摘  要

从古至今，教育都是人们非常重视的，尤其是对于儿童的教育。本文中，作者将分析的是美国作家弗朗西斯•霍奇森•伯内特所写的儿童小说《秘密花园》中女主人公玛丽的性格，作者通过描写女主人公玛丽的外貌变化，结合环境变化、次要人物的性格影响等分不同阶段对玛丽的性格进行分析，以进一步阐述儿童文学人物性格对儿童与成人读者的影响以及对儿童成长的作用。玛丽从一个性情乖戾的女孩成长为一个受人喜欢健康快乐的女孩，这一变化让每个人都能看到成长的乐趣与重要性。她的成长过程也让许多儿童与成人不断思考，如何教育与如何做好教育并非易事，但只要找对方法，教育也是可以得到回报的。

关键词：性格分析；儿童教育；成长

Abstract

Education, especially children’s education, is very important in the history. This thesis is an analysis of the characteristics of the heroine Mary in The Secret Garden, written by the American writer Frances Hogdson Burnett. The author will describe the changes of Mary’s expressions, the changes of the environment and other people around her then draw a conclusion that the characteristics of the characters in children’s literature will influence both children and adults and play an important role in the growing up of children. After observing the growing up of Mary from a queer, indifferent girl to a healthy, happy girl, people can find out the joy and importance of growing up. Mary’s story can encourage people to find out new and proper ways to communicate with and educate children well. The author mainly adopts documental method, comparative method, inductive method and citing method to analyze the characteristics of Mary and have a depth-study of her because she has influenced a lot of children as well as adults.

Key words: analysis of the characteristics; children’s education; growing up

1 Introduction
Now many scholars prefer to study the children’s literature. The creation of children’s literature has lasted for a long time, which not only reflects the personality problems in the process of growth of young people, but also is the collective metaphor of the growth of the young American nation. Contemporary American children’s literature, with its unique personality, plays a very important role in children’s growth. Children’ literature becomes an independent classification. Research and introduce contemporary American children’s literature can expand the new field of literary studies in the United States, and also provide a reference and inspiration of our children’s literary creation, so that more people will be concerned about the growth of children, and will understand children’s spiritual needs and psychological needs, for the majority of literary works of children have the effect of helping them grow up healthily. In this thesis, the author will make more details researches on the characteristics of the heroine in The Secret Garden, which is one of the most famous works in children’s literature.