Anne of Green Gables — Chapter 14

About This Passage

Anne's fabricated confession — the chapter's most luminous and most morally complicated speech, in which Anne's imagination and her need for the picnic together produce a vivid, untrue story about Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald and a brooch sinking 'all purply-sparkling' beneath the Lake of Shining Waters. Ten Tier 2 words gather here (OVERCOME, TEMPTATION, THRILLING, SLIPPED, SPARKLING, BENEATH, FOREVER, IMAGINED, LENGTHEN, CONFESSING), and the passage models how the same imagination that adorns ordinary life can also be put to dishonest use.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 14 in three parts: first, what happens between Marilla and Anne over the missing brooch on Monday and Tuesday; second, what happens on the morning of the picnic — Anne's invented confession, Marilla's refusal, the dismal lunch; third, what happens after Marilla finds the brooch in her black lace shawl.

Discussion Questions

1. Anne calmly recites her invented confession 'without the least apparent compunction or repentance,' and only later explains she made it up to be allowed to go to the picnic. What does this mixture of inventiveness, calm, and self-interest reveal about Anne's mind under pressure?
2. Marilla refuses to let Anne go to the picnic even after the confession. What evidence in the story, both before and after the discovery, suggests Marilla's punishment is too harsh — and what evidence suggests it might be just?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide