Alison Larkin Presents: Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden recap

The volume pairs two stories of isolated children who make lives beyond the households that confine them. Jane Eyre survives abuse at Gateshead and hardship at Lowood, becomes a governess, and loves Edward Rochester. Their wedding is stopped because Rochester's wife Bertha is alive at Thornfield. Jane leaves, finds cousins and an inheritance, rejects St John Rivers's loveless proposal, then returns after Bertha has died in a fire and Rochester has been blinded and maimed. Jane and Rochester marry as more equal partners. The second story follows orphaned Mary Lennox to Misselthwaite Manor, where she discovers a garden locked since her aunt's death and her hidden, invalid cousin Colin. With Dickon Sowerby, Mary revives the garden and helps Colin replace fear and inactivity with friendship, exercise, and confidence. Colin learns to walk. When his grieving father Archibald returns, he finds the healthy boy running from the restored garden, and they go home together.

Jane Eyre, an orphan dependent on her aunt Mrs Reed, is bullied at Gateshead and punished when she resists. She openly rejects her aunt's claim to kindness and is sent to Lowood, a charity school whose manager Mr Brocklehurst confuses deprivation with moral discipline. At school Jane befriends Helen Burns and receives humane guidance from Miss Temple. Brocklehurst humiliates Jane using Mrs Reed's false account of her, but Miss Temple investigates and clears Jane's name. Disease exposes Lowood's neglect, and Helen dies of tuberculosis. Conditions later improve. Jane remains for years as a pupil and teacher, acquiring the education that makes an independent working life possible.

Jane leaves Lowood to become governess to Adèle Varens at Thornfield Hall. The housekeeper Mrs Fairfax welcomes her, but odd laughter and unexplained events suggest that part of the house is concealed. Jane meets Thornfield's owner, Edward Rochester, without initially knowing him. His abrupt questions develop into sustained conversation, and each values the other's intelligence. Jane saves Rochester when his bed is set on fire; he attributes the danger to the servant Grace Poole and asks for secrecy. Jane falls in love but believes Rochester intends to marry the socially prominent Blanche Ingram. During a house party, Jane watches their apparent courtship while trying to suppress her own hopes.

Richard Mason arrives from the West Indies and is attacked in a locked upper room. Jane helps Rochester tend him without receiving an explanation. After a visit to the dying Mrs Reed, Jane returns to Thornfield. Rochester pretends that Jane must leave when he marries, then reveals that Blanche was never his choice and asks Jane to become his wife. Jane accepts, though troubling incidents accompany the engagement. At the wedding, Mason and a solicitor announce that Rochester already has a living wife. Rochester takes the group to see Bertha Mason, confined at Thornfield because of severe mental illness and responsible for the fire and attack. He asks Jane to live with him outside marriage, but she refuses and flees alone.

Destitute after leaving Rochester, Jane is rescued by St John, Diana, and Mary Rivers. She becomes a village teacher and learns that her uncle John Eyre has died, leaving her a fortune. The Rivers siblings are also revealed as her cousins, and Jane shares the inheritance with them. St John prepares for missionary work in India and asks Jane to marry him as a useful partner rather than a loved wife. She rejects the marriage and, after seeming to hear Rochester call her, returns to Thornfield. Bertha has burned the house and died; Rochester was blinded and lost a hand while saving others. Jane finds him at Ferndean, chooses him freely, and marries him. He later recovers enough sight to see their child.

The second story begins in India, where disagreeable, neglected Mary Lennox is orphaned by a cholera outbreak. She is sent to Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire to live with her uncle Archibald Craven, a widower who is usually absent. The immense house is governed by secrecy and shut rooms. Martha, a young servant, encourages Mary to dress herself and explore outdoors. On the moor and in the gardens Mary meets the gruff gardener Ben Weatherstaff and a friendly robin. She learns that Mrs Craven died after an accident in her favorite garden and that her grieving husband locked its door and buried the key ten years earlier. The mystery gives Mary a purpose beyond her own complaints.

Guided by the robin, Mary finds the buried key and the hidden door. Inside, the neglected garden appears dormant rather than dead, and she begins clearing space around new shoots. Martha's brother Dickon joins her, bringing tools, seeds, and an instinctive knowledge of plants and animals. Mary trusts him with the secret. Her work outdoors improves her appetite, strength, and temper. At night she repeatedly hears crying that the adults deny. Following the sound, she discovers her cousin Colin Craven, a pale boy kept in a secluded bedroom. Colin believes he is gravely ill and destined to grow a crooked back. Accustomed to ruling servants through tantrums, he is startled by Mary's refusal to fear him and fascinated by the garden he has never seen.

Mary visits Colin regularly and tells him about Dickon and the living world outside. When Colin has a violent tantrum, she challenges his certainty that he is becoming deformed, and the confrontation breaks the household's usual pattern of fearful obedience. Dickon visits with his animals, and Colin agrees to be taken secretly into the locked garden. There he sees evidence that his mother's garden is returning to life and begins to imagine health rather than death. Mary, Dickon, and Colin call the force of growth and determined thought magic, using their private ceremonies to strengthen Colin's confidence. Exercise and fresh air produce visible improvement. Ben Weatherstaff discovers them, and Colin shocks him by standing to prove that he is neither helpless nor deformed.

The children and Ben keep Colin's recovery secret so he can surprise his father. Colin practices walking and grows steadily stronger, while the restored garden becomes a place of friendship rather than mourning. Susan Sowerby visits, understands what the children have accomplished, and treats Colin with warm common sense. Far away, Archibald Craven begins to emerge from years of grief and receives Susan's message urging him to come home. Returning to Misselthwaite, he is drawn to the locked garden and hears a child inside. Colin runs out into his path, healthy and eager, and shows his astonished father the revived garden. They walk together back to the manor, where the servants can scarcely believe that the invalid boy is upright. Secrecy ends as Colin reenters family life and Archibald accepts both his son and the garden bound to his wife's memory.

The volume closes with the resolution of The Secret Garden. Mary, Dickon, and Colin have secretly restored the locked garden, while exercise, friendship, expectation, and time outdoors have restored Colin's strength. He progresses from standing to walking and plans to surprise his father. Susan Sowerby writes to Archibald Craven, whose years of wandering have begun to loosen their hold on him, and urges him to come home. He returns to the garden associated with his wife's death and meets Colin running from it, healthy and joyful. Father and son walk back to Misselthwaite together, astonishing the servants and ending the household's rule of grief and secrecy. Earlier in the volume, Jane Eyre also reached a settled ending: Bertha Mason died in the fire at Thornfield, Jane returned as an independent heiress to the injured Rochester, and they married; he later recovered enough sight to see their child. Both stories therefore end with damaged households reopened to attachment, though by different paths.