Anne of Avonlea recap

At sixteen Anne Shirley teaches the Avonlea school while keeping house at Green Gables with Marilla, and finds that her pupils, her neighbours, and her own quick temper all resist improvement. She quarrels with the irascible new neighbour Mr. Harrison, sells his Jersey cow by mistake, and ends by becoming his confidante. With Gilbert and Diana she founds a village improvement society whose first triumph is a hall painted a hideous blue. Marilla takes in six-year-old orphan twins, Davy and Dora Keith, and Davy's mischief keeps Green Gables lively. Anne loses her temper once, whipping her most difficult pupil, and is ashamed of it; she also gains a devoted scholar in the dreaming Paul Irving. Losing her way one afternoon, she discovers Miss Lavendar Lewis living alone at Echo Lodge, and gradually learns that Miss Lavendar was once engaged to Paul's widowed father. Their old quarrel is mended and they marry. Mrs. Lynde, widowed, comes to Green Gables to keep house, freeing Anne and Gilbert to leave for Redmond College.

Previously: Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, an elderly brother and sister farming Green Gables in the village of Avonlea on Prince Edward Island, sent for an orphan boy to help with the work and were sent eleven-year-old Anne Shirley instead. Marilla meant to return her and then kept her. Anne grew up at Green Gables, talkative, imaginative, and prone to scrapes, made a bosom friend of Diana Barry, and kept up a five-year quarrel with the clever Gilbert Blythe after he teased her about her red hair. She won a place at Queen's Academy, took the two-year course in one, and gained a scholarship to Redmond College. Then Matthew died suddenly and Marilla's eyesight began to fail. Anne gave up the scholarship, took the Avonlea school in order to stay at home, and learned that Gilbert had given up that school for her sake, which finally ended the feud between them. She begins this book at sixteen, teaching in the village where she grew up.

Anne, sixteen and a half, is preparing to teach the Avonlea school and is interrupted by her new neighbour, Mr. Harrison, who arrives in a fury because a Jersey cow has broken into his oats again. Anne promises to keep the animal tied or sell her, and shortly afterwards, catching what she takes to be the same cow in his field once more, she sells her on the spot to a passing buyer. The cow turns out to have been Mr. Harrison's own; Anne's is safely in the pasture where the hired boy had left her. Anne goes to confess, pays over the money, and to her surprise the two become friends over the mistake. Calling at his untidy house she is startled by his parrot Ginger, whose language is not fit for a Sunday-school. Anne, Gilbert, and Diana meanwhile launch the Avonlea Village Improvement Society, intending to smarten the village up, and find the older residents unenthusiastic.

Anne begins teaching, determined never to use the strap and to rule by affection. Most of the school responds; the exception is Anthony Pye, who despises a girl teacher. She discovers a rare pupil in Paul Irving, an American boy living with his strict grandmother while his widowed father works abroad, whose imagination matches her own. The improvement society raises money and arranges to have the village hall painted; through a muddle over the order it is painted a violent blue, to the delight of everyone who predicted the scheme would fail. At Green Gables, Marilla's cousin Mary Keith dies and leaves her six-year-old twins, Davy and Dora, with no other relative willing to take them at once. Marilla agrees to keep them for a time. Dora gives no trouble whatever; Davy gives nothing else, and Anne finds her evenings occupied with his questions and his disasters.

Davy's mischief runs from spoiled preserves and a jug of cream to running off during a Sunday visit, and Anne learns that he behaves better for affection than for punishment. Her own teaching is tested on what she afterwards calls a Jonah day, when nothing goes right, and she finally loses her temper and whips Anthony Pye. She is ashamed of it and apologizes to herself if not to him; oddly, it is from that day that Anthony begins to respect her. The improvement society continues its work, and Anne, Diana, Jane and Priscilla spend a golden day exploring the woods and discovering the neglected garden of Hester Gray, a young wife long dead. Mr. Harrison's household is upset by the arrival of the wife nobody in Avonlea knew he had; she has come to find him after a long separation, and Anne has a hand in reconciling them.

The Harrisons settle down together, Mrs. Harrison cleaning the house thoroughly and banishing Ginger the parrot to the woodshed. Summer brings a run of small calamities and comedies to Green Gables and the school. Paul Irving's stories of his rock people bring Anne up against Mrs. Irving's disapproval of imagination, and Anne defends the boy. Anne and Diana lose their road one afternoon and knock at a stone house up a hidden lane, where they are welcomed by Miss Lavendar Lewis, a small, sweet-faced woman of about forty-five living alone with a little maid called Charlotta the Fourth, keeping herself young by playing at parties for imaginary guests. Anne begins to visit Echo Lodge regularly, and gradually gathers that Miss Lavendar was once engaged to a young man from Avonlea and quarrelled with him over nothing that either could afterwards explain.

Anne takes Paul Irving to Echo Lodge, where he and Miss Lavendar take to one another at once, neither of them knowing what connects them. Anne, piecing together what she has been told, begins to suspect that the man Miss Lavendar refused a quarter of a century ago was Paul's father, and word comes that Stephen Irving is expected back on the Island to see his son. Anne's second year of teaching ends with the school flourishing and even Anthony Pye reconciled to her. Davy has grown into the household and Marilla, who took the twins as a duty, is plainly attached to them. The village improvement society has planted, tidied, and gradually won the older residents round, and the blue hall has been repainted a colour everyone can live with. Anne, who once thought she would go to Redmond, has begun to wonder whether she will ever leave Avonlea at all.

Stephen Irving comes home to Avonlea and goes up the hidden lane to the stone house, and after twenty-five years the quarrel between him and Miss Lavendar is mended; he asks her again and she accepts, with Charlotta the Fourth listening at the door and Paul delighted to be given a mother he already likes. The two are married quietly at Echo Lodge in late August, with Anne and Diana attending. The couple leave for the United States and take Paul and Charlotta with them, so Anne loses her favourite pupil and her friend from the stone house in the same week, though Echo Lodge is to be reopened each summer. At Green Gables the question of Anne's future is answered by a death: Mrs. Rachel Lynde is widowed, and rather than live alone she comes to Green Gables to keep house for Marilla and take charge of the twins. With the household provided for, Marilla insists that Anne go to Redmond College after all. Anne resigns the Avonlea school, and she and Gilbert Blythe leave the village in September for their first term.

Miss Lavendar Lewis and Stephen Irving are married at Echo Lodge on an August afternoon, with Anne and Diana as bridesmaids, Charlotta the Fourth weeping with joy, and Paul delighted to be given a mother he already likes. The couple leave for the United States, taking Charlotta with them, and Paul goes too, so Anne loses her favourite pupil. Echo Lodge is to be kept up and opened again in the summers, so it is not shut for good. Mr. Harrison and his wife are settled and reconciled, and the Avonlea Village Improvement Society has begun to change the look of the village. At Green Gables the twins have become a fixture, Davy no more docile but a good deal more affectionate. Mrs. Rachel Lynde, left alone in the world after her husband's death, comes to live at Green Gables and take over the housekeeping and the twins, which frees Marilla and settles the question that has hung over Anne for two years. Anne and Gilbert are able at last to go to Redmond College in the autumn, and part from Avonlea on a September evening with their studies ahead of them and their friendship unchanged.