Responsibility and duty

Responsibility and duty in Anne of Avonlea are more than rules imposed by family or society: they become meaningful when people accept the work of caring for others and consider what their choices make possible. The novel places ordinary labor beside public ambition, asking how obligation can be answered without erasing affection, individual purpose, or the limits of those who serve.

Work Offered to Others

Gilbert Blythe’s decision to become a doctor gives responsibility a public and intellectual form. He imagines a profession devoted to fighting disease, pain, and ignorance, and connects that work to an obligation across generations: those who came before have contributed to the knowledge he inherits, so he hopes to add something for those who will follow. His ambition is not simply to acquire a respected career; it is to repay a debt to the human community through useful work.

Anne Shirley describes a different, more personal contribution. Rather than aiming chiefly to increase what people know, she wants to make life more beautiful and leave others with a little joy or a happy thought that would not otherwise have existed. Gilbert recognizes that this is already part of her daily influence. Their exchange broadens the meaning of service: knowledge and medicine can address suffering directly, while kindness and imaginative sympathy can alter how a person experiences a life. The two forms are distinct, but both treat one person’s capacities as something that may benefit others.

The Keith Twins and the Work of Care

The practical test of duty begins when Marilla Cuthbert returns home worried about Mary Keith, whose illness is worsening, and about the future of her six-year-old twins. Mary has heard from the children’s uncle, who is working in a lumber camp and cannot take them until spring, when he expects to marry and provide a home. He asks that neighbors care for the children through the winter, but Mary cannot bear to ask them. Marilla suspects that Mary wants her to take the twins, though Mary has not said so directly.

Marilla does not treat family connection as an automatic answer. The children are only third cousins, she observes, and taking two youngsters would bring considerable responsibility. She considers Dora quiet and good, but fears that Davy will be troublesome. Anne, by contrast, sees the children’s need as a reason to provide care rather than a reason to refuse it. Her sympathy is rooted in the vivid memory of her own neglected childhood, and she knows that Marilla is most responsive to what she understands as duty. Anne argues that Davy especially needs good training and points to the risks of leaving the twins with other possible households: she reports that the Sprotts’ children are said to have a profane father, while the Wiggins family is described as living on skim milk as Mr. Wiggins sells off what he can. Her argument makes refusal consequential: the question is not only whether Marilla wants additional work, but what influences and care the children might otherwise receive.

Marilla agrees, though gloomily, and immediately names a cost that affection alone will not meet. Her eyes prevent her from sewing, so Anne will have to make and mend the twins’ clothes. Anne dislikes sewing, but accepts it as her own share of the responsibility: if Marilla will take in the children from duty, Anne can sew for the same reason. The exchange makes care concrete. It is not an abstract promise of kindness but a household commitment measured in time, clothing, and labor, shared by people with different capacities and reluctances.

Duty, Education, and Shared Households

The obligations within Green Gables also affect Anne’s education. Marilla tells her that she has saved enough for one year at Redmond College and that money from the stock will cover another; scholarships might help beyond that. Anne hesitates because she cannot leave Marilla alone with the twins, who still need substantial care, even though Marilla’s eyesight has improved. The conflict is not between ambition and indifference: Anne’s concern for Marilla and the children is itself sincere, but it threatens to make her education impossible.

Marilla responds by proposing a change in who shares the household’s responsibilities. After speaking with Rachel Lynde, she explains that Rachel is facing financial insecurity: the farm was mortgaged to help a younger son go west, little beyond the interest has been paid, and Thomas Lynde’s illness has added expenses. The farm will have to be sold, with little expected to remain after the bills; Rachel fears leaving Avonlea to live with Eliza. Marilla has thought of inviting Rachel to live with her, but consults Anne before asking. That offer would give Rachel a home and allow Anne to attend college. Care therefore moves in more than one direction: Marilla’s willingness to take in Rachel is not separate from her support of Anne’s future, but the means by which that future can become possible. Anne receives the prospect with astonishment, while leaving the decision about Rachel’s invitation to Marilla.

Anne’s own approach to education further distinguishes duty from the pursuit of honors. When she prepares to go to Redmond, she says she may try for one or two honors but no longer values them as much as she once did. She wants to learn how to live well, make the most of life, and understand and help other people and herself. Education matters here not as an escape from responsibility or a store of status, but as a way to become more capable of meeting life and other people thoughtfully.

Marriage, Expectations, and the Limits of Duty

James A. Harrison’s account of his marriage to Emily Harrison offers a more uneasy example of responsibility within domestic life. He recalls that after his sister died, she worried about what would become of him and persuaded him to promise that he would marry. She recommended Emily Scott, who had money of her own and a reputation as a model housekeeper. Harrison made the promise to ease his sister’s mind, proposed, and was surprised when Emily accepted. His story begins with a family obligation that leads to marriage, but the marriage quickly exposes how poorly a promise can prepare two people to live together.

After their fortnight’s wedding trip to St. John, Emily began cleaning the house soon after they arrived home late at night and continued again from early morning. Harrison says that he could have reconciled himself to her housekeeping if she had left him alone; instead, she expected him to change. He had to exchange his boots for slippers at the door, smoke only in the barn, improve his grammar, and stop eating with his knife. Emily’s former work as a schoolteacher shaped her corrections, while Harrison admits that he became cranky and disagreeable rather than trying to improve. His account does not present him as blameless, even as he describes the strain of being continually corrected. The contrast shows domestic responsibility turning sour when improvement is demanded as one-sided reform rather than negotiated mutual care.

The conflict over Ginger, Harrison’s parrot, makes the limits of that reform especially clear. Harrison was attached to the bird because his sailor brother, a childhood favorite, had sent it to him while dying. Emily disliked parrots and could not tolerate Ginger’s profane speech; she tried to stop the bird, just as she tried to change Harrison’s grammar, but both attempts seemed to make matters worse. Harrison distinguishes the parrot’s repetition from human profanity, while Emily cannot accept that distinction. In his telling, Ginger becomes the point on which the marriage finally split. The episode complicates any simple equation of duty with compliance: care for a spouse does not mean that every habit can be corrected by persistent scolding, and attachment to a gift carrying a family memory also has its claim.

A Shared Measure of Responsibility

Across these situations, the novel gives duty both a demanding and a generous face. Marilla’s hesitation acknowledges the weight of taking in two children; Anne’s willingness to sew shows that a good intention must be carried by work. Marilla’s plan for Rachel and Anne shows that one person’s future need not be answered by abandoning another person to hardship: the household can be reorganized so that support is shared. Gilbert’s chosen profession and Anne’s wish to bring beauty and understanding into other lives extend the same concern beyond the family.

These examples do not make responsibility effortless. It can require disliked labor, limit available choices, or become oppressive when one person’s expectations take the form of constant correction. The book’s more sustaining model joins obligation to attention: recognize who needs help, consider what refusal would mean, and find a form of care that respects both the recipient and the person undertaking it. In that sense, duty is not only what people owe; it is also the work through which they make one another’s lives more possible.