Anne of Green Gables — Chapter 7

Narration Prompt

Summarize the chapter's argument or narrative arc, then identify the central tension and evaluate whether Montgomery handles it honestly.

Discussion Questions

1. The narrator claims Anne 'knew and cared nothing about God's love, since she had never had it translated to her through the medium of human love.' This is a causal-epistemological claim: human love is the necessary condition for knowledge of divine love. Evaluate this claim philosophically: is Montgomery articulating a position closer to Feuerbach (God is a projection of human love) or to Aquinas (human love participates in divine love) — and does the novel's evidence support a determinate reading?
2. Montgomery defines humor as 'a sense of the fitness of things' and deploys it at the precise moment Marilla perceives that a conventional prayer does not suit Anne. If this definition is taken seriously — humor as ethical perception rather than comic response — what does it imply about the relationship between comedy and morality in this novel, and how does it reframe the comic scenes of earlier chapters?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide