A-Z Characters That Transform: Colin Craven

In The Secret Garden, Mary transforms first. And some scriptwriters obviously feel that her character is somewhat abandoned. They aren't wrong. Colin's recovery kind of overwhelms the last part of the book. 

And it is skillfully done. 

Both Mary and Colin undergo a spiritual transformation before they undergo physical ones. They are both cross, self-centered, friendless, and spoiled (Mary through neglect; Colin through undue deference). They go out into nature, and they are cured! 

Not entirely, but the underlying idea here was common to the time period. It is the same idea that gave rise to muscular Christianity, the YMCA, Boy Scouts, and National Parks. Send people into nature, and they will shed all the bad manners they picked up in the evil urban environment. 

One of the few version to do 

the scene correctly. 

Frances Hodgson Burnett, however, was also a decent observer of children. Colin and Mary's transformations are more organic and realistic than Pocahontas dancing through the trees. One of the best scenes in the entire book is when Mary shouts down Colin's tantrum. He is convinced that he felt "a lump." Mary insists on scanning his back and tells him, in utter scorn, that there isn't a lump; if he claims there is again, "I shall laugh!"  

Burnett writes, "No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish words had on him. And now that an angry, unsympathetic little girl insisted obstinately that he was not at all as he thought he was, he actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth."

It is an excellent true-to-life moment. Nature helps Colin. So does another child and not just any another child--but an equally sharp and clever cousin. And although Mary changes, she doesn't lose her sharp cleverness. She doesn't become angelic.   

The second part of the transformation is that Colin gets out of bed and eventually can walk and run. 

For some reason, filmmakers balk at this. They either have him not entirely recover or so slowly that the final scene is Colin tottering to reach his dad rather than acting as he does in the book: a totally ADHD, I-got-a-billion-ideas-brewing-at-a-time unstoppable force who RUNS at his father. 

I suspect they are afraid of making Colin TOO well (and consequently making some viewers feel bad or something). A solution is embedded in the text yet few films use it: Colin's doctor doesn't particularly want him to get well and practices a kind of Munchausen's by Proxy on him (see The Sixth Sense). The doctor's tut-tutting and bad doctoring create tension as well as a possible mystery and could provide a really decent pay-off (which is never used though one of the versions makes Mrs. Medlock overly protective).  

The most remarkable aspect of Burnett's text is not only that Colin gets better but that he gets better is such a specific way, retaining a core personality. He and Mary, who are cousins, are like two sides of a genetic coin. They are both curious,  smart, interested in practical matters. Mary is a doer, someone who wants to dig into earth. Colin wants to carry out real-world experiments but he is more about books and learning and starting his own religion or philosophy. 

It is easy to picture them after World War I (which, unfortunately, would have arrived when Mary and Colin were anywhere between 13 and 24 depending on whether the book takes place in 1900 or 1911): Mary and Colin and, if they could persuade him, Dickon go to digs in Mesopotamia where Mary works as an archaeologist and Colin as an anthropologist. Dickon keeps them safe. 

The differing mental framework here remains consistent throughout the book!