Mistress Mary, quite contrary

The nursery rhyme "Mistress Mary, quite contrary" is a pivotal verbal motif in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, first wielded as a weapon of mockery and later transformed into a symbol of personal growth and the garden's revival. Its journey from a cruel taunt to a cherished reference mirrors Mary Lennox's own arc from a sour, neglected child to a healthy, connected one, and it becomes a thread linking the garden's past to its future.

Origin as a Taunt

The rhyme is introduced by Basil Crawford, a boy with "impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose" whom Mary instantly hates. While Mary is playing alone under a tree, making heaps of earth and paths for a pretend garden, Basil interrupts her with a suggestion. When she angrily tells him to go away, he begins to tease her, dancing around and singing: "Mistress Mary, quite contrary, / How does your garden grow? / With silver bells, and cockle shells, / And marigolds all in a row." The other children hear and join in, and the crosser Mary becomes, the more they sing. From that day onward, as long as she stays with the Crawfords, they call her "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary" when speaking of her or to her. The nickname is a direct expression of their perception of her as a disagreeable, sour child, and it stings Mary deeply.

Recollection and Reclamation

Months later, after Mary has discovered the secret garden and begun working in it with Dickon Sowerby, the rhyme resurfaces in her memory. As she and Dickon clear places to plant seeds, she suddenly remembers Basil's song and asks Dickon if there are flowers that look like bells. She tells him about Basil and his brothers and sisters in India, and how she hated them for their teasing. Reciting the rhyme, she frowns and gives her trowel "a rather spiteful dig into the earth," insisting, "I wasn't as contrary as they were." Dickon's response is gentle and wise: he crumbles the rich black soil, sniffs its scent, and says there seems no need for anyone to be contrary when there are flowers and friendly wild things. Mary, kneeling beside him holding the seeds, stops frowning. In this moment, the rhyme is no longer a weapon but a memory she can examine and set aside, a marker of how far she has come.

Thematic Significance

The rhyme's transformation from insult to artifact of growth encapsulates one of the novel's central themes: the power of nature and connection to heal a contrary spirit. The "garden" of the rhyme, which once mocked Mary's barren inner life, becomes the literal secret garden she helps restore. The "silver bells" and "cockle shells" she wondered about are replaced by real crocuses, snowdrops, and daffodils pushing through the soil. The rhyme's journey thus parallels Mary's own: what began as a label for her isolation and sourness becomes a touchstone for her new life, a reminder of the contrary child she was and the thriving one she is becoming. It also links her to the garden's own story of neglect and revival, making the old nursery rhyme a surprisingly apt prophecy of the transformation to come.