Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden : Engendering Abjection's Sublime

Abstract

This essay examines the continued appeal of Burnett's novel despite its apparently conservative, gendered values. Read in the context of the late-Victorian zeitgeist and through Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, however, The Secret Garden reveals challenges to the culture's dominant values of competition and provides readers with an alternative model of social interaction. With this psychosocial model, Burnett also demonstrates the value of acknowledging, rather than denying, that which has been rejected by culture.