Priscilla Grant

Priscilla Grant is Anne Shirley’s former schoolmate, friend, and ally in the Avonlea Improvement Society. As a teacher at Carmody, a contributor to the Society’s plans, and the niece of a celebrated author, she connects Anne’s friendships and public ambitions with the comic surprise of Charlotte E. Morgan’s visit to Green Gables.

Background and Place in Avonlea

When Rachel Lynde reports that the Carmody school has been given to a teacher named Priscilla Grant, Anne immediately recognizes her Queen’s Academy schoolmate and is delighted by the news. The narrative establishes their shared educational past before Priscilla appears in the scenes themselves: she is not merely a name from Anne’s earlier life, but a friend expected to join the community and its activities.

Priscilla also has a family connection that matters greatly to Anne. Her aunt is Charlotte E. Morgan, the author of Edgewood Days and The Rosebud Garden, books Anne admires. Learning that the famous writer is Priscilla’s aunt gives Anne a thrill and turns the possibility of meeting Morgan into a personal dream. Priscilla’s place in the story thus links a real friendship to Anne’s imaginative life as a reader.

Friendship and the Improvement Society

Anne and Gilbert Blythe have already imagined an ideal Avonlea as they plan the Improvement Society, while Priscilla is expected to participate in its work. Anne tells Diana Barry that Priscilla will write a paper for an upcoming Society meeting and expects it to be good, partly because she associates Priscilla’s family with accomplished writing. The Society gives Priscilla a role in Anne’s practical, communal ambitions, not just in her private excitement about literature.

Anne’s sense of responsibility for the organization shapes how she approaches its less appealing tasks. While canvassing Tory Road with Diana, she explains that she chose the difficult route because she was the first to suggest the Society and therefore feels she ought to undertake the most disagreeable work. Priscilla is part of this forward-looking circle of friends and collaborators, even though the account does not describe her canvassing the road herself.

Her friendship with Anne also appears in a spring outing planned around Anne’s belated birthday celebration. Anne proposes that she, Priscilla, Jane Andrews, and Diana go into the woods to discover the spring together. At a pool, the girls suggest names including Birch Pool, Glimmer-glass, and Anne’s Fairies’ Mirror; the name is decided by drawing slips of birch bark from Anne’s hat, and Jane’s suggestion, Crystal Lake, wins. Priscilla participates in the shared game of naming, while Anne accepts the chance result without voicing her disappointment.

The Long-Awaited Visit

As summer approaches, Anne looks forward to Charlotte E. Morgan’s visit to Prince Edward Island and expects Priscilla to bring her to Avonlea. The prospect occupies Anne’s imagination well before it becomes real. When a letter arrives from Priscilla, Anne learns that the visit is planned for Thursday, weather permitting: Priscilla and her aunt will drive to Avonlea, spend the afternoon at Green Gables, and go on to the White Sands Hotel that evening to meet Morgan’s American friends.

Anne asks Marilla Cuthbert to let her cook the whole dinner, wanting to do something for the author of The Rosebud Garden. She and Diana plan a flower-filled parlor, wild roses for the table, and a meal they hope will make a good impression. Anne’s expectations are heightened by Morgan’s heroines, whom she imagines as naturally composed and capable housekeepers. Priscilla’s aunt has become, in Anne’s mind, not only a famous writer but a judge before whom Anne and her domestic abilities may somehow be measured.

The visit changes at short notice. Priscilla explains that she did not know until the previous night that they were coming: Morgan had planned to spend the day with a friend in town, but that friend’s household was quarantined because of scarlet fever. Priscilla proposed Green Gables instead, knowing how much Anne wanted to meet her aunt. They also bring Mrs. Pendexter, a friend of Morgan’s from New York, whose husband is a millionaire. Their stay must be brief because Mrs. Pendexter has to return to the hotel by five o’clock.

Surprise at Green Gables

Priscilla arrives with Morgan and Mrs. Pendexter at a moment when Anne is working through the practical disorder of preparing the house and dinner. Anne has just shifted feathers from one bed tick to another; her dress is covered in down, and feathers form a halo around her hair. She has also hurriedly applied lotion to her nose, worried about the seven freckles she associates with the Society’s picnic. The visitor she recognizes by appearance as Morgan turns out to be Mrs. Pendexter; Morgan is the shorter, stout, gray-haired woman. In Anne’s bewilderment, the mistaken identification barely registers beside the shock of receiving her guests in such disarray.

Priscilla apologizes for the unexpected arrival and explains the changed plan. Anne nevertheless welcomes the party calmly, escorts the guests to the spare room and parlor, and then hurries outside to help Priscilla unharness the horse. Priscilla’s account makes clear that the surprise is not a planned test or an intentional discourtesy: the decision to come was a last-minute response to the quarantine and Morgan’s altered arrangements.

When Priscilla goes into the parlor, Anne catches Diana by the arm and explains who is there, how she looks, and that the house has nothing prepared for dinner but a cold ham bone. Priscilla has also looked at Anne with a puzzled expression while they put away the horse, a look Anne interprets with embarrassment as a reaction to her appearance. The scene sets Anne’s elaborate preparations against the actual arrival: the carefully imagined reception collapses into feathers, a mistaken identity, and an improvised meal.

Narrative Role

Priscilla’s importance lies in the way she brings Anne’s hopes into contact with ordinary contingency. Their friendship is visible in shared school history, Society plans, and woodland recreation; her family connection to Morgan then gives Anne’s admiration for an author a personal route into the home. Finally, Priscilla’s last-minute change of plans delivers the guests before Anne is ready. The visit’s comedy depends on the contrast between Anne’s idealized picture of a composed encounter and the untidy circumstances of its actual beginning. Priscilla helps create that reversal without intending it: she is both the friend who knows Anne longs to meet Morgan and the bearer of news that arrives too late for Anne’s preparations.