by Glory Lennon

Created on: June 01, 2009

Think of your favorite books. Now think about the main characters within those books. Would you say they were the same person from start to end of the tale? If you can truthfully say this then it must, most assuredly, have been a very boring story. In all the best fiction the main characters have to go through a series of events, situations or encounters with other characters that will in some way change them hopefully for the better. It is essential to do this in fiction but how do we achieve character growth and change? Let's take a look at how one author did it.

Mary Lennox in Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden" started out as a weak, sickly, taciturn child, with no interests, no sense of humor and lackluster in appearance and countenance. There was nothing about her to endear anyone to her. Yet by the final page she was happy, with a vigorous little body, pretty, vivacious, intelligent and, for the first time in her life, having fun, being loved and loving in return. How was this accomplished in less than three hundred pages?

Ms. Burnett used several things to achieve this. She got rid of Mary's thoughtless parents and gave her a much needed change of venue. With the change from a neglected child to an orphan and of situation (moving Mary from the unbearably hot India to the cooler and strangely isolated Moors of England) created a circumstance in which something had to give. How could Mary possibly not change in some way with that drastic difference in her life?

But it didn't stop there. Ms. Burnett obviously had to change the people with whom Mary needed to interact. In India Mary barely saw her parents and almost exclusively interacted with her Ayah, a nanny of sorts who used to sing her Indian songs, tended to her every need and prevented her from doing anything.

Once in England, however, Mary had to deal with the stern, unfriendly Mrs. Medlock who insisted Mary look after herself, a far cry from her Ayah. Mary also had the silly, though very likable Martha to tend to her a bit. Martha liked to talk and her Yorkshire accent was something in itself for Mary to grapple with. Mary found it quite irritating at first but grew to like Martha's chatter. Then there was the grumpy old gardener Ben who dislike her from the start but only pretended to after a while as Mary in turn grew likeable.

But how did Mary grow likable? Well that was another trick of Ms. Burnett. Mary got herself a hobby. She went out into the cold winter air, something

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