Children should be seen and not heard

“Children should be seen and not heard” is a traditional rule of adult authority that treats children’s silence as a virtue. In the novel, Marilla Cuthbert names it as the response she may use when she cannot answer Davy Keith’s questions, but Anne Shirley’s influence on the twins presents a more attentive alternative: correction through explanation, trust, and care.

The Maxim as a Traditional Rule

The maxim surfaces when Marilla and Rachel Lynde discuss the household arrangements they have made after Anne’s departure. Rachel agrees to help with the twins but refuses to take responsibility for answering Davy’s questions, observing that she is neither an encyclopedia nor a Philadelphia lawyer. Marilla accepts that the children will miss Anne, yet insists that Anne’s future must not be sacrificed to Davy’s curiosity. If he asks something she cannot answer, she says, she will tell him that children should be seen and not heard.

Marilla presents the maxim as a method available to her, not as a detailed program she has already imposed. Its force lies in the contrast between a child’s questions and an adult’s refusal to engage: where Anne treats curiosity as something that can be met with an explanation, the old rule would end the exchange by appealing to children’s subordinate place in the household.

Anne’s Alternative: Guidance Through Explanation

Several episodes show what the maxim’s silencing response would leave unanswered. When Davy misreads a catechism passage about God redeeming people and concludes that it says God makes preserves, Anne first has to step away to compose herself, then returns and explains how a comma changes the meaning. Davy follows the mistaken reading through to its comic implication, wondering whether heaven can have Saturdays. The scene makes his error an occasion for explanation rather than a reason to dismiss him.

Anne’s approach also appears in Davy’s remorse over telling falsehoods. When he discovers that he has made Anne cry, he rushes into her lap and admits that he did not know lying was wrong; he says he has seen other children do it and had tried to be like Paul Irving. Anne recognizes that he needs instruction as well as forgiveness, and tells Marilla that he should be forgiven this time if he promises not to lie again. The episode presents moral learning as a relationship in which an adult takes a child’s understanding seriously and makes the rule clear.

Children’s Voices and Adult Judgment

Davy’s remembered conversation with his dying mother gives his conduct a further context. He recalls that she told him to be good and to be kind to Dora, and that he should stand up for her. He understands the promise in his own childlike way: pulling Dora’s curls is not, in his view, incompatible with protecting her from anyone else who might do so. His reasoning is wrong, but it is also spoken aloud, allowing the adults to see the gap between his intention and the effect on his sister.

Paul Irving’s question about whether he is wrong “in my upper story” shows another risk when children hear adults judge their difference without being included in the conversation. After overhearing Mary Joe call him queer and suggest something is wrong with him, Paul cannot sleep for a long time and seeks Anne’s reassurance. She tells him he is not wrong. The scene does not directly invoke Marilla’s maxim, but it underscores the importance of answering a child who is trying to understand what adults’ words mean about him.

A Rule Set Against Anne’s Influence

Marilla herself concedes that Anne’s methods seem to have worked fairly well with Davy, whom Rachel describes as reformed. Marilla admits she has grown fond of both twins: Davy wins her over, while Dora is lovely and dependable, though Marilla and Rachel find her less lively. Their discussion thus complicates the prospect of reviving the traditional rule. Marilla can name it as the way she was brought up, yet she also recognizes the children’s attachment to Anne and the changes Anne’s guidance has helped bring about.

The maxim stands as a proposed substitute for the patient work of answering children, especially when Marilla is uncertain what to say. The episodes involving Davy and Paul demonstrate the stakes of that choice: children’s questions and interpretations may be mistaken, but listening reveals what they have understood, what they fear, and what they still need to learn. The novel contrasts silence imposed by authority with a form of care that corrects without denying children a voice.