"The Secret Garden" and "The Princess and the Goblin" Comparison Essay by Jay Writtings LLC

"The Secret Garden" and "The Princess and the Goblin"
A comparison of the young girls' journey to maturity in Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden" and George MacDonald's "The Princess and the Goblin".
# 116104 | 2,106 words | 5 sources | MLA | 2009 | US
Published on Aug 27, 2009 in Literature (Children) , Literature (English)


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Description:

The paper discusses how novels from the nineteenth century can be seen as a kind of moral and social map that reveal the path to success to female readers while reinforcing the dominant views of "traditional" gender relations, sexuality, marriage and family. The paper closely examines two popular texts of the nineteenth century - Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden" and George MacDonald's "The Princess and the Goblin". The paper compares and contrasts both protagonists' path to womanhood and illustrates how these works both represent the novel's role in shaping the social scripts of young women.

From the Paper:

"Both girls are, in other words, orphans both literally (Mary's parents die from cholera) and metaphorically (Irene's mother is described as "not very strong"), which leads to them being re-placed geographically to isolated country estates where they are more or less free to live "naturally" without the preconscribed scripts that mothers and traditional family homes might bring to them. Sent to be "brought up by country people in a large house, half castle, half farmhouse" (1), Irene finds herself freed into a potentially vital liminal space - half politic, half nature - that itself is positioned "on the side of another mountain, about half-way between is base and its peak" (1). For a young girl in the flux of change, and willing to embrace transgression as a natural right, it is a setting almost staged for challenge and trial."

Sample of Sources Used:

  • Auerbach, Nina. Communities of Women: An Idea of Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978.
  • Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The Secret Garden. University of Virginia Library Electronic TextCenter. <http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/BurSecr.html>
  • DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Writing beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-CenturyWomen Writers. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985.
  • Fraiman, Susan. Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and The Novel of Development.New York: Columbia UP, 1993.
  • MacDonald, George. The Princess and the Goblin. London: Puffin, 1996.

Cite this Comparison Essay:

APA Format

"The Secret Garden" and "The Princess and the Goblin" (2009, August 27) Retrieved October 03, 2023, from https://www.academon.com/comparison-essay/the-secret-garden-and-the-princess-and-the-goblin-116104/

MLA Format

""The Secret Garden" and "The Princess and the Goblin"" 27 August 2009. Web. 03 October. 2023. <https://www.academon.com/comparison-essay/the-secret-garden-and-the-princess-and-the-goblin-116104/>

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