'You're So Yeller'

Identity, Land, and the Third-Culture Subject in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden

Abstract

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911) has given rise to a wide array of critical responses – from seeing Mary’s gardening linked to her sexuality to postcolonial readings of the text. One element that such readings have missed is the peculiar displacement in identity within which Burnett situates her protagonist, Mary. At the beginning of the narrative, Mary belongs to no culture, neither the Anglo-Indian culture that she should belong to as an English child residing in India nor the local Indian culture with which she frequently interacts. While postcolonial readings of the text account for some of this displacement, the concept of “third culture” in social theory provides a better understanding of this cultural and political displacement that Burnett uses, and more importantly, Burnett’s value of fixed cultural identity and her emphasis throughout the narrative of changing Mary’s displaced status by having her acculturate to English culture. This reading of Mary as a third-culture subject addresses an important aspect of The Secret Garden that has not been examined before and shows a formation of identity and power different from postcolonial models. This reading also highlights the problematic nature of the concept of “home” in the text and the type of subjects who can gain a home in England.