63 pages • 2 hours read
Lucy Maud MontgomeryAnne Of Green Gables
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1908A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 20-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 20 Summary: “A Good Imagination Gone Wrong”
Springtime arrives in Avonlea, and the blossoming new world captivates Anne’s attention once more. Anne shares with Marilla her belief that mayflowers are “the souls of the flowers that died last summer” (194) and tells her that all the girls made wreaths of the mayflowers at school one day and marched down the road bedecked in springtime. As usual, Marilla finds these adventures a silly waste of time.
One June evening, Anne sits by the window in her east gable room and gazes at the Snow Queen, bedazzled once more in flowery blooms. The room still maintains its stiff and rigid feel, but there is a certain vibrant pulse to it now, brought on by the life of the young woman sitting in it. Marilla enters with Anne’s laundry and sits down quickly, troubled by a headache. She commends Anne for helping with the housework and sarcastically chides her for burning the pie.
Anne explains that she got lost in daydreaming about being a princess locked in a lonely tower. She apologizes and claims she “wanted to be extra good today because it’s an anniversary” (196). She came to Green Gables a year ago, but Anne assumes that the day means nothing to Marilla. She asks Marilla if she is sorry they kept her, and true to fashion, Marilla responds that she’s “not exactly sorry” even though she secretly “sometimes wondered how she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables” (197). Marilla asks Anne to run and ask Mrs. Barry for an apron pattern, and strangely enough, Anne seems afraid to go. When Marilla presses her, Anne reveals that she and Diana have renamed the wooded area between their homes the Haunted Wood. They imagined the wood was haunted one day and dreamed up a wild list of ghosts and evil creatures who lay in wait for young girls to walk by. Marilla thinks Anne’s imagination has gone too far and forces her to go to the Barry’s. Anne cries and pleads with Marilla to let her go in the morning, but Marilla chooses to risk a ghost snatching Anne and carrying her off into the ether.
Shivering in horror, Anne sets off for the Barry home. The wind through the birch trees “makes her heart stand still” (200), and the sound of the branches rubbing together makes her break out in a cold sweat. When bats swoop down close to her, she takes off running until she reaches the Barry kitchen door. On the way back, she closes her eyes the entire way. When she reaches Green Gables, she promises to remain content with commonplace places.
Chapter 21 Summary: “A New Departure in Flavourings”
The schoolmaster, Mr. Phillips, finally moves on to new opportunities, and all the girls at school break down in tears at his goodbye speech even though he has not always been their favorite person. However, the allure of summer vacation quickly brightens Anne’s spirits, especially since a new arrival in Avonlea has spurred her interest.
The pastor of Avonlea for 18 years, Mr. Bentley, resigned a few months prior, leaving the Avonlea church to face a revolving door of traveling pastors, most of whom the townspeople did not like. But now, a new minister and his wife have arrived, “a young, pleasant-faced couple still on their honeymoon” (205). Mr. and Mrs. Allan bring a spark of new life to the old town, but Anne “fell promptly and whole-heartedly in love” (205) with Mrs. Allan. Convinced Mrs. Allan is a kindred spirit, Anne cannot wait to attend Sunday school.
The entire town alternates welcoming the new pastor and his wife by inviting them to tea, and Marilla schedules a time for them to come to Green Gables. Anne, elated by this news, asks to make a cake for the occasion. Marilla agrees, but on the morning of the invite, Anne comes down with a severe cold. Not to be deterred, she perseveres in making the cake, and Anne even has time to decorate the table with flowers from the garden. The Allans arrive, and even Matthew appears after Anne convinces him to overcome his shyness and meet the new minister.
When lunch is over and the cake is served, Mrs. Allan’s face registers a shocking taste. Marilla sees this and tastes the cake herself, only to find that Anne has used liniment instead of vanilla in the recipe. Anne is devastated, but Marilla is to blame—she temporarily put the liniment in the old vanilla bottle after the liniment bottle broke. Embarrassed, Anne flies to her room and throws herself on the bed in tears. When the door opens, Anne assumes it is Marilla and confesses her shame. However, it is not Marilla—it is Mrs. Allan, who sits down and assures Anne that she is touched by Anne’s “kindness and thoughtfulness” (212). That evening, Anne deems Mrs. Allan a kindred spirit and revels in the fact that she always learns from her mistakes.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Anne Is Invited out to Tea”
After a visit to the post office, Anne returns with stars in her eyes from receiving an invitation to tea from Mrs. Allan. Marilla advises her to calm down, but Anne cannot, and Marilla wonders how Anne will ever get through life going through such extremes of emotion. She wakes up the next morning, studies her rules of etiquette so she doesn’t embarrass herself in front of Mrs. Allan, and heads off to tea. She returns that evening and sits with Marilla on the porch, her head in Marilla’s lap, to tell her about the afternoon. Anne and another girl from Sunday school, Lauretta, were the guests today, and after Lauretta left, Anne confided in Mrs. Allan about her entire life history, even the more tragic moments, and found a supportive ear in Mrs. Allan. Due to a visit to the minister’s home from Mrs. Rachel right before Anne left, Anne knows that the school has replaced Mr. Phillips with a female teacher—Miss Muriel Stacy. Though Mrs. Rachel doubts the merit of having a female teacher, Anne is looking forward to it.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honour”
A week after the tea with Mrs. Allan, Diana throws a party for the girls at school. After a small lunch, the girls engage in “daring,” the new form of amusement among the young people of Avonlea. The dares begin innocently enough: climbing trees and hopping around the yard on one leg. The ante rises when Anne dares Josie Pye, her nemesis, to walk the Barry fence railing. Josie does so without a single falter, and Anne responds that she knew a girl once who “could walk the ridgepole of a roof” (221).
Josie doesn’t believe this is possible and dares Anne to try it. Though Diana pleads with Anne not to, Anne’s pride is at stake, and she must do it “or perish in the attempt” (221). She climbs, via a nearby ladder, to the Barrys’ roof and takes a few steps before losing her balance and falling to the ground below. The girls are all convinced Anne must be dead and run screaming to the other side of the house. Luckily for Anne, the roof is low on that side, and she lands in a huge flower bush. She may not be dead, but her ankle is a bit sore, and she asks Mr. Barry to carry her back to Green Gables.
Marilla is out in the orchard picking apples when she sees Mr. Barry carrying a limp Anne across the field, followed by all the other girls. Her heart stops, and, at that moment, she realizes what Anne means to her. She runs up to them, and Anne tells her to “look on the bright side of things” (224) because she could have broken her neck instead. A visit from the doctor proves that her ankle is broken, and Anne must rest for seven weeks before returning to school. This devastates her for two reasons: one, she will miss the arrival of the new teacher, and two, Gilbert will get ahead of her in school.
Thankfully for Anne, the girls visit her every day and keep her apprised of what is happening at school. They reveal that the new teacher is a breath of fresh air after Mr. Phillips, and based on their reports, Anne deems Miss Stacy a kindred spirit before even meeting her.
Chapters 20-23 Analysis
On the year anniversary of Anne’s arrival, time is taken for reflection and growth. Anne is maturing, even though her scrapes and imagination say otherwise. She is growing into a young woman with promise and prospects, one who transforms the lives of everyone she meets. The feeling of new life in the east gable room is symbolic of the new life she has brought to Marilla and Matthew, much like when she opened the stuck gable window in the opening chapters. The description of the room makes it clear that the vital life force now present at Green Gables is independent of time: it extends beyond Anne’s school girl items or the flights of fancy that cause her to bring the outside world into her room. It is a feeling of hope and promise, and these chapters unite Marilla and Anne on a deeper level.
The relationship between Marilla and Anne reaches its highest point so far in the novel, as Marilla wonders how she ever lived before Anne. This orphan girl, unwanted by even Marilla at the beginning of the book, has become such an integral part of the family life at Green Gables. Marilla’s understanding of this encroaching feeling reaches its apex when Mr. Barry carries Anne home, and Marilla fears she is dead:
At that moment Marilla had a revelation. In the sudden stab of fear that pierced her very heart she realized what Anne had come to mean to her. She would have admitted that she liked Anne—nay, that she was very fond of Anne. But now she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Anne was dearer to her than anything else on earth (224).
This is a turning point for Marilla, and it sets the stage for the end of the novel when Marilla must turn to Anne for help. Her headaches, briefly mentioned in Chapter 20, foreshadow the eye problems that will incapacitate her later in the book when she must rely on Anne to save the homestead.
While Anne’s fantasies still consume her daily life, she can now differentiate between fact and fiction. She is comfortable engaging in deep, philosophical conversations with adults and can hold her own. She can reach Matthew when no one else can, and their ability to communicate wordlessly highlights Anne's impact on the old bachelor. Her list of kindred spirits is growing, and it’s clear now what the requirements are: they must treat her with kindness and acceptance very close to the initial meeting. Anne has an uncanny knack for seeing a person’s true character, and she is rarely wrong.
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By Lucy Maud Montgomery
