MovieChat Forums > The Secret Garden (1993) Discussion > A couple of observations.

A couple of observations.

posted 15 years ago by stargirl_lincs
11 replies | jump to latest

This is hands down my favourite childrens film of all time and I watched it again yesterday just cause I was in the mood when a couple of things struck me.

1) When Mary arrives at Misselthwaite she cannot dress herself yet she has just spent a few weeks on a steamboat from India so who dressed her everyday? There seemed to be a large number of orphans on the boat so I doubt one of the adults on board would have the time to dress her every morning and evening.

2) If Colin has lived in a dark room with no sunlight for 11 years, surely his eyes would not be able to cope when they pull the boards off his windows. In fact I think it would cause irreparable damage would it not? I know he had the gas lamps and things but isn't sunlight different?

I know that it's just a film and I'm not really expecting proper answers to this I just wondered if anyone else had noticed these or any other things that struck them as odd in the film.

[–] inlovewithJC 15 years ago

1) I hadn't thought of that - I don't know!
2) The sun does bother his eyes at first, remember? But aren't there scenes before they open the shutters where it is reasonably bright in the room, in the daytime? Maybe they did open some shutters, just not the ones right near his bed, where he spends most of his time. I don't know, though.

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[–] tommy_angelo38 15 years ago

There might have been nurses or nannies on the ship to look after the children.

The sunlight blinded Colin at first, and that sent him into a tantrum.

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[–] stardustfairy85 14 years ago

I think it had more to do with the fact that she expected her "servant" to dress her as before, not that she couldn't dress herself if she wanted/had to.

[–] theRealPedron 14 years ago

i just watched this movie for the first time yesterday.

1-actually, if you notice, when she gets off the boat she is wearing black. it made me immediately think that she had not changed clothes since her parent's funeral (and perhaps she was whisked off to England the moment the funeral ended?)
2-maybe, but if you think about it, the fog over the moors is pretty similar. Almost no sun penetrates for the whole winter. I don't think it's sunlight, other than the fact that sunlight is brighter than candle light, but if he had SOME light he wouldn't kill his eyes by looking at the light, but hey, i am NOT an optometrist so i don't know. i thought the same thing when they yanked the shades.

[–] mochabean82 14 years ago

In response to #2...He wasn't throwing a fit about the sunlight, it was about the "spores". He was taught that the spores weren't good for his sick lungs and he actually thought they would hurt him.

[–] Roxy08005 14 years ago

She knew how to dress herself she was just lazy and demanded someone dress her.

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[–] PinkWeeds 14 years ago

In the book Mary was escorted by an officer's wife and her two children to England- it's probable that there were servants on the ship as most women in that class would have travelled upper class (think Titanic) and someone would have dressed Mary. It's not really at all silly that Mary didn't know how to dress herself during this time. Historically speaking women didn't dress themselves if they were upperclass. The book explains that it wasn't Mary who was silly for not knowing how to dress herself or pick up after herself but Martha who didn't know how things were done for the upperclass.
Today our clothes are made for us to easily be able to slip on ourselves in 5 minutes but at the time that the book was written clothes were much more tricky to get in and out of. Most dresses buttoned up the back, plus petticoats, stockings. And as a woman got older there would be corsets that would make bending over impossible (because of this most upperclass girls were trained to not bend over to get them ready for the time when they too would wear a corset and not be able to bend over).

I also don't think the sunlight would have hurt Colin's eyes more than it did because it wasn't direct sunlight and he had had some of his shutters open prior to that. Just not the glass.

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[–] ricky_says_hi 14 years ago

here's another question: who put Mary in her night gown then if she asked who was going to dress her? surely if she didn't know how to put on her clothes, she wouldn't know how to take them off either so how did she put her nightgown on the first night in Misselthwaite?

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[–] eljaykay1219 14 years ago

Perhaps Mary fell asleep on the way to the manor and she was carried into bed and put into her nightgown while asleep.

[–] am_buglet_82 13 years ago

I agree with whoever said she probably didn't change clothes on the boat.

And Colin didn't have a fit because of the light or the spores...he had a fit because she left him there alone to go play with Dickon.
At least that's what I've always thought...

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[–] smlfc245 8 years ago

Hi, Amanda. That's what I thought too about Colin. He got jealous then just like he did when Mary and Dickon were on the swing later in the movie. That's JMO though.