Boston

Boston is a recurring point of departure and arrival in the novel, a place beyond Avonlea associated with better prospects, family separation, and new domestic arrangements. Its significance gathers around Miss Lavendar Lewis’s household: generations of Bowman girls leave for the city, but the marriage of Miss Lavendar and Stephen Irving changes Charlotta the Fourth’s expected departure into a shared move with the couple.

A destination for the Bowman girls

When Miss Lavendar explains why she calls her helper Charlotta the Fourth, she recalls that her mother’s death left her unable to remain alone in the house. Unable to afford the wages of a grown-up girl, she took in a Bowman girl in exchange for board and clothes. The first Charlotta came at thirteen and stayed until she was sixteen, then went to Boston because she could do better there. Her sister followed in the household, as did other Bowman girls; Miss Lavendar numbered them successively because they looked alike and she found their given names difficult to keep straight.

The arrangement made Boston more than a distant place-name in the household’s routine. Each departure meant Miss Lavendar would lose the companion who had helped her keep house, and she worried that Charlotta the Fourth, the last of the Bowman girls, would eventually leave as well. At fourteen, Charlotta was still with her, but the precedent suggested that her stay had an endpoint. Miss Lavendar’s uncertainty about what she would do after that departure reveals the practical and emotional importance of the girls’ service and companionship.

From expected departure to a shared home

Charlotta the Fourth initially imagines that she, too, must leave for Boston when she grows older. She is concerned not only about leaving Miss Lavendar without a helper, but about whether a stranger would respect Miss Lavendar’s make-believe and domestic habits. Charlotta considers herself unlucky with dishes, yet insists that no replacement would love Miss Lavendar more. Her attachment makes the expected move a potential loss for both women, not simply the next step in a family pattern.

After Stephen Irving and Miss Lavendar marry, that prospect changes. Charlotta, now fifteen, announces that she will go to Boston and live with the newly married couple. She presents the arrangement as a consequence of Stephen’s affection for Miss Lavendar and is grateful that they are so fond of one another. Boston remains the destination, but no longer signifies Charlotta’s separation from the person she serves: the marriage makes room for their relationship to continue within a new household.

A point of arrival for Paul Irving

Boston is also the place from which Paul Irving comes to Avonlea. Anne Shirley tells Miss Lavendar that Paul, her young pupil, arrived from Boston the previous year to live with his grandmother, Mrs. Irving, on the shore road. His origin connects Boston to a different kind of movement: unlike the Bowman girls, who leave Avonlea for the city, Paul travels from Boston into the community where Anne teaches.

The mention of Paul’s name exposes the history Miss Lavendar has not forgotten. She asks whether he is Stephen Irving’s son, and Anne confirms it. The exchange establishes a link between the boy who came from Boston and the old attachment that will later be renewed when Stephen returns and marries Miss Lavendar. Boston thus marks Paul’s point of origin in the local story, even as his presence helps connect its separated family and romantic histories.

Mobility and belonging

The novel gives Boston a specific, limited narrative function: it is named as a place where the Bowman girls can do better, and as Paul’s former home, rather than described through its streets or institutions. Its meaning is carried instead by decisions about where people can live and with whom. For the Bowman girls, it represents an established route away from Miss Lavendar’s household; for Paul, it precedes his life with his grandmother in Avonlea.

Charlotta’s eventual plan reshapes that pattern without cancelling it. She does go to Boston, as the other girls did, but the marriage allows her to accompany Miss Lavendar rather than be replaced in her home. Boston therefore stands at once for departure and continuity: movement away from Avonlea, but also the possibility that affection and household ties will survive a change of place.