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This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.

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Find all my work at MJMunoz.com.

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Prepare yourself for some off-the-cuff book talk as I tackle another middle grade book chapter by chapter.

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So, Chapter 4 of The Secret Garden, which is called Martha, is an interesting one.

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Some people could argue that it's too long.

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I believe it's about 30 minutes long, maybe 24, something like that, but it feels like it's probably 30 minutes long.

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And the other chapters were much shorter, so that's kind of interesting.

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I don't know if the pacing should have been different or not, but it's interesting.

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We get right away a very strong bit of conflict between Martha and Mary Lennox.

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And Martha is a simple, rustic, rude housemaid who is one of, like, 11 kids, I think.

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She's got a Yorkshire accent, she's very Yorkshire and, again, crude.

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She keeps using thou, which surprises me.

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I don't know if Yorkshire people at that time would have been using thou, or thou, I should say, or if she was trying to be fancy.

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And sound more sophisticated to Mary Lennox, and she just didn't know.

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But I find that interesting that she's doing that.

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So there's a lot of, like, you know, the Israel of us and my father only gives 16 students a week.

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And I can tell you my mother's put to it to get forage for a mole.

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They tumble about on the mole and play there all day.

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And mother says, the air, the mole fends them.

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She says she believes they eat the grass same as the wild ponies do.

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Dickon, he's five years old, and he's got a young pony.

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He calls his own.

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Anyway, where did you get it? asked Mary.

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So, you know, Mary speaks this very proper English with her accent that she would have absorbed from her parents,

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whereas, well, Martha speaks this, you know, not proper English, this Yorkshire English that she absorbed from her parents.

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And that's kind of interesting.

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It's another bit of class distinction between them.

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And they very quickly get into this conflict over the fact that Mary is either so upper class or so British,

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or rather so Indian that she's not English, not English enough for Martha.

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And then we actually get into this fascinating exchange of racism between the two of them,

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where Martha was all excited because she heard this child was coming from India.

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And so she thought they would be Indian.

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I think she says black or she says black or dark.

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And it's just, you know, ignorantly, she's I mean, people from India have very dark pigmentation.

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Some of them have and it's definitely a different quality from, you know, a black person.

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But it's a very, very dark skin color.

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And I could see a simple Yorkshire girl who came and speak proper English, even though she's from England, having that perspective.

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But what's even more surprising is that we learn that Mary, like, I think she says they're not people, they're servants.

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And it's shockingly racist that she feels that way.

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But she's a callow child.

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She's a child who never received love and proper instruction and ethics from her parents.

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I'm assuming if her mother was just kind of a party lady who enjoyed being wealthy and going to parties and stuff,

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and her father was busy with army duties, they probably weren't the most religious people.

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They probably didn't, you know, spend a lot of time improving her character or helping her to be a better person or instructing her in what's right and what's wrong at all.

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That's very likely.

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So we shouldn't be surprised at this, you know, racism in her.

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We shouldn't be surprised at this almost subhuman perspective she has on Indians.

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The fact that she calls them, you know, just servants is really sad.

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And it's really interesting. And it really marks her as probably one of the worst.

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Like morally one of the worst characters. No, not morally.

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Having that kind of perspective because of ignorance and being stupid or, I guess, ill informed and misinformed because you were not raised properly.

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Doesn't make you morally reprehensible. It makes you sad and ignorant and somebody who's in need of being taught.

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Anyway, it was a shocking revelation. It was a shocking thing to experience.

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And yeah, I don't know. I don't know where to go from there.

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They have this whole struggle over the fact that Mary's Ayah would always dress her and Martha says she can't.

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And it's funny she talks about her mother thinking that rich children or children of rich people who are pampered and dressed and, you know, fed well and given all these things.

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Like you would think they would turn out to be nicer people, but it turns out that taking care of everybody's needs for them and kind of expecting nothing from the back and there being no reciprocity, you know, interestingly enough, that turns out to make them not to be the most wonderful people.

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And Martha reflects on the fact that Mary's in that situation and look at her, you know, and especially because not only is she incredibly racist, which Martha is to some extent too, because of, you know, that was of the times, that kind of attitude.

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But she also treats Martha horribly. She treated she treats her as subhuman as she treated the Indians because they're beneath her, they're servants.

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They're just people who are there for her. And that's her perspective, which is, you know, of course, wrong, because there's still people regardless of what class they're in or what job they have.

