Anne of Green Gables — Chapter 5

About This Passage

The chapter's most ethically charged paragraph: Anne, asked whether the women who raised her were good to her, defends them rather than condemns them. Four vocabulary words (faltered, scarlet, sensitive, embarrassment) appear in two sentences, and Montgomery's punctuation — the em-dashes, the broken-off 'not quite—always' — does ethical work that students should learn to read.

Narration Prompt

Trace the chapter as a sequence of three movements: Anne's announced decision to enjoy the drive, the bald-fact recital of her history, and the silent shift inside Marilla on the Shore Road.

Discussion Questions

1. Anne argues against Shakespeare's 'a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,' insisting that names actually do change the thing they name. How does this small philosophical claim — voiced casually by an eleven-year-old — function as the implicit theory behind every renaming Anne has performed since arriving at Green Gables?
2. Marilla orders Anne to 'stick to bald facts,' yet Anne's bald-fact recital — both parents dead, Mrs. Thomas's drunken husband, the Hammonds' eight children, the unwilling asylum — is more devastating than any of her imaginings could have been. What is Montgomery arguing about the relationship between fact and feeling when fact is allowed to speak without ornamentation?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide