Both Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, written in 1911, and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, written in 1868, have remained among the most read and best loved children's classics for decades. Although both novels are set in the times in which they were written and therefore do not provide modern readers with an intimately familiar setting, the characters and values the novels present are as real and as relevant today as they were when first created, and it is this quality which charms children of the 1990's as much as it charmed their great-grandparents. This research will explore the similarities between The Secret Garden and Little Women and identify the factors which make them such enduring children's classics.
One reason the books likely remain so popular is that both of them feature strong, independent-minded girls as their central characters. In The Secret Garden, the heroine is Mary Lennox, introduced as "the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen" (Burnett 1). The unwanted child of a well-to-do English couple living in India, young Mary is left to the care of servants who indulge her every whim out of fear; before long, Mary grows into "as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived" (Burnett 2). It is her domineering, egocentric nature, however, which allows her to survive the death of her parents and the long, solitary days she endures after relocating to Misselthwaite Manor. Young readers may not admire everything Mary says and does, but they can no doubt identify with (and perhaps envy) the stubbornness and sense of self which make Mary a survivor.
Mary is not at first a likeable character; in addition to the unflattering descriptions quoted above, it is revealed that although her mother had died, Mary "did not miss her at all" (Burnett 7). As the story progresses, however, Mary grows tremendously and becomes more and more likable; not only does she develop close, affectionate attachmen...