From Varying Viewpoints

Our family loves Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.  For those unfamiliar with the story (I recommend you read the books) two characters are important to know for this post.  The first is Rachel Lynde.  Mrs. Rachel is a neighbor to Green Gables and does not tolerate being left out of the goings on.  She is curious to know everything that is happening and then shares her strong (mostly critical opinion) on everything.  Anne is young orphan who comes to live at Green Gables.  She is full of wonder and awe.  The most simple things become grand when seen through her imagination, a wonderful example of someone who goes through their life filled with wonder and awe.  In the opening chapter you can see a contrast between how Anne sees Green Gables and how the practicle Rachel Lynde sees everything. 

Rachel’s Assessment:  

 “Green Gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visible from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so sociably situated.  Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in such a place living at all.”

“It’s just staying, that’s what,” she said as she stepped along the deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes.  “It’s no wonder Matthew and Marilla were both a little odd, living away back here by themselves.  Trees aren’t much company, though dear knows if they were there’d be enough of them.  I’d ruther look at people.  To be shure, they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they’re used to it.  A body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said.”

With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into the backyard of Green Gables.  Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about on one side with great patriarchal willows and on the other prim Lombardies.  Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel would have seen it if there had been.  Privately she was of the opinion that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she swept her house.  One could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrimming the proverbial peck of dirt.

 Anne’s Description: 

Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes glistening with delight.  Oh, wasn’t it beautiful? Wasn’t it a lovely place?  Suppose she wasn’t really going to stay here.  She would imagine she was.  There was scope for the imagination here.

A huge cherry tree grew outside, so close that its bough tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen.  On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of apple trees and one of cherry trees, also showered over with blossoms; and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions.  In the garden below were lilac trees purple with flowers, and their *** sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind.  

Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches  *** upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggest of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally.  Beyond it was a hill, green and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in it where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen from the other side of the Lake of Shinning Waters was visible.

For fun I put the above descriptions into chatGPT and it created two very different images.  Rachel’s description is more precise in the location, Anne’s description is more accurate in terms of color and elements.