A Boy Was Ordered
A boy was ordered, and a girl arrived.
This is a full summary of L. M. Montgomery’s novel, so it has spoilers, including the sad turn near the end. The text I read is the free Project Gutenberg ebook. It has thirty-eight chapters and about one hundred two thousand words, and every chapter number you hear is from that edition.
Here is the story in one breath. An eleven year old orphan is sent by mistake to a farm that wanted a boy. She talks too much, makes a long run of disasters, wins over everyone who meets her, and by sixteen she gives up a scholarship because the people who took her in need her. Let’s start where the mistake does.
The Mistake at Bright River
In chapter one the gossip of the village, Mrs. Rachel Lynde, watches Matthew Cuthbert drive past in his best suit and white collar. Matthew is the shyest man alive, and he is going somewhere. She goes up to Green Gables to find out where.
He and his sister Marilla are middle aged, and Matthew is sixty. They have decided to adopt an orphan boy to help on the farm, because Matthew’s heart troubles him. So in chapter two he drives eight miles to the Bright River station.
There is no boy. There is a girl of about eleven sitting on a pile of shingles, with two thick red braids, a short ugly dress and a carpet bag. She has been so sure he would come that she had planned to spend the night in a wild cherry tree if he did not. The stationmaster says she preferred to wait outside because there was more scope for imagination.
Matthew cannot make himself tell her. In chapter three he brings her home, and Marilla asks where the boy is. The girl bursts into tears. Nobody, she says, ever wanted her. She asks to be called Cordelia, then gives her real name, Anne Shirley, and asks for it to be spelled with an E.
Marilla Makes Up Her Mind
Anne wakes in chapter four to a cherry tree blooming outside her window, and names it the Snow Queen. On the drive in chapter five, Marilla orders her to stick to bald facts, so she tells her history. Her parents, Walter and Bertha Shirley, were teachers who died young, and she was passed through other people’s houses and then an orphan asylum, always useful as a nursemaid.
In chapter six Marilla drives Anne to see Mrs. Spencer, who brought her, to set the mistake right. Mrs. Spencer’s answer is that Mrs. Peter Blewett needs a girl to help with her large family, and Mrs. Blewett looks like a hard woman. Marilla changes her mind. She takes Anne home, and in chapter eight tells her she can stay.
The book then moves fast, and the money is in the little scenes. Anne has never said a prayer, so Marilla lends a book. She gets plain dresses, and she hates them. She wears roses and buttercups on her hat to church, which horrifies Mrs. Lynde.
Rachel, Diana and Gilbert
In chapter nine Mrs. Lynde arrives to inspect the new arrival and calls her skinny and homely, with hair as red as carrots. Anne loses her temper and tells Mrs. Lynde exactly what she thinks of her. Marilla sends her to her room until she apologizes, and in chapter ten she does, with a speech so dramatic that Marilla can barely keep a straight face.
In chapter twelve she meets Diana Barry, a black haired girl who lives at Orchard Slope, and the two swear a solemn vow to be bosom friends. Chapter fourteen is the amethyst brooch. Marilla loses it, and Anne, who is innocent, confesses to losing it so she can go to a picnic. The brooch turns up later, hanging by its catch from a thread of the lace on Marilla’s shawl. Marilla admits she was wrong.
In chapter fifteen Anne starts at Avonlea school. A boy named Gilbert Blythe pulls the end of her braid and whispers carrots. She breaks her slate over his head. The teacher, Mr. Phillips, makes her stand in front of the class, and she decides she will never speak to Gilbert again. It is the start of the book’s long quarrel, and the book keeps it going for years.
A Long Run of Mistakes
Chapters sixteen to twenty-eight are Anne getting into trouble, and each one is a small short story.
In chapter sixteen she serves Diana what she thinks is raspberry cordial. It is Marilla’s currant wine, and Diana goes home unwell. Mrs. Barry forbids the friendship. In chapter eighteen Diana’s little sister Minnie May has croup, and Anne, who helped look after the Hammond twins, knows what to do. Mrs. Barry forgives her and the friendship is back.
In chapter nineteen she and Diana jump onto a spare bed that already has Diana’s Aunt Josephine in it. In chapter twenty she is so frightened of the Haunted Wood that she runs home gasping. In chapter twenty-one she bakes a cake for the minister’s wife, using anodyne liniment where the vanilla should be. In chapter twenty-three Josie Pye dares her to walk the ridgepole of a roof, and she falls and hurts her ankle.
A new teacher, Miss Stacy, arrives in chapter twenty-four and the whole class loves her. Matthew notices in chapter twenty-five that Anne’s dress is not like the other girls’, and he insists on puffed sleeves. In chapter twenty-seven she tries to dye her hair black from a peddler’s bottle, and it comes out green. Marilla cuts it off.
In chapter twenty-eight she plays Elaine, the lily maid, in a leaking boat, and clings to a bridge pile until Gilbert rows up and rescues her. He asks to be friends, and she says no. Remember that.
The Queen’s Class
Miss Stacy forms a class in chapter thirty, to prepare for the entrance examination to Queen’s Academy, and Anne joins it. The class is Gilbert, Ruby Gillis, Jane Andrews, Josie Pye, Charlie Sloane, Moody Spurgeon MacPherson and Anne. Diana’s parents do not plan to send her, which feels to Anne like a calamity.
Anne studies hard. In chapter thirty-two the pass list is out, and she and Gilbert are tied, with her name placed first. Matthew, as promised, is delighted.
In chapter thirty-three she recites at the White Sands hotel concert, wearing a string of pearl beads Matthew brought her. Then in chapter thirty-four she goes to Queen’s. Her goal for the year is the Avery scholarship, two hundred fifty dollars a year for four years at Redmond College.
In chapter thirty-six the results are posted. Gilbert wins the medal, and Anne wins the Avery. That night she goes to bed happy. The book tells us outright that it is the last night before sorrow touched her life.
The Reaper
The sad part of the book is short. In chapter thirty-seven, Matthew comes into the kitchen with a newspaper, and falls across the doorway. He is dead, and the doctor says the shock was quick. The paper reported that the Abbey Bank had failed, and Marilla has already said that every penny the Cuthberts saved was in that bank.
Anne cannot cry that night, and Marilla, who rarely shows her feelings, weeps without holding back. Soon after, Marilla is told by an oculist that she may go blind unless she gives up reading and sewing and anything that strains her eyes.
In chapter thirty-eight Marilla means to sell Green Gables. Anne says no. She gives up the Redmond scholarship, and applies to teach. She learns that Gilbert Blythe has withdrawn his own application for the Avonlea school so that she can have it, and he walks home with her, and asks again for friendship. This time she says yes.
The book ends with the bend in the road. Anne’s world has narrowed, but she is not sorry about it, and she knows there is always a turn ahead.
What the Count Says
Here is what I counted in the text. Anne’s name appears one thousand two hundred six times. Marilla appears eight hundred forty-five times, Diana four hundred fifteen, Matthew three hundred sixty, and Gilbert only one hundred thirteen. The word imagination and its forms show up one hundred seventy-six times, and kindred spirits fourteen.
In my reading, the book is not really about a girl being fixed. Marilla changes as much as Anne does, and the saddest chapter exists to show it. That is an opinion, and you can argue it either way.
If you want to read it yourself, the Project Gutenberg text is free. Subscribe, tap like, and tell me in the comments which of Anne’s disasters is your favorite. The full guide is on book explained dot com, and the link is in the description.
