Anne of Green Gables — Chapter 12

About This Passage

This passage is the chapter's pivot from external scolding into interior longing. Note Montgomery's deliberate cadence: Anne's clasped hands and the dish-towel slipping 'unheeded to the floor' hold the camera on the small theatrical gesture, while 'tragical disappointment' lifts the diction toward a higher register that Anne herself has chosen. Copying the lines develops attention to how a writer paces emotional revelation through small physical detail before letting the character speak.

Narration Prompt

Reconstruct Chapter 12 in five movements: Marilla's Friday scolding, Anne's tearful asylum-speech, the visit to Orchard Slope and meeting with Mrs. Barry, the bosom-friend vow with Diana, and Matthew's chocolate sweeties followed by Marilla's confession. Note how each movement deepens Anne's attachment to Green Gables.

Discussion Questions

1. When Anne demands an oath sworn over running water 'as long as the sun and moon shall endure,' she imports the formal cadences of medieval covenant and biblical oath into a children's friendship. Diana laughs 'fore and aft' but joins in. What is Montgomery suggesting about the relationship between imaginative play and the formation of binding moral commitments? Is Anne's ritual a fantasy that will fade, or a serious act of will that the chapter has already validated?
2. The narrator observes that 'Marilla was not to be drawn from the safe concrete into dubious paths of the abstract.' This sentence is gentle teasing, but it diagnoses a real difference between Anne and Marilla. Anne reasons from principle ('What was the difference?' between flowers on a hat and flowers on a dress); Marilla reasons from observed consequence (people stared, Mrs. Rachel Lynde nearly sank through the floor). Which mode of moral reasoning does the chapter ultimately treat as more reliable, and what evidence supports your answer?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide