Some critics focused on the feminist indication of The Secret Garden。 Shirley Forster and Judy Simons in their article “Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden” (2007) explored how Burnett’s novel was different in genre conventions of stories from other novels。 They believed the garden was used to emblematize the idea of private space as a prerequisite for the development of inpidual creativity。 They also interpreted that this novel had been primarily to a female readership。