Burnett uses Yorkshire idioms in several places in The Secret Garden to denote the response the people of Misselthwaite Manor and its surrounding area have to Mary Lennox. Using local idiom in this way allows the reader a glimpse into the mindset of the Yorkshire characters and allows the author to lend a bit of local color to interactions as small as thoughts. When Mrs. Medlock is bringing Mary home to the manor for the first time, she observes her discontentedly and makes use of the word "marred," which is a Yorkshire term that means spoiled and pettish:
Mary sat in her corner of the railway carriage and looked plain and fretful. Her black dress made her look yellower than ever, and her limp light hair straggled from under her black crêpe hat. “A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life,” Mrs. Medlock thought.
The word "marred" is often spelled and used as "mardy" and connotes someone who is sulky or whining. Used in this way, however, it associates Mary's physical appearance with her unpleasant demeanor, as "marred" in standard English means "sullied" or "disfigured."
Fittingly, all the language Burnett uses to describe Mary in this segment is of ugliness and disorganisation. She is "plain and fretful" even when sitting still, with "straggling" hair that sits "limp" on her ugly dress. It would be hard to imagine a less sympathetic depiction of a young child by a narrator. The narrator in The Secret Garden, in this and many other parts of the first half of the novel, is tonally very unsympathetic to Mary. Burnett does this to engage her audience in Mary's selfishness and bad upbringing, and to make young readers think carefully about the choices she is making in her speech and behavior.
In the early part of the novel, when Mary has only just come to Misselthwaite, she thinks she can behave like she did in the India of her childhood. Beginning in Chapter 4, Burnett uses an idiomatic phrase from the Victorian period to denote instances when Mary expects something to be done for her. Her English servants and counterparts find this idiom baffling:
“Why doesn’t tha’ put on tha’ own shoes?” she said when Mary quietly held out her foot. “My Ayah did it,” answered Mary, staring. “It was the custom.” She said that very often—“It was the custom.” The native servants were always saying it. If one told them to do a thing their ancestors had not done for a thousand years they gazed at one mildly and said, “It is not the custom” and one knew that was the end of the matter.
Ironically, when this phrase is being explained here, it seems like something the Indian servants would have said to Mary in order not to do what she wanted them to do. This is situationally ironic because Mary is utilizing a phrase her servants always used as an excuse to not do something—and yet, Mary now uses the very same phrase to convince somebody else to do something for her.
Mary doesn't want to change her behavior initially because she has no idea that it's even possible to do so. She has, like Colin Craven, been coddled her whole life and given whatever she asks for. When this phrase comes up, it is usually in situations where Mary does have to get used to English customs. Mary believes this phrase denotes superiority, but to people like Martha who have been raised to be independent, it makes her seem weak and helpless.
The phrase "new things" is repeated many times in The Secret Garden, and occurs always when Mary Lennox encounters someone else's behavior that makes her stop and reflect on her own. Burnett's novel employs a few phrases that work like this, forming a shorthand for a much larger concept that would belabor the point if explained to the reader every time. An example of this idiomatic motif happens when Martha scolds Mary for being unable to dress herself properly in Chapter 6:
“Hasn’t tha’ got good sense?” she said once, when Mary had stood waiting for her to put on her gloves for her. “Our Susan Ann is twice as sharp as thee an’ she’s only four year’ old. Sometimes tha’ looks fair soft in th’ head.” Mary had worn her contrary scowl for an hour after that, but it made her think several entirely new things.
When Martha compares Mary to her much younger sister, who is "only four year' old" to Mary's 10, she makes her feel ashamed. The idiomatic phrase Martha uses here, "Hasn't tha' got good sense?" refers to the idea that, because she hasn't been taught how to take care of herself, Mary is missing fundamental qualities of common sense that even a toddler would have. This provokes Mary's "contrary scowl," but instead of just making her cross, it makes her change.
Burnett implies much later in the book that Mary's "disagreeable" thoughts were taking up too much "space" in her head to allow for good thoughts and common sense. In Chapter 27, she writes:
So long as Mistress Mary’s mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to be pleased by or interested in anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly, bored, and wretched child.
The fact that trying to "think new things" improves both Mary's mind and her body, "correcting" her "yellow face" and "sickliness," is another reference to Burnett's interest in Christian Science. Rather than having to be told that she is spoiled or that she should change, when Mary "thinks new things" in The Secret Garden, the author is implying that her mind and her worldview are expanding. When she stops focusing on her "dislikes and sour opinions of people," she is quite literally changing her own mind for the better. This happens most explicitly in the beginning of Chapter 27, when Burnett outlines the book's central idea of the "power of thoughts," explicitly discussing that central theme in the novel:
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body.
Bad thoughts here are themselves approached using similes in medical and technical language, equating them to dangerous childhood illnesses like "scarlet fever." Thoughts have "power" like batteries, risks like "poison," and benefits like "sunlight" does.
The phrase "new things" is repeated many times in The Secret Garden, and occurs always when Mary Lennox encounters someone else's behavior that makes her stop and reflect on her own. Burnett's novel employs a few phrases that work like this, forming a shorthand for a much larger concept that would belabor the point if explained to the reader every time. An example of this idiomatic motif happens when Martha scolds Mary for being unable to dress herself properly in Chapter 6:
“Hasn’t tha’ got good sense?” she said once, when Mary had stood waiting for her to put on her gloves for her. “Our Susan Ann is twice as sharp as thee an’ she’s only four year’ old. Sometimes tha’ looks fair soft in th’ head.” Mary had worn her contrary scowl for an hour after that, but it made her think several entirely new things.
When Martha compares Mary to her much younger sister, who is "only four year' old" to Mary's 10, she makes her feel ashamed. The idiomatic phrase Martha uses here, "Hasn't tha' got good sense?" refers to the idea that, because she hasn't been taught how to take care of herself, Mary is missing fundamental qualities of common sense that even a toddler would have. This provokes Mary's "contrary scowl," but instead of just making her cross, it makes her change.
Burnett implies much later in the book that Mary's "disagreeable" thoughts were taking up too much "space" in her head to allow for good thoughts and common sense. In Chapter 27, she writes:
So long as Mistress Mary’s mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to be pleased by or interested in anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly, bored, and wretched child.
The fact that trying to "think new things" improves both Mary's mind and her body, "correcting" her "yellow face" and "sickliness," is another reference to Burnett's interest in Christian Science. Rather than having to be told that she is spoiled or that she should change, when Mary "thinks new things" in The Secret Garden, the author is implying that her mind and her worldview are expanding. When she stops focusing on her "dislikes and sour opinions of people," she is quite literally changing her own mind for the better. This happens most explicitly in the beginning of Chapter 27, when Burnett outlines the book's central idea of the "power of thoughts," explicitly discussing that central theme in the novel:
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body.
Bad thoughts here are themselves approached using similes in medical and technical language, equating them to dangerous childhood illnesses like "scarlet fever." Thoughts have "power" like batteries, risks like "poison," and benefits like "sunlight" does.
