Anne of Windy Poplars recap

Engaged to Gilbert Blythe and waiting out his medical course, Anne Shirley spends three years as principal of Summerside High School, boarding at an old house called Windy Poplars with two elderly widows and their outspoken help, Rebecca Dew. The story is told largely through her letters to Gilbert. Her first year is a quiet war with the Pringles, the clan that dominates the town and resents her appointment, until an old family diary comes into her hands and the opposition collapses. She wears down the hostility of the embittered vice-principal Katherine Brooke by taking her home to Green Gables for Christmas, and befriends a lonely, strictly reared child next door, little Elizabeth Grayson, who is waiting for a father she has never met. Between these threads Anne meddles benevolently in Summerside's romances, feuds, and family histories. At the end of the three years she reunites Elizabeth with her father, resigns her post, and leaves Summerside to be married.

Previously: Anne Shirley grew up at Green Gables in Avonlea, on Prince Edward Island, after being sent there as an orphan child by mistake to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. She taught the village school for two years, then took her degree at Redmond College in Kingsport, where she refused Gilbert Blythe's first proposal, was courted for a while by the handsome Royal Gardner, and lost her old schoolfellow Ruby Gillis to consumption. When Gilbert nearly died of typhoid fever she understood that she had loved him all along, and on his recovery they became engaged, agreeing to wait three years while he finished his medical training. Her closest friend Diana is married to Fred Wright and living near Avonlea; Marilla keeps Green Gables with Mrs. Rachel Lynde and the twins, Davy and Dora. This book covers those three waiting years, which Anne spends away from home.

Anne arrives in Summerside as principal of the high school and takes a room at Windy Poplars, an old house in Spook's Lane kept by two elderly widows, Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty, with their formidable help Rebecca Dew and a much-disputed cat. She is comfortable there at once. The school is another matter. The Pringles, a clan connected to half the town, had wanted the principalship for one of their own and set themselves to drive Anne out: her pupils are politely unteachable, Jen Pringle is quietly insolent, and invitations dry up. The vice-principal, Katherine Brooke, who wanted the post herself, refuses every friendly approach and is openly hostile. Anne also meets little Elizabeth Grayson from the great house next door, a lonely, closely guarded child who comes for the milk, calls herself by a different name each day, and lives for a time she calls Tomorrow, when her absent father will come for her.

The Pringle campaign continues through the autumn, and Anne, who has never failed to make friends anywhere, finds the situation wearing. Calling on an elderly woman on an errand of neighbourly kindness, she is given an old handwritten diary kept by a seafaring member of the family, and reading it discovers a discreditable truth about the ancestor the Pringles revere above all others. Anne has no intention of using it, but once the two elderly sisters who head the clan learn that she has read it, the resistance ends overnight. Invitations arrive, Jen Pringle becomes an ordinary pupil, and the school settles down. Anne fills the rest of her first year with the affairs of Summerside: neighbours' feuds, courtships, old family grievances, and the friendship of little Elizabeth, whose grandmother allows the child almost nothing and whom Anne takes on rare and treasured walks.

In her second year Anne is established in Summerside and busy in other people's lives. She helps a young couple whose engagement has been forbidden by an unreasonable father, contriving matters so that the pair settle the question themselves; she gives a woman kept in service to a tyrannical invalid mother a single afternoon of freedom at a friend's silver wedding; she takes country walks with Lewis Allen, a poor student working his way through school, and blunders cheerfully into more than one household's private history. The important change of the year is Katherine Brooke. Anne persuades her to spend Christmas at Green Gables, and away from Summerside the vice-principal's hardness gives way; she tells Anne about a childhood of poverty and charity and dependence, and gradually becomes a friend. Katherine afterwards leaves teaching, which she has always hated, for work she has chosen for herself.

Anne's third and last year in Summerside brings more of the town's tangled affairs. She dines at the gloomy Tomgallon house with its last surviving daughter, who recounts the disasters of her family with mournful relish; she has a hand in reconciling a proud woman with the man she quarrelled with years ago; and she watches over little Elizabeth, whose grandmother's rule grows no gentler. The child's situation troubles Anne more and more, and she resolves to do something about the father who has left her there.

Anne discovers what has kept Elizabeth's father away: he blamed the child for her mother's death and has been discouraged from claiming her. Anne writes to him, and when Pierce Grayson comes to Summerside she brings father and daughter together. The misunderstanding is cleared away, Mrs. Campbell's hold on the child is broken, and Elizabeth is to live with her father, so the Tomorrow she has been waiting for finally arrives. Anne's third year at the school ends. She resigns her post to be married, and the Pringles, who once tried to drive her out, are among those sorriest to see her go. Katherine Brooke is settled and happy in a new life. The parting at Windy Poplars is hard on everyone, Rebecca Dew and the two widows most of all, and Anne leaves Spook's Lane for the last time. Gilbert has finished his medical course; the three years of waiting are over, and Anne goes home to be married.

Anne finishes her third year as principal of Summerside High School and resigns to be married. The Pringle clan, long since won over, is sorry to lose her. Katherine Brooke, whose bitterness Anne dissolved by taking her home to Green Gables for Christmas, has left teaching for work she actually wants and has become a real friend. Little Elizabeth's future is settled: Anne brings her father, Pierce Grayson, to see her, the misunderstanding that kept them apart is cleared up, and Elizabeth goes to live with him, so that the Tomorrow she has been waiting for arrives at last. Anne makes her farewells at Windy Poplars, where Rebecca Dew and the two widows part from her with real grief, and she leaves Spook's Lane for the last time. Miss Minerva Tomgallon's house, the Summerside gossip, the school, and the three years of letters are behind her; ahead is her wedding to Gilbert Blythe, who has finished his medical course, and the house by the sea they will begin their marriage in. The book closes with Anne's Summerside chapter shut and her married life about to begin.