Anne of Green Gables: Chapter 20: A Good Imagination Gone Wrong Summary & Analysis

The “reluctant Canadian spring” finally comes to Green Gables. Anne happily chatters to Marilla about a student outing to gather mayflowers. Some students offered each other mayflowers (Anne was offered some, but “rejected them with scorn”), and everyone marched home singing afterward. Soon after, Violet Vale becomes filled with violets. When Anne spends time there, she doesn’t worry “whether Gil—whether anybody” beats her in class, but when she’s in school, she cares more than anything. There are “a lot of different Annes” in her, and she thinks that’s why life is so confusing.

One evening in June, Anne sits by her gable window, daydreaming. Marilla bustles in with some freshly ironed aprons, feeling weary in the aftermath of a headache. Anne expresses sympathy, and Marilla says Anne’s housework was helpful enough today, although it wasn’t necessary to starch Matthew’s handkerchiefs or burn the pie to a crisp. Anne is sorry—she’d meant to stay focused on facts, but she felt “an irresistible temptation” to imagine she was a princess waiting for a knight to rescue her. And she’d meant to be especially good today because it’s the anniversary of her coming to Green Gables, the most important day of her life. Marilla admits that she isn’t sorry that Anne came to Green Gables, while privately thinking that she doesn’t know how she lived before Anne’s arrival.

Marilla asks Anne to go to Orchard Slope to get a sewing pattern from Mrs. Barry, but Anne hesitates, explaining that she can’t walk through “the Haunted Wood”—the spruce wood along the brook. She and Diana imagined it because the idea of a haunted wood is so “romantic.” They’ve imagined that a wailing white lady walks beside the brook at night, and there’s also the ghost of a murdered child, and a headless man. When Marilla insists there is no such thing as ghosts, Anne objects that plenty of respectable and religious people believe in them, but Marilla won’t hear of it.

Marilla tells Anne to walk to the Barrys’ through the spruce grove to teach her a lesson. Anne is genuinely terrified and resists, sobbing, as Marilla walks her down to the brook. Finally, though, she stumbles up the path, shrinking from every noise and shadow. By the time she reaches the Barrys’, she has started running so fast she’s out of breath. On the way home with the sewing pattern in hand, she rushes over the bridge with her eyes closed for fear of seeing a ghost. Her teeth chattering, she tells Marilla that from now on, she’ll be content with ordinary places.