Overview
In this comprehensive study of Burnett's masterwork, its literary milieu, and its enthusiastic, if belated, critical treatment, Phyllis Bixler argues that Burnett adapted themes and forms from fairy tales and moral tales about exemplary children to create a compelling story. Bixler discusses Burnett's debt to the romantic movement and the long western tradition of literary pastoral, showing how its association of childhood and garden makes Burnett's children's classic a bridge between the romantic and such hallmarks of the moderns T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Bixler addresses the mythic appeal of The Secret Garden, and its description and encouragement of children's self-reliance.
