The Forgotten Garden

“‘She must have felt so alone when she realized she wasn’t who she’d thought she was.’” 

Cassandra makes this observation about Nell. The comment indicates her growing understanding of her grandmother’s personality. The comment is also descriptive of Cassandra’s own feelings after Lesley abandons her. 

“To abandon a child, she had once said to someone, when she thought Cassandra couldn’t hear, was an act so cold, so careless, it refused forgiveness.” 

Nell’s comment is an indictment of Lesley for leaving Cassandra. It also expresses her judgment of her own unknown mother. However, what Nell really can’t forgive is the psychological toll that abandonment took on her own life. 

“His words had tossed the book that was her life into the air and the pages had been blown into disarray, could never be put back together to tell the same story.” 

Nell is remembering Hugh’s disclosure about her past. She can never see her family in the same light. More importantly, she can never view herself in the same way again. 

“‘I knew you first, Nellie, I’ve loved you longest.’ But it wasn’t enough. She was a lie, had been living a lie, and she refused to do so any longer.” 

Nell is remembering Hugh’s protest that he loves her no matter where she came from. The real problem isn’t Nell’s abandonment. It’s the lie she now tells herself. She can’t believe her foster father could possibly feel the same about her as he does about his biological children. 

“How could she expect him to value her, still to want her, once he realized she was someone disposable? That her own true family had discarded her?” 

Nell breaks up with her fiancé because she projects her own thoughts onto him. She believes she has lost value and assumes Danny will reject her. Nell never tries to find out if this is true. 

“If what the aunts had said was true, the suitcase wasn’t a mere historical artefact: it was an anchor.”

Cassandra believes that the suitcase anchored Nell to her past. Cassandra herself was deprived of two anchors after her mother left and her family was killed. Nell has always functioned as Cassandra’s anchor. When she dies, Cassandra uses the white suitcase as her own anchor.

“The crone had sacrificed her eyes to provide the Princess with shelter and now must this kindness be repaid.” 

Eliza’s story illustrates the dynamic between Nell and Cassandra. Nell gave up her quest for her past so she could take care of Cassandra. By finding all the missing puzzle pieces to complete Nell’s story, Cassandra repays the favor. 

“‘A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she’ll find her courage wanting.’” 

Georgina gives this advice to Eliza. Although Eliza learns to save herself, Rose never does. Rose relies on the people in her family to rescue her, and her helplessness wreaks havoc in all their lives. 

“For with Sammy’s death Eliza was half a person. Like a room robbed of candlelight, her soul was cold, dark and empty.” 

Even more than the loss of her mother, Eliza’s loss of her twin devastates her. She uses almost the same wording to later describe her loss of Ivory. The concept of losing half herself is expressed again fictionally in “The Golden Egg.” 

“It had mattered to Nell and it mattered now to Cassandra. This puzzle was her inheritance. More than that, it was her responsibility.” 

This is the pivotal moment when Cassandra decides to take up Nell’s quest. In doing so, she mirrors the heroine of “The Crone’s Eyes.” Like that heroine, the quest offers unexpected rewards for Cassandra. 

“It leads to the formation of a tiny ice flint in the […] heart. Ice that, though at times concealed, never properly melts.” 

Rose contemplates the prospect of an early death and how it has frozen her heart. Ironically, her fragility makes her behave ruthlessly toward both her husband and Eliza. She forces her husband to sire a child and then shuts Eliza completely out of that child’s life. 

“This girl, Georgiana’s daughter, was little more than a cuckoo, sent back to supplant Adeline’s own child. To push her from a nest that Adeline had fought to make her own.” 

Adeline hates Eliza because Linus prefers her to his own daughter. In comparing the girl to a cuckoo, she foreshadows Eliza’s fairy tale about the cuckoo who escapes from the evil queen’s clutches. In giving birth to Ivory for Rose’s sake, Eliza also functions like the cuckoo, which deposits its eggs in another bird’s nest. 

“All are shaped by things beyond their control, traits inherited, traits learned.” 

Linus makes this comment when he contemplates his lameness. However, the words apply equally well to Nell. Like Linus, she doubly cripples herself by the conviction of her own unworthiness. 

“She’d understood the power of stories. Their magical ability to refill the wounded part of people.” 

Early in life, Eliza grasps the importance of storytelling. Her skill in spinning tales stems from the dire circumstances of her childhood. Such misery could only be counteracted by an imagination strong enough to overcome reality. 

“‘I sometimes feel my entire life is a series of accidents and chances—not that I’m complaining. One can be very happy having relinquished all expectation of control.’” 

Julia makes this offhand comment to Cassandra, not realizing how well it applies to the latter. Cassandra only ends up solving Nell’s mystery through a series of accidents and chances. She allows life to lead her to a happy, fairy tale ending. 

“It was the house of the dead: Linus locked away in his darkroom, Rose in the bedroom, Adeline lurking in the corridors.” 

Nathaniel makes this comment about his family late in the story. Eliza reaches a similar conclusion about the Mountrachets. She only decides to take Ivory because she can’t bear to leave the child in a house of the dead. 

“She would learn why Eliza stole her and put her on the boat to Australia. All lives needed purpose, and this would be Nell’s. For otherwise, how would she ever know herself?” 

Nell equates purpose with self-knowledge. Unbeknownst to her daughter, Eliza reaches the same conclusion. When she declares her identity as Ivory’s mother, the statement both defines Eliza and gives meaning to her life.

“It seemed to Nathaniel that by then he’d crossed so many lines of principle once presumed inviolable, one more wouldn’t hurt.” 

Nathaniel has been ordered to paint Eliza out of Rose’s portrait, and he complies. In retrospect, his marriage to Rose has been a deal with the devil. In exchange for fame and success, Nathaniel has sacrificed both his artistic inspiration and his moral integrity. 

“‘Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance.’” 

Eliza offers this cold aphorism to Nathaniel when he pleads for her to stay away from Ivory. Rose doesn’t want to be reminded where her baby came from. Ironically, Rose doesn’t concern herself with the barbed memories that both Eliza and Nathaniel must bear for her sake. 

“‘You make a life out of what you have, not what you’re missing.’” 

Ruby is being philosophical without recognizing how much her comment applies to the Nell’s situation. Nell chose to make herself unhappy because of the birth family she never knew. She failed to value the foster family and fiancé, who had all offered her a second chance at happiness.

“‘Those that lived there were like the dead, my mum said. All gloomy for one reason or another. All wanting things they shouldn’t or couldn’t have.’”

Mary offers this observation about the Mountrachets. It echoes Nathaniel’s remark about a house inhabited by the dead. Linus wants the return of his dead sister. Adeline wants the respect of the upper crust. Rose wants a baby of her own. None of them succeeds.

“A story about a young woman who lived alone in a dark wood, who made the wrong decision for the right reason and destroyed herself in the process.” 

Eliza is referring to “The Golden Egg,” but the moral applies equally well to her own circumstance. After losing Georgiana and Sammy, she doesn’t want to lose Rose. Instead, she parts with an even greater treasure—Ivory. 

“And Eliza knew where she was going. Flying towards her daughter, towards Ivory. The person she had spent a lifetime seeking, her other half. She was whole at last, heading towards home.” 

Eliza equates Ivory with home. This underscores the novel’s theme that home is not necessarily a dwelling. It can also be a sense of completeness and a place in the heart. Sammy’s death deprived Eliza of her other half. Ivory restores that other half and brings her mother home.