Contrary

Contrary is the defining temperament of Mary Lennox at the beginning of The Secret Garden, a state of sourness, selfishness, and obstinacy that isolates her from others and is crystallized in the nickname "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary." This disposition, rooted in neglect and tyrannical indulgence in India, gradually softens as she forms attachments to the moor, the robin, Dickon, and the secret garden, marking the novel's central transformation from emotional barrenness to health and connection.

Origin and Manifestation

Mary's contrariness is established before she ever reaches England. Born to a beautiful, party-loving mother who handed her over to an Ayah and kept her out of sight, Mary grew into a sickly, fretful child who was "as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived." She never learned to consider others; her Ayah and the native servants always obeyed her, and governesses quit after a few months. When the cholera outbreak left her orphaned and alone in the bungalow, she did not cry for her dead nurse—she was "not an affectionate child and had never cared much for any one." The nickname that defines her state comes from Basil Crawford, a boy at the clergyman's house where she is first taken. Teasing her as she plays alone making a garden, he sings, "Mistress Mary, quite contrary, / How does your garden grow? / With silver bells, and cockle shells, / And marigolds all in a row." The other children take it up, and Mrs. Crawford later remarks that though it is naughty of them, "one can't help understanding it." Mary herself is described as having "the most unattractive ways I ever saw in a child."

The State as a Barrier

Contrariness functions as a wall between Mary and the world. She arrives at Misselthwaite Manor feeling "quite contrary" and dislikes almost everything: the moor, Martha's familiar Yorkshire speech, the idea of dressing herself. When Martha innocently says she thought Mary might be black because she came from India, Mary flies into a rage, calling her "daughter of a pig" and sobbing with helpless fury. She is lonely but does not know it; she thinks, "People never like me and I never like people." Ben Weatherstaff, the surly gardener, bluntly tells her they are alike: "We was wove out of th' same cloth. We're neither of us good lookin' an' we're both of us as sour as we look. We've got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I'll warrant." This is the first time Mary has heard the truth about herself, and it makes her uncomfortable.

Transformation and Diminishment

The state of contrariness does not vanish overnight but recedes as Mary's world expands. The fresh air of the moor gives her an appetite and stirs her blood; the robin's friendliness draws a near-smile from her sour face; the skipping-rope sent by Susan Sowerby turns her cheeks red. She begins to like people—Martha, Ben Weatherstaff, the robin, Dickon, and her mother's memory—and realizes she has "never thought of that before" when Martha asks how she likes herself. Working in the secret garden, she feels "less 'contrary,' though she did not know why." The state is replaced by health, curiosity, and the capacity for joy, so that by the time she befriends Colin and helps him stand, her old sourness is almost entirely gone. The novel traces the arc from a child who is "quite contrary" to one who can laugh, dig, and belong.

Thematic Significance

Contrary is not merely a personality quirk but the novel's emblem of what happens when a child is unloved, neglected, and given unchecked power. It is a state of emotional and physical sickness—Mary is yellow-faced, thin, and perpetually cross—that mirrors the locked, dead garden and the hidden, hysterical Colin. The cure is the same for all three: fresh air, purposeful work, the trust of living things, and the slow, steady warmth of attachment. The nickname "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary" becomes ironic as Mary grows into a girl who is anything but contrary, and the garden that once existed only in a teasing rhyme becomes a real, thriving place.