Assignment 4 – Finding the Beginning

Chris Mallory

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

The conflict in this story is Anne vs. the Avonlea citizen’s attitudes. Anne Shirley is an orphan searching for a home, a place to belong.

In the first chapter, Mrs. Rachel Lynde, the town busy body, sees Mathew Cuthbert, dressed in his Sunday best, driving the buggy down the road one afternoon when he should have been out sowing turnip seed. She hurries over to Green Gables to ask his sister where he is going and why. Upon finding out that Mathew and Marilla have decided to adopt an orphan boy to help with the farm work, she is very much opposed to the idea. Mrs. Rachel tells Marilla horror stories about adopted orphans, and one in particular about a girl that poisoned the well and killed the whole family. But, as Marilla replied, they were going to get a boy, not a girl. This chapter lets the reader know exactly what the conflict will be; any orphan introduced into this community would probably not be welcomed immediately and would be viewed with suspicion. People in Avonlea didn’t take children out of orphan asylums – it just wasn’t done. In the next chapter, the reader finds out (if they couldn’t tell from the title!) that Mathew and Marilla’s orphan is a girl, not the boy they expected – and that, of course, will add to the conflict, too.

When Mathew meets Anne in chapter two, he discovers that not only is she not a boy, but that she has an Imagination – not necessarily a good thing for a girl living in a small farming community at that time. He also finds out that she wants a home more than anything, and he hasn’t the heart to tell her that there’s been a mistake. So he takes her home to Marilla and they decide to keep her. Anne tries to conform to Avonlea society, but her Imagination causes her to get into various scrapes throughout the book and in the end it’s what the people of Avonlea love most about her – her fresh way of seeing the world. If Anne’s imagination had been more conventional for her time and place, if, for example, she made particularly beautiful quilts or absolutely wonderful strawberry-rhubarb preserves, there would have been less conflict and not much of a story; I doubt the book would still be popular after all these years.

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