Anne of Green Gables — Chapter 6

Narration Prompt

Recount the full architecture of Chapter 6, from Mrs. Spencer's door at White Sands Cove through Marilla's closing soliloquy in the dairy at Green Gables, with attention to the sequence by which Marilla's mind is moved from disposing of Anne to keeping her.

Discussion Questions

1. Mrs. Spencer pronounces Mrs. Blewett's arrival 'positively Providential,' and the narrator immediately observes that Marilla 'did not look as if she thought Providence had much to do with the matter.' What is Montgomery doing with the language of providence here, and what theological distinction is the chapter quietly insisting upon?
2. Mrs. Blewett is constructed almost entirely out of layered testimony: Marilla's glance at her body, the village's reputation of her, the speech of discharged servant girls, and the ironic phrase 'her tender mercies.' What does Montgomery accomplish by withholding any explicit scene of Mrs. Blewett's cruelty and instead building her out of accumulated witness, and what does this technique imply about how moral verdicts are formed in a community?

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