Notes:Anne of Avonlea/Cultural references and allusions

"Flowers spring to blossom where she walks The careful ways of duty, Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Are flowing curves of beauty."

- Anne of Avonlea – Epigraph

This quote is from a poem called "Among the Hills" by John Greenleaf Whittier. It is featured in Among the Hills and Other Poems.

"[Anne] sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil."

Virgil (70 B.C.-19 B.C), an ancient Roman poet, is best known for his three major works of Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid.

"When Anne entered the schoolroom she was confronted by prim rows of 'shining morning faces'"

This quote is a reference to the famous "All the world's a stage" speech from Act II, Scene VII of As You Like It by William Shakespeare.

"Isn't it something to have started a soul along a path that may end in Shakespeare and Paradise Lost?"

This is a reference to John Milton's epic seventeenth-century poem, Paradise Lost, which explores the war in Heaven and the Fall of Man from the perspective of Lucifer.

"While the children read their verses Anne marshalled her shaky wits into order and looked over the array of little pilgrims to the Grown-up Land."

This quote is an allusion to John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress with its use of allegorical place names.

"All Sorts and Conditions of Men ... and Women"

"All Sorts and Conditions of Men ... and Women", the title of Chapter 6, is a reference to Walter Besant's 1882 slum novel, All Sorts and Conditions of Men.

"Bliss is it on such a day to be alive; but to smell dying fir is very heaven. That's two thirds Wordsworth and one third Anne Shirley."

This quote is a reference to William Wordsworth's poem, "The French Revolution as it Appeared to Enthusiasts at its Commencement", which first appeared in the 1805 edition of The Prelude.

"Dora had a 'prunes and prisms' mouth, Davy's was all smiles"

This quote is a reference to Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit (1857), in which the character Mrs General instructs her young charges that uttering the phrase "prunes and prisms" will give an attractive and ladylike shape to the mouth.

"The trouble is, I've got things the matter with my conscience,' sobbed Anne. 'Oh, this has been such a Jonah day, Marilla. I'm so ashamed of myself. I lost my temper and whipped Anthony Pye."

"A Jonah day", also the title of chapter 12, is a reference to the prophet Jonah from the Old Testament of the Bible and is used by Anne to describe a day where everything has gone wrong. Jonah, in incurring the wrath of God for not carrying out his mission, was thrown overboard at sea and swallowed by a whale.

"Plum puffs won't minister to a mind diseased,' said Anne disconsolately; but Marilla thought it a good sign that she had recovered sufficiently to adapt a quotation."

This quote is a reference to Act V, Scene III of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

"Every morn is a fresh beginning, Every morn is the world made new,"

This quote is a reference to the extended version of Susan Coolidge's poem, "New Every Morning".

"We're to seek for beauty and refuse to see anything else. 'Begone, dull care'"

This quote is a reference to the traditional English song, "Begone Dull Care", which has been dated back as far as the seventeenth century. The song was transcribed and compiled alongside other poems of the oral tradition in Robert Bell's 1857 collection, Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England.

"The Substance of Things Hoped For"

"The Substance of Things Hoped For", the title of chapter 16, is a reference to Hebrews 11:1.

"Everything was going well but Anne was beginning to feel nervous. It was surely time for Priscilla and Mrs Morgan to arrive. She made frequent trips to the gate and looked as anxiously down the lane as ever her namesake in the Bluebeard story peered from the tower casement."

This quote is a reference to the fairy tale "Blue Beard", which was first popularized by Charles Perrault in 1697. In the story, Anne, sister-in-law to Blue Beard, keeps a frantic watch from a lofty tower to hasten the arrival of her brothers, so that they might save her sister from her execution.

"Over the mountains of the moon, Down the valley of the shadow."

This quote is a reference to the 1849 poem, "Eldorado", by Edgar Allan Poe. Anne quotes this poem in response to Davy's question about the location of sleep.

"I'll amuse your Aunt Josephine with the "strange eventful history" of this afternoon when I go to town tomorrow. We've had a rather trying time, but it's over now. I've got the platter, and that rain has laid the dust beautifully. So "all's well that ends well"."

"Strange eventful history" is a quote from Jacques' "All the world's a stage" speech from Act II Scene VII of William Shakespeare's As You Like It. "All's well that ends well" is a reference to Shakespeare's play, All's Well That Ends Well.

"There was a moment's stillness ... and then from the woods over the river came a multitude of fairy echoes, sweet, elusive, silvery, as if all the 'horns of elfland' were blowing against the sunset."

This quote is a reference to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Blow, Bugle, Blow".

"Anne seems to me real stately and like a queen. But I'd like Kerrenhappuch if it happened to be your name."

Here Diana makes a reference to Kerenhappuch, the third daughter of Job in the Bible.

"Anne and Diana came with the wholesome joy and exhilaration of the outer existence, which Miss Lavendar, 'the world forgetting, by the world forgot', had long ceased to share"

This quote is a reference to line 208 of Alexander Pope's poem, "Eloisa to Abelard".

"'I only squealed once,' said Davy proudly. 'My garden was all smashed flat,' he continued mournfully, 'but so was Dora's,' he added in a tone which indicated that there was yet balm in Gilead."

This quote is a reference to Jeremiah 8:22.

"Under Mr Irving's praise Anne's face "burst flower-like into rosy bloom""

This quote is a reference to the long narrative poem Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl by John Greenleaf Whittier, first published by Ticknor and Fields in 1866.

"[Anne] turned to confront Charlotta the Fourth, who was in the hall, all 'nods and becks and wreathed smiles'."

This quote is a reference to John Milton's pastoral poem, "L'Allegro" (1645).

"Perhaps some realization came to [Marilla] that after all it was better to have, like Anne, 'the vision and faculty divine'"

This quote is a reference to line 79 of "The Excursion: Being a Portion of the Recluse" by William Wordsworth.

"Anne, of late, had not been without her suspicions that Diana was proving false to the melancholy Byronic hero of her early dreams. But as 'things seen are mightier than things heard,', or suspected, the realization that it was actually so came to her with almost the shock of perfect surprise."

This quote is a reference to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, "Enoch Arden" (1864). In the poem, Enoch is a happily married fisherman who, due to financial difficulties, is forced to undertake work as a merchant seaman and, through misfortune, becomes shipwrecked on a desert island. After ten years, Enoch is able to return home, only to find his wife, Annie, happily married to another man, believing Enoch to be long dead. Enoch never reveals himself to his wife, not wanting to mar her happiness, and dies of a broken heart. "Enoch Arden" is a poem very fitting with the themes of Anne of Avonlea, of romance, separation, and misunderstandings, (Mr and Mrs J. A. Harrison, and Miss Lavendar and Stephen Irving) and Gilbert's opinion that the love story of Lavendar and Stephen would 'have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been no separation or misunderstanding'.

"Like the helmet of Navarre, Charlotta's blue bows waved ever in the thickest of the fray."

This quote is a reference to Bertha Runkle's 1901 historical romance novel, The Helmet of Navarre.

"By noon the rooms were decorated, the table beautifully laid; and upstairs was waiting a bride, 'adorned for her husband'."

This quote is a reference to Revelation 21:2.

"The two upper bows rather gave the impression of overgrown wings sprouting from Charlotta's neck, somewhat after the fashion of Raphael's cherubs."

This quote is a reference to Raphael's 1512 painting, Sistine Madonna.

"[Anne] sat down under the silver poplar to wait for Gilbert, feeling very tired but still unweariedly thinking 'long, long thoughts'."

This quote is a reference to the poem "My Lost Youth" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which was first published in Putnam's Magazine in August 1855.