52 pages • 1-hour read
Tom's Midnight Garden
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Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Exile”
Tom Long is angry and upset when his summer vacation plans are ruined. He and his brother, Peter, had eagerly anticipated spending the holidays building a treehouse in the garden. However, Peter is quarantined with measles, and their parents are sending Tom, who was exposed but doesn’t appear to have caught the measles, to stay with his aunt and uncle Gwen and Alan Kitson. The Kitsons have no children and live in an apartment with no garden near Ely in eastern Britain.
Tom is rude to Alan as they drive through Cambridgeshire. On the way, they stop at Ely Cathedral. Tom wants to climb the cathedral’s tower, but Alan reminds him that he cannot mix with other people in case he has measles. He buys his nephew a postcard of the cathedral tower instead.
The Kitsons live in an old manor house that was split into apartments after the end of World War II and surrounded by new housing developments. Tom finds the hallway characterless and “unwelcoming.” Its only interesting feature is a grandfather clock that ticks loudly. Gwen warns Tom not to touch the clock since it belongs to the landlady, Mrs. Bartholomew, who lives in the attic apartment. Alan complains that although the clock keeps accurate time, it always strikes the wrong hour and is so loud that he can hear it in bed.
Gwen leaves flowers and her childhood books in Tom’s room. Tom complains that the room is clearly a nursery, as there are bars on the window, and accuses the Kitsons of treating him like a “baby.” Gwen explains that the bars were there when they moved in.
Tom sends Peter the postcard of Ely Cathedral, signing it with his trademark drawing of “an elongated cat” (7). Peter cannot reply to Tom’s letters while he is in quarantine.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Clock Strikes Thirteen”
At night, Tom cannot sleep, the result of a lack of exercise and Gwen’s rich meals. He lies awake listening to the grandfather clock strike the wrong hours. One night, he sneaks out of bed, but Alan hears him. He lectures his nephew on the importance of remaining in bed for 10 hours, and Tom reluctantly promises to obey. He lies awake until midnight, and when he counts the clock’s strokes, he hears 13. Tom reasons that the extra hour means he can get up without breaking Alan’s 10-hour rule.
Chapter 3 Summary: “By Moonlight”
Tom wedges the apartment door open with one of his slippers and goes downstairs to the grandfather clock. Since it is too dark to read the time, he opens the back door to let in the moonlight. The Kitsons have told Tom that the door leads to a small backyard where the trash cans are kept. However, Tom is astonished to see a garden with a large lawn, yew trees, and flowerbeds blooming with hyacinths. Furious that his aunt and uncle lied to him, Tom resolves to sneak out and explore the garden the next day.
In the hallway, Tom sees a girl in an old-fashioned maid’s uniform emerging from a downstairs apartment. She looks straight at Tom but does not see him. Tom notices that the formerly bare hallway is now cluttered with decorative objects, including a barometer and glass cases displaying “stuffed birds and animals” (22). The only familiar item is the grandfather clock. Tom watches the maid disappear as she reaches another door. At the same time, the objects fade around him, and the hall returns to how it looked when he arrived. Tom wonders if the maid and the objects were ghosts but notes that he was not scared by them.
Chapter 4 Summary: “By Daylight”
The next morning, Tom feels happier while thinking about the garden that is waiting for him. He unsuccessfully tries to shame the Kitsons into telling him the truth. Remembering how Gwen left flowers in his room, Tom states that it would be nice to have her own garden. She could then pick flowers, such as hyacinths, instead of buying them. Gwen points out that this would be impossible even if they had a garden, as it is too late in the summer for hyacinths to bloom.
Gwen warns Tom not to go downstairs that morning, as Mrs. Bartholemew will be winding the grandfather clock. Ignoring her instructions, Tom goes to the back door. He notices a modern Yale lock that was not there the previous night. Outside, he sees a paved area with trash cans, just as the Kitsons described. The downstairs tenant is repairing his car in the yard. The man warns Tom to wait before returning inside, as Mrs. Bartholomew is downstairs. Tom glimpses a petite old lady wearing black.
Tom searches for any commonality between the backyard and the garden he saw the previous night. He notices a familiar yew tree in the garden of a nearby house. When Mrs. Bartholomew leaves, Tom goes inside and studies the grandfather clock. The dial features a winged man with one foot on land and the other in the sea.
Tom writes to Peter, telling him everything that has happened and how he plans to climb into the garden with the yew tree. He writes “B.A.R.” (which stands for “burn after reading”) on the letter. That night, at midnight, the clock strikes 13. Alan is annoyed by the chimes, hoping that they also wake Mrs. Bartholemew. However, the landlady is fast asleep, “dreaming of the scenes of her childhood” (33). Downstairs, Tom sees that the Yale lock on the back door has disappeared. He steps out into the garden.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Footprints in the Dew”
Although Tom opens the door just after midnight, dawn is breaking in the garden. He explores a yew-tree tunnel and discovers a pond and a large summerhouse. In the kitchen garden, he finds a note addressed to “Oberon, King of Fairies” (40). The garden is walled on three sides, while the fourth border is a hedge. Tom finds a secret passageway in the hedge that is just large enough to crawl through, and he emerges in a meadow of cows that stare at him.
