How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually awakening her imagination. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong, pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her blood, so the same things had stirred her mind. In India she had always been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things. Already she felt less "contrary," though she did not know why. (8.2)
Weirdly, this sentence in the passage above about Mary being "too hot and languid" in India to care about stuff appears twice in this novel in almost exactly the same words. In Chapter 5, Mary also reflects that, in "India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything" (5.22). Frances Hodgson Burnett wants to emphasize the contrast in climate between India and England so much that she repeats herself in two different paragraphs.
Quote #8
"This is such a big lonely place," [Mary] said slowly, as if she were turning matters over in her mind. "The house is lonely, and the park is lonely, and the gardens are lonely. So many places seem shut up. I never did many things in India, but there were more people to look at—natives and soldiers marching by—and sometimes bands playing, and my Ayah told me stories. There is no one to talk to here except you and Ben Weatherstaff. And you have to do your work and Ben Weatherstaff won't speak to me often. I thought if I had a little spade I could dig somewhere as he does, and I might make a little garden if he would give me some seeds." (9.36)
Mary decides right away that she definitely can't trust Archibald Craven not to keep her out of the Secret Garden if she comes clean with him right away. So instead, she explains her desire for a garden in terms of a contrast between India and Misselthwaite Manor. She emphasizes that in India, there wasn't much to do, but there was a lot to look at. Here, there's not much to look at, so she needs more to do.
And since this whole book is about how good it is to have stuff to do, it actually turns out to be good for Mary that Yorkshire is so rugged and empty. She can't just sit back and watch the world go by; she has to make a world for herself in the Secret Garden.
Quote #9
"Aye, that we mun," she said (which meant "Yes, indeed, we must"). "I'll tell thee what us'll do first," she proceeded, and Dickon grinned, because when the little wench tried to twist her tongue into speaking Yorkshire it amused him very much. "He's took a graidely fancy to thee. He wants to see thee and he wants to see Soot an' Captain. When I go back to the house to talk to him I'll ax him if tha' canna' come an' see him tomorrow mornin'—an'. bring tha' creatures wi' thee—an' then—in a bit, when there's more leaves out, an' happen a bud or two, we'll get him to come out an' tha' shall push him in his chair an' we'll bring him here an' show him everything." (18.18)
Mary practices the Yorkshire accent as though it's a whole different language. Do you have a strong accent that connects you to where you're from? Do you have an accent that you can put on and then stop using at will? Have you ever taken this awesome (though not particularly accurate) English accent quiz? Maybe you've been a Yorkshire speaker all along and you just don't know it yet.