The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
Matthew Cuthbert drives to the station to collect an orphan boy. Waiting on the platform is a skinny, red-haired girl who has already decided to love everything she sees.
Anne Shirley
A red-haired orphan with a carpet-bag turns Avonlea into a world large enough for imagination and belonging.
Green Gables
A tidy farmhouse meant for no child becomes the one place Anne can finally call home.
One astonishing decision leaves Avonlea reeling and raises questions no one can ignore.
Read →Mrs. Rachel Astonished
“Oh, no, I’m quite well although I had a bad headache yesterday,” she said. “Matthew went to Bright River. We’re getting a little boy from an orphan asylum in Nova Scotia and he’s coming on the train tonight.”
If Marilla had said that Matthew had gone to Bright River to meet a kangaroo from Australia Mrs. Rachel could not have been more astonished. She was actually stricken dumb for five seconds. It was unsupposable that Marilla was making fun of her, but Mrs. Rachel was almost forced to suppose it.
“Are you in earnest, Marilla?” she demanded when voice returned to her.
“Yes, of course,” said Marilla, as if getting boys from orphan asylums in Nova Scotia were part of the usual spring work on any well-regulated Avonlea farm instead of being an unheard of innovation.
Mrs. Rachel felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She thought in exclamation points. A boy! Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of all people adopting a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after this! Nothing!
Mrs. Rachel's shock is funny because it treats a child as something exotic and faintly alarming, on par with a kangaroo shipped in from Australia. She is the neighbor who knows everything happening in Avonlea, and here the Cuthberts have done something she never saw coming, which offends her more than it worries her. Marilla makes it worse on purpose, answering as if adopting a boy were as ordinary as planting potatoes, leaving Rachel to sputter through her exclamation points alone.
The Wrong Child Arrives
Matthew Cuthbert drives to the station to collect an orphan boy. Waiting on the platform is a skinny, red-haired girl who has already decided to love everything she sees.
Anne’s carpet-bag
One shabby carpet-bag holds everything Anne owns when Matthew comes to fetch her.
Marilla Cuthbert
A severe woman of narrow habits discovers that duty can become mother-love.
Anne of Green Gables
The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.
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