The Secret Garden and the gaze

Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden (1911) suggests that acts of looking are seminal to the communication of ideals surrounding gender in the text. The acts of looking – which this paper refers to as the gaze – to which Mary Lennox introduces her cousin Colin Craven direct him toward a model of masculinity characterised by its emphasis on power but, in doing so, disempowers her in her agency in the story.