How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance and she had thought her very pretty, but as she knew very little of her she could scarcely have been expected to love her or to miss her very much when she was gone. She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a self-absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself, as she had always done. (2.1)
There's a pretty direct cause-and-effect logic here: Mary's parents neglected her, so she becomes a "self-absorbed child" who doesn't miss her own mother when she dies. Parents bad = kids bad, which seems fair a lot of the time. Still, if a kid behaves really badly (as Mary does, when she abuses her Indian nanny with her violent tantrums), when does parental responsibility end and personal responsibility start? Is Mary to blame for any of the bad things she does in this book? Is Colin? Why or why not?
Quote #2
All [Mary] thought about the key was that if it was the key to the closed garden, and she could find out where the door was, she could perhaps open it and see what was inside the walls, and what had happened to the old rose-trees. […] Besides that, if she liked it she could go into it every day and shut the door behind her, and she could make up some play of her own and play it quite alone, because nobody would ever know where she was, but would think the door was still locked and the key buried in the earth. The thought of that pleased her very much. (8.1)
We talk a little bit about the Secret Garden's isolation as a parallel to Mary's in the "Symbols" section, so go there to read more. Here, we want to point out this weird moment when Mary decides that she would like to have a place to go where she can play alone and "nobody would ever know where she was." Now, as it is, Mary's pretty darn isolated: She hasn't met her uncle and new guardian, Archibald Craven. The only person she has to talk to is Martha, her maid.
So why does she need a play space that's even more isolated and withdrawn than, say, her own room in Misselthwaite Manor? Why does her habit of being isolated and alone make her want even more isolation and loneliness?
Quote #3
"Is Colin a hunchback?" Mary asked. "He didn't look like one."
"He isn't yet," said Martha. "But he began all wrong. Mother said that there was enough trouble and raging in th' house to set any child wrong. They was afraid his back was weak an' they've always been takin' care of it—keepin' him lyin' down and not lettin' him walk. Once they made him wear a brace but he fretted so he was downright ill. Then a big doctor came to see him an' made them take it off. He talked to th' other doctor quite rough—in a polite way. He said there'd been too much medicine and too much lettin' him have his own way." (14.27-28)
The early treatment that Colin receives when everyone assumes that he is unable to take care of himself says a lot about the state of medicine in Frances Hodgson Burnett's day. Colin may not be getting the formal rest cure of the late 1800s, but he is being isolated and treated like a baby according to the totally untrue idea that lack of activity will somehow make him stronger.
It's only once Colin begins to make social ties and to take responsibility for his own physical health that he begins to get over the psychological effects of his total parental neglect.