Portrait of Lilias Craven
The Portrait of Lilias Craven is a painting of Colin Craven's mother that hangs over the mantelpiece in his bedroom, hidden behind a rose-colored silk curtain. It is the image of a young woman with a laughing face, bright hair tied up with a blue ribbon, and gay, lovely eyes that are exactly like Colin's own—agate gray and seemingly twice as large as they really are because of the black lashes that rim them. The portrait is a constant, veiled presence in the room where Colin has spent most of his life as an invalid, and its concealment and eventual revelation trace the arc of his transformation from a bitter, hysterical boy into a healthy, hopeful one.
Concealment and Colin's Resentment
Colin himself ordered the curtain drawn over the portrait. He explains to Mary Lennox, "Sometimes I don't like to see her looking at me. She smiles too much when I am ill and miserable." His feelings toward his mother are deeply conflicted: he complains, "I don't see why she died. Sometimes I hate her for doing it," and he blames her death for his own illness and his father's rejection. "If she had lived I believe I should not have been ill always," he says. "I dare say I should have lived, too. And my father would not have hated to look at me." The covered portrait thus becomes a physical manifestation of Colin's grief, anger, and sense of abandonment—a reminder of the love he never received and the life he believes he was denied.
Unveiling and Reconciliation
The turning point comes after Colin has begun to recover in the secret garden. Mary notices that the curtain has been drawn aside, and Colin tells her he intends to keep it that way. He describes waking in bright moonlight two nights earlier, feeling "as if the Magic was filling the room and making everything so splendid that I couldn't lie still." He got up, looked out the window, and then went to pull the cord. "She looked right down at me as if she were laughing because she was glad I was standing there," he says. "It made me like to look at her. I want to see her laughing like that all the time. I think she must have been a sort of Magic person perhaps." This moment marks Colin's acceptance of his mother's memory and his own emerging strength. Mary observes, "You are so like her now, that sometimes I think perhaps you are her ghost made into a boy," a remark that deeply impresses Colin and leads him to hope that his father might one day be fond of him.
The Portrait as a Symbol of Healing
The portrait's transformation from a hidden, painful object to a visible, cherished one mirrors Colin's own journey from a sickly, isolated child to a vibrant, hopeful boy. It also prefigures the final reunion with his father, Archibald Craven, who, upon seeing Colin for the first time after his recovery, gasps at the sight of his son's face—the same gray eyes rimmed with black lashes that he had adored in his wife. The portrait, once a source of sorrow and resentment, becomes a bridge between the living and the dead, and a testament to the healing power of the secret garden and the "Magic" that Colin comes to believe in.