Returning to the lawn, he notices fresh footprints in the dewy grass, but his own feet do not leave imprints. When he sees a gardener with a wheelbarrow appear as the sun rises, Tom is concerned that he has spent more than an hour in the garden. He goes back inside, where the grandfather clock shows that it is only a few minutes past midnight.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
Chapter 1 introduces the novel’s inciting incident and develops Tom Long’s character. His anger and frustration reveal significant traits of his character. His unwillingness to leave his garden at home highlights his love of outdoor space and physical activity. Meanwhile, Tom’s reluctance to abandon Peter underlines their fraternal bond and his enjoyment of other children’s company. The revelation that the Kitsons have neither children nor a garden bodes poorly for Tom’s well-being, setting the move up as an obstacle to Tom’s happiness. Tom’s third-person narrative perspective encourages empathy for his situation, but these chapters also illustrate his flaws. His ingratitude is shown when he ignores his aunt’s attempts to make him feel at home, with books and flowers, and complains that his room is a nursery. Tom’s insistence that he is “not a baby” is undercut by examples of his immaturity (6), as with his wish that Alan were “a brutal uncle” who beat him (3), giving him a valid reason to run away.
Tom’s objections to the plan establish a key theme: The Contrast Between Childhood and Adulthood. The novel emphasizes the powerless nature of childhood as Tom’s parents and the Kitsons make decisions about him that conflict with his wishes. The title of Chapter 1, “Exile,” underlines the protagonist’s sense that he is being unfairly banished from his home. Tom’s state of quarantine only adds to his impotence and frustration, illustrated by the scene in which he is forbidden from climbing the cathedral tower at Ely. This lack of control over his own life is further illustrated by the bars on his bedroom window in the Kitsons’ apartment, which manifest the protagonist’s sense of imprisonment. The divide between the worlds of adults and children is also emphasized in Tom’s letters to Peter, bearing the instruction “B.A.R.” (burn after reading). The correspondence illustrates the secret world of the brothers from which adults are excluded. Furthermore, Tom perceives adults’ directives as pointless and arbitrary, such as Alan imposing a 10-hour rule when he cannot sleep. Tom’s belief that the adult world conspires against him is illustrated when he assumes that the Kitsons lied about the existence of the garden, believing that they wanted to prevent him from enjoying it.
Tom’s transition from the present, in the Kitsons’ apartment, to the past, in the garden, grounds the novel in the fantasy time-slip genre. He passes from one era to another via mystical means, rather than through the use of time-travel technology. Magical elements are introduced to the storyline through the book’s central symbols and motifs. The erratic grandfather clock that strikes 13 symbolizes the fluidity of time. The motif of the midnight garden, which exists only at night, further contributes to a fictional world where the rules of time are unrelated to those of everyday life. Tom realizes that time has an elastic quality, meaning that he can spend hours in the garden and return to his own world only minutes after leaving it. Furthermore, the blooming hyacinths illustrate that the seasons do not directly correlate with his daytime life.
Pearce emphasizes how Tom thrives in the magical world of the garden. His initial unfavorable impression of the house as “empty—cold—dead” contrasts with vibrant descriptions of the outdoor space (4). The author frequently uses personification to describe the garden’s features. For example, the sundial’s “chin” is depicted as “buried in curly stone clouds—looking like his father’s chin covered with shaving lather” (39). The literary technique conveys the garden’s vitality, highlighting how the protagonist also comes alive while experiencing this fantastic realm and establishing the theme of The Impact of History on the Present as Tom experiences both relief and freedom in the past world.
Throughout these chapters, the author hints at the presence of Hatty, whom Tom has not yet met. The footprints on the lawn, the secret passageway in the hedge, and the note to “Oberon, King of Fairies” (an important figure in medieval and Renaissance literature, particularly Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) all indicate another presence in the garden. These clues also suggest that the unseen person shares Tom’s lively imagination and love of exploring. Meanwhile, the Kitsons’ landlady, Mrs. Bartholmew, is also portrayed as an elusive figure. Readers are given the impression of an intimidated, cantankerous elderly woman through the tenants’ warnings not to touch her grandfather clock or disturb her while she is winding it. However, Pearce also offers a clue to Mrs. Bartholomew’s identity, describing her as “dreaming of the scenes of her childhood” when the clock strikes 13 (33). This line hints at the crucial role that Mrs. Bartholomew’s dreams and memories play in the existence of the midnight garden.
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