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She still treat them with dignity and respect and she just doesn't know that that's the case.

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But she gets some pushback and she throws a huge tantrum and finally Martha does concede to dress her if she'll do something or other. I can't remember what it was.

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And then she tells her, hey, kid, you like you got to go outside. You got to go on the war and play and do whatever.

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And then she starts because she knows or Martha says something about this garden.

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I can't remember if Miss Midlock said something to the or Mrs.

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Midlock said something to her about the garden or not, but Martha definitely mentioned something.

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And she hears about this one more locked door.

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So there's this room with a hundred houses that shut up and locked. And there's this garden even that shut up and locked. And it blows her mind.

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This idea that a garden would ever be locked. And then it's something that somebody, you know, because you can just walk into a garden.

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So anyway, she gets onto the grounds eventually and she starts playing by herself and she hears about Dickon and how Martha's other siblings play out on the moor and do whatever.

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Dickon's like, Tim, which I mentioned as I read horribly trying to do the the accent, not the cock. I always say cognac accent, but it's a Yorkshire accent.

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Anyway, so she does that. And eventually she plays. She meets this groundskeeper and this Robin, which she's never encountered a Robin because she grew up in India.

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That's all she knows is like in India.

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And she ends up asking maybe somebody at the kitchen or something about, oh no, she asks him, you know, like, oh, I'm looking for this thing.

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And he's like, well, why should they be locked or whatever?

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And anyway, the Robin does seem to be going into the secret garden and she kind of has this little relationship develop.

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And she likes the idea of Dickon. This is like disparate stuff, but it's all connected.

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She likes this idea of Dickon being a kid around her age and having this connection with all the animals, with the pony specifically.

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And he seems like a real nice guy. And I kind of feel like the groundskeeper might be Dickon's or Dickon and Martha's grandfather, but I don't remember if that's true or not.

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But he it's interesting. He says to Martha that, you know, she's like him. She's ugly and disagreeable and nobody likes her or him.

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And, you know, they're going to have no friends. But, you know, he is the only friend is this Robin. So maybe he's not their grandfather.

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I don't know. I wouldn't think you'd say that if you were married.

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Although maybe he's a crotchy old man and his wife doesn't like him or his dad or something like that.

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And Martha never really thought much of her looks. She thought her mother was beautiful, but she never thought much of her own looks.

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And she is learning that her personality is disagreeable.

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And it's interesting because she's getting these shocks that are going to help transform her character.

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And also she's getting this motivation to find out what the secret of the secret garden is or to find the secret garden itself.

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And she is enchanted by nature. She's enchanted by these animals, specifically the Robin and like the idea of the pony.

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And the idea that a child could befriend an animal and have this relationship with them, especially because an old man said his bird is his friend.

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So not only a child, but also an old man.

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That anybody could befriend and have this connection with these animals is like really inspiring to her.

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It's like it's changing the way she's thinking about the world.

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Martha is helping her to see beyond the class distinction and see that people are people.

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And that they deserve respect and care and to be treated differently than she's thought.

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So it's like her whole worldview is shifting based on these interactions with these humble people.

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And she knows that she has to do something else in order to survive there.

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Not that she's an under threat, but just in order to be there and be not miserable, she has to do something else and she has to be something else.

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And I think that's really interesting.

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And I do find it compelling.

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So I'm looking forward to the next chapter.

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I kind of was not as long. This one was long, but it was really interesting.

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So hopefully you liked it too and I'd like to hear your thoughts on the chapter and on the book so far because I really do like it.

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It's very interesting. It's a very interesting character study and analysis of Mary.

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And I wonder, I mean, I know from the movie that I saw years ago last time I saw it, she was meant to be a much better kid.

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And Dickon plays a role in that.

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And also her cousin who's Craven's son.

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And I don't know what that'll be like because she's a sickly child.

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Well, I know. So we'll get into that. We'll get into it in the next chapter.

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So anyway, I'm looking forward to reading it and to continuing this book because it's really been enjoyable.

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So again, I'd like to hear your thoughts. What do you think about it so far?

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How do you think Mary is handled?

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How do you think this racism is handled?

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How do you think this classism is handled?

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And how do you think the whole story is shaping on so far?

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I hope you enjoyed that. Please remember to like, share, subscribe.

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I invite you to comment, ask questions and share your thoughts with me.

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It's always more fun when you're part of the conversation.

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Until next time, keep reading, be well and do good things.

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