Anne of Green Gables — Chapter 12

Narration Prompt

Reconstruct Chapter 12 as a study in covenantal speech. Anne's bosom-friend vow with Diana Barry, performed in the Barry garden over an imagined running-water path, imports the cadences of biblical oath, medieval feudal homage, and folk magic into a children's friendship rite. Marilla's chapter-closing avowal to Matthew ('I'm getting fond of her, but don't you rub it in') is a different kind of binding speech, defended by formal address and conjunctive 'but.' How does Montgomery argue, through the chapter's structure, that promise-making is the central work of forming an attached human life?

Discussion Questions

1. Anne's vow with Diana Barry — 'I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom friend, Diana Barry, as long as the sun and moon shall endure' — performs a child's friendship rite using formal cadences drawn from biblical covenant (Psalm 89's 'his throne as the days of heaven'), feudal homage (joined hands), and folk oath-making (running water as binding witness). Set the rite against Aristotle's philia teleia in the Nicomachean Ethics, Augustine's account of soul-friendship in the Confessions, and Montaigne's claim in 'On Friendship' that genuine friendship is the rarest of human goods. Where does Anne's instinct fit? Is Montgomery claiming that childhood friendship can reach the highest Aristotelian register, or is the chapter's irony directed at a child reaching for forms her age cannot fill?
2. The chapter sets two household pedagogical economies side by side: Marilla supplies discipline at Green Gables while Matthew supplies indulgence; Mrs. Barry supplies discipline at Orchard Slope while Mr. Barry 'aids and abets' Diana's reading. The symmetry is too exact to be accidental. Argue what Montgomery is documenting and what she may be critiquing about the gendered division of moral labour in late-nineteenth-century rural Maritimes households. What is gained and what is lost when the woman of the house must always be the corrector and the man of the house must always be the indulger?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide