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摘 要

《秘密花园》是弗朗西斯·霍其森·伯内特所写的世界著名儿童小说。伯内特是世界公认的权威儿童小说家，同时她也是一位伟大的女性作家。《秘密花园》自1911年在美国首次出版以来，一直被视为最经典的儿童小说。到目前为止，已经被翻译成多种语言在多个国家发行。此外，这本小说也被改编成话剧，电影以及音乐剧。它不仅是一本畅销小说，也是一本教育用书。许多国内外的学者都曾研究过这本小说。但对其从生态整体主义视角深入，系统的研究却并不多见。鉴于此，此文试图从生态整体主义的概念详细全面的剖析《秘密花园》。

此文将首先介绍《秘密花园》的主要故事情节以及作者信息。然后将从起源发展和主要概念两方面解读生态整体主义。接着将从三个方面详细地阐述《秘密花园》是如何体现生态整体主义的。这三方面包括：自然对人的影响，人对自然的呵护以及人与自然的互惠关系。结论部分将会总结整个研究的主要内容并且分析研究的现实意义。

环境危机是当下一个热议的话题，吸引了各方人士的密切关注。环境污染已经影响了人们的日常生活，更糟糕的是，危害了人们的身体健康。此文意在提高人们对环境问题的关注并且增强环境保护意识。更重要的是，希望为人们提供一个看待人与自然关系的新视角。

关键词：弗朗西丝·霍奇森·伯内特 《秘密花园》 生态整体主义

人与自然

1. Introduction

1.1 Background information

The Secret Garden written by Frances Hodgson Burnett is considered to be a classic of children’s literature. It has won a world-wide popularity, not only from children, but from many adults and it has never been out of print since it was first published in the United States in 1911. There is no doubt that Burnett’s own life experience contributes a lot to this novel’s success.

Frances Hodgson Burnett is an English-American playwright and author, best known for her children's stories, in particular A Little Princess (published in 1905) and The Secret Garden (1911). Burnett has an active imagination and a special fondness of nature, enjoying traveling and appreciating the beauty of nature. She published her first story before she was eighteen and was determined to be a professional writer. From then on, she has published numerous works, including novels, stories and plays. Among them, The Secret Garden was written in 1904 when Burnett bought a house in England with a walled garden. It is her own rose garden that gives her the idea for The Secret Garden, her most important masterpiece which confirms her position of superior children’s writer.

The Secret Garden is a book about the beauty of the spirit and the magic of nature. Mary Lennox, a leading character in the book, is a “disagreeable- looking” 10-year-old girl who was born in India to selfish wealthy British parents who never wanted her and only indulged in their own lives. Spoilt and with a temper, she is angry, rude and unaffectionate. After a cholera epidemic kills her parents, she is taken to England to live with her uncle at his home called Misselthwaite Manor. It is in the manor that she meets her cousin, Colin, another selfish, sour and rude child who has not been outdoors and even leaves the bed for almost ten years. In order to amuse herself, Mary starts to wonder around the manor and that is why she accidently finds the secret garden that has been hidden for ten years. She is so interested in the garden and she decides to make the garden alive again. Without any gardening experience, Mary let her new friend, Dickon, a twelve-year-old boy with a good nature and much gardening knowledge into the secret garden. Together, they starts to grow roses and other plants in the garden. Mary’s time is occupied by working in the garden and she begins to change even if she doesn’t notice it herself. She can eat more; she can run faster; she begins to communicate with others and she starts to appreciate the beauty of the environment instead of alienating herself from nature.(语法) It is decided Colin needs fresh air and the secret garden instead of lying in the bed all day, Mary and Dickon take Colin to the secret garden. The garden is very much like a magic that it helps to improve Colin’s health and he could even walk by himself. The children spend every day in the garden, working, laughing and running. The secret garden represents a splendid picture when the spring comes and the two selfish, irritable and autistic children, Mary and Colin become unbelievably as normal and healthy as any other children.

1.2 The significance of the study

The Secret Garden has been adapted into films three times and several television serials. Stage adaptations of the book have also been created. A musical version opened on Broadway in 1991 was nominated for seven Tony Awards. It is adopted frequently as teaching material in primary and middle schools in the US. As a masterpiece in the world literature, The Secret Garden emphasizes the importance of nature in the process of children’s development. It also reveals the relationship between children and the garden and to some extent, it demonstrates the relationship between human and nature. Thus, the study also has its practical significance since environmental protection has become the common issue that concerns the governments of many countries and people of all walks of life.

A series of environmental problems, such as the deterioration of the ecosystem, the extinction of bio-species and the green-house effect have posed a serious threat to human living conditions and health. The government has taken actions to fix our “damaged environment” as much as they can. People begin to find a way to achieve peaceful coexistence of economic development and environmental protection. What should be the best way to deal with the relationship between human beings and environment? Ecological holism gives us the answer.

The study by analyzing ecological holism in The Secret Garden provides a new angle to understand the relationship between man and nature.

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2. Literature Review

2.1 Previous researches of The Secret Garden

Li Ting: “On the Modernist Themes in The Secret Garden”

“On the Modernist Themes in The Secret Garden” written by Li Ting from Northeast Normal University intends to explore the themes of The Secret Garden. This thesis represents three important themes in modernist literature—absurdity in a modern society, the pursuit of a personal spiritual utopia and the attention to psychology. It firstly makes a general introduction to modernist literature and discusses the recurrent themes in literature then it examines the problems of the three characters to reveal the absurdity confronted by them. Mary suffers from alienation, Colin invalidity, and Mr. Craven disillusionment. After this, it identifies the secret garden as the individual utopia created by Burnett and analyzes the Sowerbys to illuminate the important traits of the utopia—essentially love and harmony. Finally, it explains how the author presents and dissolves the psychological problems. Mary and Colin obtain their physical health and spiritual growth through the establishment of harmony with nature in the secret garden, and by the power of nature, Mr. Craven gathers his courage and goes back home.

Zhang Ying, Su Fang:“A Feminist Interpretation of The Secret Garden”

In the“A Feminist Interpretation of The Secret Garden”, Zhang Ying and Su Fang, both from Northeast Normal University, describe Burnett’s feminist ideas reflected in the novel by using of Virginia Woolf’s feminism and Cixous’s ecriture feminine. This thesis firstly analyzes the two leading characters, Mary and Dickon, to show Burnett’s affirmation of androgyny. It also points out that the novel crosses the line between a girl’s book and a boy’s book by combining adventure story with domestic story. Finally, it indicates that the secret garden is given metaphorical meaning by the author. A ten-year waste garden is revived by Mary, which can be interpreted the garden into the place where feminist writer can obtain creativity.

Xu Manman: “A Comparative Study of Two Chinese Versions of The Secret Garden from the Perspective of Translation Aesthetics”

In her thesis “A Comparative Study of Two Chinese Versions of The Secret Garden from

the Perspective of Translation Aesthetics”, Xu Manman from An Hui University of Technology intents to make an aesthetics analysis of the two Chinese versions of The Secret Garden with her focus laid on two aspects：aesthetic representation of the formal aesthetic beauty and aesthetic representation of the non-formal beauty. At first, she provides a comprehensive material about aesthetic translation theories. Then she makes a comparison between the aesthetic representation from the original to the translation by Li Wenjun and the one by Zhang Run fang. Her thesis compares the two Chinese versions from four aspects: beauty in sound, beauty in lexis, beauty of imagery and beauty of culture. In the conclusion part, her thesis tells the main differences between the two versions and its purpose—an exploration into the two from the respective of translation aesthetics.

2.2 Limitations of the previous researches

From analyzing the previous researches, it can be concluded that most of the researches having been done emphasize the analysis of the original work itself from different aspects and mostly focus on the characters. One research makes a comparison between two Chinese versions from the perspective of aesthetic translation. There are relatively few in-depth and systemic studies touching upon the research of the relationship between man and nature, still less from the angle of ecological holism. In consideration of this, this thesis attempts to study The Secret Garden from the aspect of ecological holism. Since some people also call this book Nature’s Magic, it is worth exploring the magic in the secret garden in the light of ecological holism.

3. Ecological Holism

3.1 Origin and development of ecological holism

Ecological holism is an ideology of the western environmental movement, which originates from Aldo Leopold’s posthumous work “A Sand County Almanac” in 1930s. Aldo Leopold is not only a philosopher, but a theorist in ecological ethics, who initiates the study of ecological holism. As a pioneer devoting to environmental protection, Aldo puts forward many environmental theories like “ Thinking Like a Mountain”, “ The Value of Wildness”, “Land Ethics” and so on, which are the rudiment of ecological holism. He also proposes his basic value criterion in the third chapter of “The Outlook” of “A Sand County Almanac”, and that is “All things are right when they tend to maintain in integrity, stability, and the beauty of the biotic community, otherwise, they are wrong” (Leopold, 1939). In 1979, the international environmental ethicist Holmes Ralston III succeeds to Aldo’s environmental theories and further demonstrates ecological holism in his work “Philosophy Gone Wild” with the help of modern ecology. That is a milestone in the development of environmental philosophy. In Europe, Norwegian philosopher Arne Ness trying to find new way to deal with the human-nature relationship comes up with the theory of “Deep Ecology” presenting a more comprehensive and detailed elaboration of ecological holism.

Then American ecological philosopher Bill Duvall and George Sessions analyze ecological holism in their co-works, both contributing a lot to making it a successfully environmental theory.

3.2 Concepts of ecological holism

Aldo considers it different to emphasize the right of biological individual, thus he shifts his attention from individual organism to groups, or the whole like species, populations or ecosystem. He stresses the value of non-centralized ecological entirety and comprehensively elaborates the thought of ecological holism (Zhang, 2008).

Ecological holism aims at studying the relationship between man and nature from the macroscopic view. In other words, human-nature relationship is its main research content. Ecological holism tries to set up a brand-new view towards the relationship between people and nature. That is the oneness of ecosystem, in which man and nature affect each other and can not be separated from. The natural world is an organic integrity and a truly equal and righteous relationship should be established between people and nature. People should integrate themselves into nature rather than regard themselves as the master of nature.

The idea of ecological holism provides a new angle to think of the human-nature relationship, which will not only help to arouse people’s environmental protection awareness, but also has practical significance in building a sustainable society.

4. Ecological Holism in The Secret Garden

The most important reason why The Secret Garden is so popular is that people can not help indulging themselves in all the beautiful things happening between these lovely children and nature. Burnett gives us the chance to appreciate the beauty of nature and to feel the great power of nature. Children and the garden, more deeply, human and nature is a highlighted and eternal theme of The Secret Garden. The main concepts of ecological holism well corresponds with Burnett’s eco-consciousness. This thesis will explore how ecological holism is expressed in The Secret Garden in three different aspects: nature’s effect on people, the effect of unfavorable environmental surroundings and reciprocal relationship between man and nature.

4.1 Nature’s effect on people

Nature’s effect on people will be analyzed in this part through a sharp contrast of effects that unfavorable environmental surroundings and friendly environment put on people. In a deep sense, this reflects one main concept of ecological holism that only when people can integrate into nature that they can achieve harmonious human-nature relationship.

4.1.1 The effect of unfavorable environmental surroundings

At the beginning of the novel, Mary is described as “the most disagreeable—looking child”. “She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow because she had been bore in India and had always been ill in one way or another” (Burnett, 2010). The unfavorable whether in India is so hot and dry that people feel “languid and weak to care about anything” (Burnett, 2010). The bad natural environmental condition has weakened people’s immune system and makes people fall ill all the time.

Then a terrible cholera breaks out and takes away many people’s lives including Mary’s parents’. What little Mary’s feeling is “panic on every side” because “when the cholera had broken out in its most fetal form and people were dying like flies” (Burnett, 2010). Humans can not resist any natural disaster with weak physical bodies because of the deterioration of natural ecosystem.

Both little Mary’s body and her spirit are damaged by the hostile environment. She hates going out and she doesn’t know how to get along with others. So when she is sent to the Misselthwaite Manor surrounded by a boundless moor, she doesn’t know what to do but stays at her own room. Alienating herself from nature for almost ten years has made her a sickly, fretful, ugly little girl. Just like Burnett puts it in the book, “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary” (Burnett, 2010).

4.1.2 The effect of friendly environment

Unlike Mary, Dickon is a boy from nature. “He was a funny looking boy about twelve. He looked very clean and his nose turned up and his cheeks was as red as poppies” (Burnett, 2010).

In The Secret Garden, Burnett portrays the moor where Dickon lives as a beautiful nature paradise. The moor “smells of honey and there’s a lot of fresh air” (Burnett, 2010). “The bees and skylarks make such a nice noise humming and singing” (Burnett, 2010). Even the wild wind has been described as an invisible giant who circles around the house to rush into the house (Xie, 2013). Dickon and Mary are completely different in many ways. Dickon belongs to nature. Since he was born, he played on the moor all day and never had a cold. His closeness with nature and animals make him think that he could be one member of nature, perhaps a bird, or a fox, or a squirrel, or even a beetle. He knows the name of many animals and their secrets; he has a fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves around him, as if he were made of them.

Dickon is a typical moor boy. His intimacy with nature makes him healthy, strong and caring.

4.2 People’s care to nature

In this part, this thesis will analyze another main concept of ecological holism, which is the establishment of an equal and harmonious human-nature relationship requires abandoning the human-central thought and the arrogance of man’s dominance over nature.

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