Anne of Green Gables — Chapter 6

About This Passage

The chapter's closing interior monologue, delivered to a milk pail. Three vocabulary words appear inside it. The passage is a masterclass in Montgomery's free indirect style: a private soliloquy that doubles as a thesis statement for the entire novel — the language of experiment, of mortal dread, of unknown outcomes, framed by a woman whose hands are still doing the evening's work.

Narration Prompt

Trace the architecture of Chapter 6 from the arrival at Mrs. Spencer's through Marilla's closing soliloquy in the dairy, attending to where Montgomery places her decisive moments and how the chapter accrues moral weight without ever resorting to overt dramatization.

Discussion Questions

1. Montgomery characterises Mrs. Blewett almost entirely through testimony — what Marilla can see of her body, what reputation has supplied, what discharged servant girls have escaped to tell. What is the cumulative moral effect of this layered, secondhand portrait, and why does Montgomery refuse to give Mrs. Blewett a scene of explicit cruelty to make her case?
2. When Marilla yields, Montgomery describes Anne's face as one on which 'a sunrise had been dawning' and the child as 'quite transfigured.' What theological and aesthetic registers does Montgomery activate by reaching for the language of dawn and transfiguration, and what claim is she making about the moral significance of this otherwise small domestic decision?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide