Anne of Green Gables: Chapter 8: Anne’s Bringing-Up Is Begun Summary & Analysis

The next day, Marilla keeps Anne busy with household tasks and observes that she’s hardworking and a fast learner—her weakness is her tendency to drift into daydreams and forget what she’s doing. After Anne washes the dinner dishes, Marilla finally breaks the news: she and Matthew have decided to keep her, as long as tries to be good. Anne immediately bursts into tears of joy. Marilla tells Anne to sit down and try to calm herself—she laughs and cries too easily.

Marilla says that Anne must simply call her “Marilla”—she doesn’t want to be called “Miss Cuthbert,” because she’s not used to it, or “Aunt Marilla,” because she’s not Anne’s aunt and won’t pretend she is. Anne is shocked that Marilla never imagines. Marilla says she doesn’t believe in imagining that things are different from the way God has made them. She sends Anne into the sitting room to find the copy of the Lord’s Prayer on the mantel; she must memorize it this afternoon.

Anne doesn’t reappear, and when Marilla goes to investigate, she finds Anne staring at a picture on the wall, Christ Blessing the Little Children. Anne tells Marilla she was imagining that she was one of the children in the picture—the lonely-looking little girl standing apart from the group, hoping that Christ will notice her. She imagines how the little girl must have felt while she waited in trepidation, and the joy she must have felt when she was kindly noticed.

Marilla interrupts Anne’s digression, finding it unseemly, and tells her that when she’s asked to do something, she needs to obey immediately. Anne finally settles down to study the prayer. She interrupts her study to say that she finds the prayer beautiful; in the asylum Sunday School, the superintendent prayed “mournfully,” as if it were a “disagreeable duty.” But this prayer sounds like poetry.

After another period of silence, Anne asks Marilla if she thinks that Anne will ever have a “bosom friend” in Avonlea. By this she means an “intimate friend” or “kindred spirit” in whom she can confide anything. Marilla mentions that Diana Barry, who lives at Orchard Slope, the neighboring farm, might be a good playmate. She also assures Anne, who’s worried that Diana might also have red hair, that Diana has black hair and, more importantly, she is smart and well-behaved.

Anne disregards Marilla’s attempt to teach a moral and says that having a beautiful bosom friend would be almost as good as being beautiful oneself. When she lived with Mrs. Thomas, she named her reflection in the bookcase “Katie Maurice” and talked to Katie about her life, imagining that someday she could step through the enchanted bookcase and join Katie in a happy land forever. When Anne moved in with Mrs. Hammond, she discovered an echo in the valley and named her Violetta, becoming nearly as attached to her as to Katie Maurice. Marilla dryly observes that it will be good for Anne to have a real friend and sends her upstairs to finish learning the prayer.

Up in her room, Anne imagines different décor and furnishings for the spartan bedroom—velvet carpet, silk curtains, and gold and silver tapestries. She also imagines that she’s wearing a white lace gown, has black hair, and is named Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. But then she catches a glimpse of her reflection and reminds herself that she’s just “Anne of Green Gables”—which is so much nicer than being Anne of nowhere in particular. Then she sits at the window and blows kisses to the Snow Queen, the trees, Diana’s house, and even Katie Maurice and Violetta.