sherlock Holmes在台灣譯為福爾摩斯,事實上影集裡大家都稱他為"Sherlock"而非Holmes.