Watched The Secret Garden film. Like many illustrated versions of the book, it tries to dodge the racism within the original story. Indian people don’t speak in the film - but nor are they slapped or described as ‘not people’.

Not altogether clear why the shift from the height of colonialism to the moment of independence. It allows Misselthwaite Manor to be a place where British soldiers recuperated in WWII.

This is the only social history we learn of the house. The actual house and garden that inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett was built initially from money made from piracy, it seems.

When France Hodgson Burnett stayed there Maytham Hall was owned by Jack Tennant. Tennant’s uncle is understood to have made a fortune in the trading of enslaved Africans.

In the casting of Black actors to play Dickon and Martha, and in Mary telling Rama & Sita stories, we are offered a version of the story shaped by multiculturalism rather than FHB’s apparent contempt for India, which she never visited.

The theme of cultivation is lost somewhat, I think. The children don’t seem to have to work to revive the garden as they do in the book (where we are told that nothing can be grown in India).

The original book came out (with a different name) in 1911 - the same year that Kipling’s The Glory of the Garden was published in his ‘A School History of England’ co-written with CRL Fletcher. http://eng-poetry.ru/english/Poem.php?PoemId=11006

The themes of Christianity, English exceptionalism and a clear social order can, I think, be seen in both works. Dickon works hard to help Mary so that Colin is renewed and can inherit the house.