In any case, let's cut back to the present. Among the many potential modern day parallels with The Secret Garden, there were two that stuck out to me. The first involves an orphaned English child (interesting) who befriends two other kids as they fight back against ghosts from the past and conjure up magic to defeat the thick-headed adults that stand in their way. If you guessed Harry Potter, 500 points to Gryffindor for you!
Here's a very specific coincidence between Harry Potter and The Secret Garden that I found particularly charming. As some readers will recall, one of the stranger things at Hogwarts School involves portraits that talk and move about at will, despite being confined to their picture frames. Though J.K. Rowling took this to another level in her books, an excerpt from The Secret Garden hints at this bizarre possibility (the Broadway version even used giant picture frames to stage some of the scenes with the dead):
" She opened the door of the room and went into the corridor, and then she began her wanderings. It was a long corridor and it branched into other corridors and it led her up short flights of steps which mounted to others again. There were doors and doors, and there were pictures on the walls. Sometimes they were pictures of dark, curious landscapes, but oftenest they were portraits of men and women in queer, grand costumes made of satin and velvet. She found herself in one long gallery whose walls were covered with those portraits. She had never thought there could be so many in any house. She walked slowly down this place and stared at the faces, which also seemed to stare at her. She felt as if they were wondering what a little girl from India was doing in their house."
The second undeniable of-the-moment parallel to The Secret Garden is the television show, Downton Abbey. In recent years, this British original series made its way to PBS, and thus into the homes of many Americans entranced by its soap opera depiction of life in the post-Edwardian era. The parallels here are often literal--both timeframe and setting collide, as The Secret Garden takes place in 1906 in a Yorkshire country estate and Downton Abbey begins just six years later in... a Yorkshire country estate. The first photo is of the fictional Downton Abbey castle and the second is a still of Misselthwaite Manor from the 1993 film of The Secret Garden. Here's a tour of the neighborhood:
One of the more fascinating parallels is the portrayal of "upstairs downstairs" dynamics in both stories. The enmeshed lives and gossip between the masters of the house and the servants is at the core of why people are drawn to Downton Abbey in the first place. This theme is also central to The Secret Garden, though in less obvious ways. Here's another excerpt from the book, this time illustrating Mary's culture shock upon realizing that the servants of Misselthwaite were not quite so subserviant as those she'd grown accustomed to in India:
"Mary's meals were served regularly, and Martha waited on her, but no one troubled themselves about her in the least. Mrs. Medlock came and looked at her every day or two, but no one inquired what she did or told her what to do. She supposed that perhaps this was the English way of treating children. In India she had always been attended by her Ayah, who had followed her about and waited on her, hand and foot. She had often been tired of her company. Now she was followed by nobody and was learning to dress herself, because Martha looked as though she thought she was silly and stupid when she wanted to have things handed to her and put on."
And if you need some final proof that these three worlds are inextricably linked, look no further than Dame Maggie Smith. As luck would have it, she can be found in all three!
as Dowager Countess of Grantham, Downton Abbey
as Professor Minerva McGonagall, Harry Potter
and last but not least, as Mrs. Medlock, The Secret Garden.
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