Optimism and pessimism

Optimism and pessimism in Avonlea are more than temperaments: they are rival habits of reading the same evidence. Eliza Andrews sees the world as a vale of tears and treats preparation for the worst as wisdom; Catherine Andrews and Anne Shirley insist that hardship does not cancel the possibility of improvement. The novel tests both outlooks against practical disappointments, then lets community support and Anne’s renewed delight in an ordinary day complicate the bleakest predictions.

Two Ways of Reading the World

The difference between Eliza and Catherine is introduced in their shared home, a little brown house set in a sunny corner of Mark Andrew’s beech woods. They have been called the Andrew girls for more than fifty years. Even the house’s seasons prompt opposite judgments: Eliza complains that it is terribly hot in summer, while Catherine calls it lovely and warm in winter. Their contrasting outlooks are not abstract positions; they shape how each interprets ordinary circumstances.

Their needlework makes the contrast visible. Eliza sews patchwork not because it is needed, but in protest against the frivolous lace Catherine crochets. When Anne Shirley and Diana Barry canvass the sisters for support for the hall, Catherine listens with a smile, though she drops it whenever Eliza catches her. Eliza, by contrast, rejects the proposed contribution outright. She sees the hall as no benefit to the settlement, but as a place where young people will meet when they ought to be home in bed. Her objection rests on a conviction that the present is worse than the past and that amusement is evidence of decline.

Catherine answers that the world is getting better. Eliza dismisses her view by insisting that facts matter more than what Catherine thinks; Catherine replies that she likes to look on the bright side, and Anne interjects that there are many bright sides and that the world is beautiful. The exchange stages their disagreement as a dispute over what counts as a fact: Eliza regards her own experience of disappointment as decisive, while Catherine and Anne refuse to let it define the whole picture.

Hope in the Face of Uncertainty

Eliza’s pessimism becomes especially pointed when Anne raises Marilla Cuthbert’s failing eyesight. The doctor thinks Marilla’s eyes will not get worse if she is very careful, Anne explains, but Eliza dismisses the reassurance as something doctors say to keep people cheerful. She would have little hope, she says, and thinks it best to be prepared for the worst. Anne asks whether people ought to prepare for the best as well, since it is just as likely. Eliza counters with her fifty-seven years of experience against Anne’s sixteen.

That appeal to age gives Eliza’s outlook the force of accumulated testimony, but the scene also exposes its limit: experience can teach caution without proving that the worst is inevitable. Eliza predicts that the new society will not keep Avonlea from running further downhill. Once Anne and Diana have left, Catherine hurries after them across Mr. Andrews’s pasture and presses two quarters into Anne’s hand. She would like to give a dollar, but fears Eliza will discover the extra money taken from her egg money. Catherine says she believes the society will do good, calls herself an optimist because she has to be while living with Eliza, and urges Anne not to be cast down. Her hope takes the form of a modest, concrete act of support.

Setbacks and Reversals

Anne does not remain untouched by disappointment. After a difficult day canvassing, J. A. Harrison tells her that his approval of the society does not go as deep as his pocket. That night, Anne tells her reflection in the east gable mirror that a few more experiences like those of the day would make her as much a pessimist as Eliza Andrews. The admission gives pessimism a temporary appeal: repeated refusals can make hope feel naïve, even to someone who has been defending it.

The hall-painting fiasco sharpens that pressure. Joshua Pye paints the hall deep, brilliant blue instead of green, and the Improvers pay him after consulting Peter Sloane, a magistrate. The group cannot hold him responsible because he says he was given the cans and told to proceed without being told the intended color. The mistake is costly and conspicuous, and the Improvers expect Avonlea to become even more prejudiced against them. Instead, public sympathy turns in their favor. Rachel Lynde encourages them to continue; Major Spencer offers to clear roadside stumps and seed the ground with grass at his own expense; Mrs. Hiram Sloane promises to keep her cow away if the society makes a geranium bed at the crossroads. Even J. A. Harrison expresses sympathy outwardly.

The reversal does not make the blue paint disappear or erase the society’s trouble. It changes what the setback means. Harrison jokes that the paint can only fade prettier, since it is already as ugly as it can be, and points out that the roof is sound, so people can sit in the hall without leaks. His response, like the neighbors’ offers of help, finds a possible improvement inside an acknowledged failure. The community’s reaction contradicts the Improvers’ expectation that the mistake would deepen local opposition.

Renewed Attention and the Novel’s Balance

Later, Anne walks home through Birch Path after a day when things have gone well at school. St. Clair Donnell has not fought with the other boys over his name, Prillie Rogerson’s toothache has kept her from flirting, Barbara Shaw has had just one mishap, and Anthony Pye has not been at school. Anne calls November a month that is growing old gracefully, and finds the woods quiet, the wind like surf on a faraway shore, and the trees dear enough to greet as friends. She pauses to put an arm around a young birch and kiss its cream-white trunk; Diana sees her and laughs that Anne is still a little girl when she is alone.

The scene does not frame optimism as a guarantee that every day will go well. Its pleasures are specific and limited: a peaceful fortnight, a manageable school day, a quiet wood, and a tree Anne loves. Set beside her earlier fear that she might become as pessimistic as Eliza, this return to attention shows hope as something renewed through experience rather than secured once and for all. The novel distinguishes it from denial: Anne has faced failed appeals and a public mistake, but still finds beauty and possibility in what remains.

Across these episodes, pessimism turns past disappointment into a forecast, while optimism keeps the future open to outcomes not yet tested. Catherine’s hidden quarters, the neighbors’ practical assistance, and Anne’s affection for the birch give that distinction material form. The narrative does not claim that bright thinking alone repairs a hall, restores sight, or guarantees success; instead, it shows how expectation can shape whether people withdraw from a shared effort or continue it, and whether a setback closes the story or becomes one circumstance among many.