Anne of Green Gables: Chapter 14: Anne’s Confession Summary & Analysis

The next day, Marilla can’t find her amethyst brooch; it isn’t stuck in her pincushion as usual. When she asks Anne about it, Anne admits that she’d spotted the brooch in Marilla’s room earlier and briefly tried it on. However, she insists that she put it back where it belonged. Marilla checks her room again, but the brooch isn’t anywhere. When Anne maintains her innocence, Marilla thinks she’s being defiant and sends her to her room. She’s troubled by Anne’s lie and worries that she can’t trust her.

The next morning, Marilla tells Matthew that she’s searched everywhere for the brooch, and that since Anne continues to deny having taken it, she’ll have to stay in her room until she confesses. That means missing the Sunday school picnic, too. Anne is devastated. The next morning, when Marilla brings Anne’s breakfast upstairs, Anne says she’s ready to confess. Anne claims that when she put on the brooch, she decided to go to Idlewild and pretend she was the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. But on the way, while she was crossing the bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters, she took off the brooch for another look and accidentally dropped it into the water.

Angry, Marilla tells Anne what her punishment will be—she can’t go to the Sunday school picnic. She’s unmoved by Anne’s passionate tears and spends the morning fiercely scrubbing the house. After dinner—when Marilla is irked that Matthew thinks she’s being too hard on Anne—she goes up to her room to look for a lace shawl that needs mending. When she looks in her trunk, she finds the amethyst brooch attached to a thread of the shawl. She suddenly remembers laying her shawl on the bureau, where the brooch must have gotten caught on it.

Marilla takes the brooch to Anne’s room and demands an explanation. Anne, worn out from crying, explains that she’d confessed in hopes of being allowed to go to the picnic. She invented a story, made it as interesting as possible, and memorized it. Marilla can’t help laughing. She admits that she shouldn’t have doubted Anne, who’s never lied to her before, and that she drove Anne to tell the story. She says that if Anne forgives her, she’ll forgive Anne—and now Anne had better get ready for the picnic; it’s barely started, so she won’t have missed much. Anne is ecstatic.

That night Anne is exhausted and completely happy. She tells Marilla all about the picnic, including a boat ride on the lake, and the indescribable ice cream. That night Marilla tells Matthew the whole story about the brooch. She admits that she’s learned a lesson from the whole episode. Anne is hard for her to understand sometimes, but Marilla thinks she’ll turn out well in the end—and life with her certainly isn’t dull.