An addendum to my last post

Honestly, the book is sitting there on the shelf, I ought to have thought to check it out before writing my previous post. Talk about reinventing the wheel...

SECRET GARDEN Derived from The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson BURNETT, the term refers to a private world which becomes something of a personal Paradise surrounded by an impressive reality. In Burnett's novel the place is a walled garden amid the bleak Yorkshire moors; the garden, imbued with the youthful zeal of the children, becomes a place of recovery and regeneration. An SG is thus any place of escape or retreat that provides a personal haven for the protagonist. The SG may be a WAINSCOT or POLDER in our own world, or in an OTHERWORLD or even elsewhere in TIME. It became a standard MOTIF in CHILDREN'S FANTASY, where most SGs are literally gardens... It was in recognition of the SG as a key motif in children's fiction that humphrey Carpenter (1946- ) titled his study of the golden age of children's literature Secret Gardens (1985). 

In ADULT FANTASY SGs are a similar retreat from everyday life, though may not necessarily prove to be such a haven.

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, ed. John Clute and John Grant 

On the other hand, I was pushing a little at the edges of their definition. On reflection, I was conscious of pushing a bit hard to make Charlotte Sometimes fit my pattern. If it doesn't quite fit, then it still has affinities with the trope. Perhaps all timeslip texts do? Certainly it is more complicated than the simple 'eden' which we find in the Secret Garden. After all, what is the attraction at the heart of the notion of slipping back in time? Whether for the character, for the writer, or for the reader? It doesn't have to be anything as straight forward as a simple idealising of the past, but desire and pleasure are certainly mixed up in the notion.

Marianne Dreams though, is much closer to their use of the term in the context of adult fantasy. None of the examples given in the encyclopedia for it's use in 'adult' fantasies really convince me, which is why I think I actually prefer it that we can see this more complex version of the trope appearing in the context of fantasy written for children. It's years since I read it, but I suspect that Alan Garner's Elidor might fit the pattern. There are probably other examples out there.