Anne of Green Gables — Chapter 4

About This Passage

Marilla has just told Anne to hold her tongue. Anne obeys so completely that her silence becomes its own kind of speech — a withdrawal into imagination so visible that Marilla begins to feel that what is wrong with the situation is not the child’s talk but her own command. The closing question (‘Who would want such a child about the place?’) is the chapter’s most loaded sentence: it sounds dismissive, and is actually the question Marilla is being slowly forced to answer in the opposite direction.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 4 in seven or eight sentences, attending to the four shifts in pace: Anne’s window epiphany, the awkward breakfast and Marilla’s rebuke, the geranium-naming and the cellar pilgrimage, and the gate scene where Matthew quietly hires Jerry Buote.

Discussion Questions

1. Anne stops at the threshold and refuses to go outside, saying, ‘There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them.’ The chapter does not contradict her in words, yet by the time Anne sits down at the table she has already named the cherry-tree Snow Queen and the geranium Bonny. What is Montgomery showing about whether refusal-to-love is actually possible for someone like Anne?
2. Down in the cellar, alone, Marilla mutters, ‘She is kind of interesting, as Matthew says. I can feel already that I’m wondering what on earth she’ll say next. She’ll be casting a spell over me, too.’ Out loud to Anne and Matthew, she has said no such thing. Why does Montgomery let the reader hear Marilla’s private thought, and what argument is the chapter making about the gap between public speech and private concession?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide