Burnett often uses similes that compare the moor surrounding Misselthwaite Manor to the sea, making its bareness and desolation at the beginning of the novel seem even more profound. Mary already feels stranded and isolated after the death of the life she knew in India. She is unsettled by the unfamiliar soundscape upon arriving in Yorkshire in Chapter 3, when she has to ask her caretaker Mrs. Medlock what she is hearing:
A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound. “It’s—it’s not the sea, is it?” said Mary, looking round at her companion. “No, not it,” answered Mrs. Medlock. “Nor it isn’t fields nor mountains, it’s just miles and miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on but wild ponies and sheep.” “I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water on it,” said Mary. “It sounds like the sea just now.”
Mary feels so lost and overwhelmed in her new situation that it makes sense that she would confuse the rolling landscape for the ocean. Burnett uses sea-like sensory language to evoke this comparison, as the wind is "wild" and "rushing" like the ocean around the carriage. The repetition in the phrase "miles and miles and miles of wild land" is almost childlike, evoking the plaintive feelings rising in the vulnerable Mary. As she is carried toward her new home by the carriage, she fantasizes about what surrounds her:
Mary felt as if the drive would never come to an end and that the wide, bleak moor was a wide expanse of black ocean through which she was passing on a strip of dry land.
The sensory image of the "black ocean" echoes the expanse of mourning "blackness" from which Mary has just come, and the expanse of blackness (a different sort of mourning) that she is just about to enter at Misselthwaite.
Burnett uses ocean imagery repeatedly in The Secret Garden to indicate the scale of the "dull purplish sea" of the hills and dales of the Yorkshire moors. This representation of the landscape as oppressively vast and undifferentiated is a common one in 19th- and 20th-century literature, which often employs these lonely areas as sites of horror or transformation. In this chapter, Mary has just come from over the sea in her journey from India, but she does not seem in the least bothered by the "long voyage." Given this, it is ironic that this new home she has found makes her feel more adrift and more surrounded by imaginary obstacles than she did before.
Burnett uses a simile to liken Archibald Craven's house Misselthwaite Manor to the covering of a coffin when Mary first arrives at her uncle's home in Chapter 3. As she and Mrs Medlock pass through the gates, the narrator tells us that:
[...] When the carriage passed through the park gates there was still two miles of avenue to drive through and the trees (which nearly met overhead) made it seem as if they were driving through a long dark vault. They drove out of the vault into a clear space and stopped before an immensely long but low-built house which seemed to ramble round a stone court.
This simile presents Misselthwaite manor as oppressive, dark, and tinged with grief and death before Mary even enters it. The "long dark" distance they drive up to the manor seems very foreboding, and the "long house" in front of them echoes that idea. Likening her arrival to a "vault" evokes the image of a burial vault, which is the airtight cover that used to be placed around coffins to stop gas and odors from escaping. Mary, it seems, is entering a suffocating trap.
The language in this simile could also refer to the inside of a church, as the "trees nearly meet overhead" like the ribs inside the roof of a cathedral. This imagery is hardly less cavernous or grim, as Mary is dressed in all black, is herself in mourning, and is entering (as she has only just learned) a household paralyzed by grief.
At the beginning of The Secret Garden the harsh and wintry weather of Yorkshire seems hostile to the young and intractable Mary Lennox. It is so different from the India of her childhood that it is actively frightening. In Chapter 13, she is especially unsettled by the wind blowing around the house:
She did not cry, but she lay and hated the sound of the heavily beating rain, she hated the wind and its “wuthering.” She could not go to sleep again. The mournful sound kept her awake because she felt mournful herself. If she had felt happy it would probably have lulled her to sleep. How it “wuthered” and how the big raindrops poured down and beat against the pane! “It sounds just like a person lost on the moor and wandering on and on crying,” [...]
The word "wuthering" describes the sound of strong gusts of wind shrieking and blustering. It's only now in common parlance from the acclaimed Charlotte Brontë novel also featuring Yorkshire weather, Wuthering Heights. The tumult Mary feels inside is echoed in the weather, and their mutual "mournfulness" preoccupies her.
Earlier, in Chapter 5, Burnett uses a simile to describe Misselthwaite Manor as being shaken and embattled by the wind in a threatening way, as if an unseen giant is "buffeting [...] and beating at the walls and trying to break in." Burnett makes the reader feel the enormity of the sound and the force of the wind with this language. Mary seems very small, and the forces around her comparatively huge.
However, later, when Mary feels more comfortable and at home, the sound of the wind becomes familiar to her. When she learns the word "wutherin'" from Martha (when it had previously only been used by the narrator), she is able to contextualize the sound in a way that now feels familiar and comforting rather than oppressive and foreign. She feels that it is "nice" to be inside and protected from it. The house's strength makes her feel "safe and warm" by comparison, "in a room with a red coal fire."
At the beginning of The Secret Garden the harsh and wintry weather of Yorkshire seems hostile to the young and intractable Mary Lennox. It is so different from the India of her childhood that it is actively frightening. In Chapter 13, she is especially unsettled by the wind blowing around the house:
She did not cry, but she lay and hated the sound of the heavily beating rain, she hated the wind and its “wuthering.” She could not go to sleep again. The mournful sound kept her awake because she felt mournful herself. If she had felt happy it would probably have lulled her to sleep. How it “wuthered” and how the big raindrops poured down and beat against the pane! “It sounds just like a person lost on the moor and wandering on and on crying,” [...]
The word "wuthering" describes the sound of strong gusts of wind shrieking and blustering. It's only now in common parlance from the acclaimed Charlotte Brontë novel also featuring Yorkshire weather, Wuthering Heights. The tumult Mary feels inside is echoed in the weather, and their mutual "mournfulness" preoccupies her.
Earlier, in Chapter 5, Burnett uses a simile to describe Misselthwaite Manor as being shaken and embattled by the wind in a threatening way, as if an unseen giant is "buffeting [...] and beating at the walls and trying to break in." Burnett makes the reader feel the enormity of the sound and the force of the wind with this language. Mary seems very small, and the forces around her comparatively huge.
However, later, when Mary feels more comfortable and at home, the sound of the wind becomes familiar to her. When she learns the word "wutherin'" from Martha (when it had previously only been used by the narrator), she is able to contextualize the sound in a way that now feels familiar and comforting rather than oppressive and foreign. She feels that it is "nice" to be inside and protected from it. The house's strength makes her feel "safe and warm" by comparison, "in a room with a red coal fire."
In Chapter 18, when Mary is describing her new friend Dickon to Colin Craven, she accidentally provokes Colin's jealousy by insisting that Dickon is "like an angel!" Burnett uses situational irony to amuse the reader in this instance, but also to illustrate Mary's real and unblemished love for this charming young Yorskhireman:
“He’s nicer than any other boy that ever lived!” she said. “He’s—he’s like an angel!” It might sound rather silly to say that but she did not care. “A nice angel!” Colin sneered ferociously. “He’s a common cottage boy off the moor!” “He’s better than a common Rajah!” retorted Mary. “He’s a thousand times better!”
The reader knows that Colin is jealous, as the narrator says so just before this, and Mary's comments just inflame this feeling. The narrator also wryly notes that this is hyperbole, as it's such strong praise that it "sounds rather silly to say." Dickon is of course not like an angel, but is in fact "a common cottage boy off the moor" with "ruddy" coloring and holes in his trousers.
However, this insult doesn't mean what Colin thinks it means. Dickon's excellent, loving, and "open" character makes him beloved by everyone and welcome everywhere. He is welcome both in Misselthwaite Manor and in the tiny cottages of Thwaite because of his unusually excellent qualities. He may be a cottage boy, but he is not a "common" one. Both the use of "angel" and "common cottage boy" are ironic in this instance: Dickon is both and neither.
Burnett uses irony here to demonstrate how little Colin and Mary understand their own feelings at this point and also to show Colin's possessive feelings over Mary. In Chapter 18, when Colin apologizes to Mary for his tantrum, the irony is resolved as he says:
“Well, it was rather funny to say it,” [...] “because his nose does turn up and he has a big mouth and his clothes have patches all over them and he talks broad Yorkshire, but—but if an angel did come to Yorkshire and live on the moor—if there was a Yorkshire angel—I believe he’d understand the green things and know how to make them grow and he would know how to talk to the wild creatures as Dickon does and they’d know he was friends for sure.”
