Conscience and repentance

Conscience and repentance emerge most clearly in Davy Keith’s two uneasy encounters with wrongdoing: first, when he fears the bad word he wants to say, and later, when shame over an unspecified misdeed keeps him from praying. Through Anne Shirley’s patient questions, the episodes frame conscience not as freedom from temptation but as the inward recognition that a choice is wrong, and repentance as the attempt to face that recognition rather than hide from it.

Temptation and the Fear of Prayer

Davy’s first crisis begins before he has committed the act he dreads. He admits that he has not felt like praying for a week and has skipped his prayers on two successive nights. The prospect of confessing this troubles him: he asks Anne whether she will be angry if he tells her the reason. When he finally explains, the problem is an ugly word he heard from Mr. Harrison’s hired boy and has wanted to repeat ever since—even while saying his prayers. Davy describes temptation as persistent and intrusive, but he also draws a clear distinction between wanting to do wrong and having done it. He explicitly tells Anne that he has not yet done anything naughty; what frightens him is the strength and persistence of the desire.

Anne does not respond by treating the impulse as an accomplished offense or by demanding that Davy conceal it. She allows him to state it, then redirects his attention from the forbidden word to its effect on the kind of person he wants to become. Her warning is that such words could fill his mind, poison it, and drive out what is good and manly. Davy considers this and recognizes that he does not want that outcome. Anne’s counsel then becomes practical: he should avoid people who use such words. The exchange connects moral self-command with the company he keeps, without suggesting that the temptation itself has vanished by force of reprimand.

The change is visible in Davy’s body as well as in his answer. At first he comes to Anne and buries his head in her lap but will not kneel. After she helps him put the temptation into words and consider its consequences, he eagerly wriggles down onto his knees and says that he can pray again. In particular, he is no longer afraid to say the prayer’s words about dying before morning. The movement from a refused posture to a willing one makes prayer a measure of restored willingness: Davy can approach it once he has stopped treating the unspoken temptation as something that must be hidden.

Anger and the Choice to Transgress

A later episode shows a more complicated failure of self-command. Davy has been simmering over what he regards as Rachel Lynde’s repeated attempts to correct him. His immediate grievance is that she had influenced Marilla Cuthbert against letting him go fishing with the Timothy Cottons. As he and Dora Keith set out, Rachel gives them a string of instructions about behaving properly at church, including remembering the Golden Text, keeping their collection, and paying attention to the sermon. Davy marches off without answering; once clear of the lane, he contorts his face to frighten Dora and blurts out an insult about Rachel.

The scene does not make his anger inexplicable: it supplies the fishing dispute and his sense of having endured Rachel’s corrections. But it also shows that his grievance does not prevent him from crossing a line he later regrets. After snapping at Dora and telling her to be quiet, he retreats behind the woodpile to think over the way of transgressors. That secluded pause follows the outward display of defiance with an inward reckoning. The narrative gives no account here of the particular wrong that later leaves him ashamed, so the episode should not be used to identify an offense the text does not specify. It does establish a pattern: anger and misconduct are followed not by ease but by withdrawal and reflection.

Conscience as an Inner Warning

When Davy comes to Anne later, he is miserable and says he was worse than ever before. His distress has become a barrier to prayer: he cannot bring himself to tell God what he has done and is ashamed for God to know. Anne answers that God already knows, refusing the idea that silence can make the wrongdoing unknown. The scene therefore separates confession from disclosure of new information. What matters is Davy’s willingness to acknowledge his action rather than avoid prayer because he is embarrassed by it.

Anne asks whether he has been unhappy ever since doing wrong. Davy emphatically confirms that he has. She names this unhappiness as conscience punishing him, then explains conscience in terms he can understand: something within a person that indicates when an action is wrong and makes that person unhappy when the wrongdoing continues. Davy asks what conscience is, so the explanation is not merely a rebuke; it gives him a way to interpret his own distress. His remorse is no longer only an overwhelming feeling. It becomes evidence, in Anne’s account, of an inward capacity to recognize wrongdoing and a reason to stop persisting in it.

Repentance Without a Claim of Perfection

Anne asks Davy to promise not to repeat the conduct she names: using naughty words, running away on Sundays, or telling falsehoods to cover his sins. His answer is firm but qualified. He says he will not do those things because, as he puts it, “It doesn't pay.” That practical phrasing sits beside Anne’s moral and religious guidance: Davy recognizes that wrongdoing has costs, while she directs him to tell God he is sorry and ask forgiveness. The account ends with her instruction, not with a narrated confirmation that he has carried it out, so repentance remains an offered next step rather than a completed ritual witnessed on the page.

Davy’s qualification that he might be bad in some other way prevents the exchange from turning into a promise of flawless conduct. Anne’s response is specific to the recurring failures under discussion, while Davy recognizes that resolving one temptation does not make every future temptation disappear. Together, the episodes present conscience and repentance as an ongoing practice: naming an impulse before acting on it, noticing the misery that follows a wrong, accepting that concealment cannot undo it, and being invited back toward prayer and forgiveness. Anne does not erase Davy’s responsibility; she makes it possible for him to face it without concluding that wrongdoing has made him unworthy of being heard.