As Colin is always being told that imperfections in his physical appearance represent faults in his character, the idea of calling a funny-looking child like Dickon an "angel" is quite alien to him. People who are very good and very beloved are, in his mind, supposed to be very beautiful as a result. He is able to recognize that Dickon's appearance doesn't mean anything about his personality in this hypothetical statement, with the caveat that Dickon would have to be a "Yorkshire" angel were he one at all.
In Chapter 18, when Mary is describing her new friend Dickon to Colin Craven, she accidentally provokes Colin's jealousy by insisting that Dickon is "like an angel!" Burnett uses situational irony to amuse the reader in this instance, but also to illustrate Mary's real and unblemished love for this charming young Yorskhireman:
“He’s nicer than any other boy that ever lived!” she said. “He’s—he’s like an angel!” It might sound rather silly to say that but she did not care. “A nice angel!” Colin sneered ferociously. “He’s a common cottage boy off the moor!” “He’s better than a common Rajah!” retorted Mary. “He’s a thousand times better!”
The reader knows that Colin is jealous, as the narrator says so just before this, and Mary's comments just inflame this feeling. The narrator also wryly notes that this is hyperbole, as it's such strong praise that it "sounds rather silly to say." Dickon is of course not like an angel, but is in fact "a common cottage boy off the moor" with "ruddy" coloring and holes in his trousers.
However, this insult doesn't mean what Colin thinks it means. Dickon's excellent, loving, and "open" character makes him beloved by everyone and welcome everywhere. He is welcome both in Misselthwaite Manor and in the tiny cottages of Thwaite because of his unusually excellent qualities. He may be a cottage boy, but he is not a "common" one. Both the use of "angel" and "common cottage boy" are ironic in this instance: Dickon is both and neither.
Burnett uses irony here to demonstrate how little Colin and Mary understand their own feelings at this point and also to show Colin's possessive feelings over Mary. In Chapter 18, when Colin apologizes to Mary for his tantrum, the irony is resolved as he says:
“Well, it was rather funny to say it,” [...] “because his nose does turn up and he has a big mouth and his clothes have patches all over them and he talks broad Yorkshire, but—but if an angel did come to Yorkshire and live on the moor—if there was a Yorkshire angel—I believe he’d understand the green things and know how to make them grow and he would know how to talk to the wild creatures as Dickon does and they’d know he was friends for sure.”
As Colin is always being told that imperfections in his physical appearance represent faults in his character, the idea of calling a funny-looking child like Dickon an "angel" is quite alien to him. People who are very good and very beloved are, in his mind, supposed to be very beautiful as a result. He is able to recognize that Dickon's appearance doesn't mean anything about his personality in this hypothetical statement, with the caveat that Dickon would have to be a "Yorkshire" angel were he one at all.
Burnett uses similes involving personification to make the reader feel that Colin Craven's mother is present in the "secret garden" even after her death. Through the "voice" of the narrator, the novel details several instances where the natural world takes on characteristics already attributed to Lilias Craven. For example, in Chapter 21 when Colin, Mary and Dickon all go into the "secret garden" together for the first time:
Between the blossoming branches of the canopy bits of blue sky looked down like wonderful eyes.
Colin and his mother, Burnett repeatedly tells the reader, have exactly the same "wonderful eyes," and so the sky's "looking down" takes on a tincture of her motherly influence. As the garden was Lilias Craven's own special place, the idea that her presence might linger there after death is aligned with the Spiritualist beliefs that recur in the novel. Being in a place associated with a dead loved one (or touching something of theirs) was a common element of the rituals some people in the 19th and 20th century performed to "speak" with the departed. When the children are in the garden, Lilias is not only a memory but is actually a personified presence, as the narrative uses figurative language to give the sky human-like qualities (and, specifically, Lilias's qualities).
