Tory Road

Tory Road is a secluded route near Spencervale whose quiet, lightly traveled character shapes Anne Shirley and Diana Barry’s journey to find a replacement platter. Its name carries a local political joke, while a mishap at the Copp sisters’ home makes the road the setting for one of the search’s comic reversals.

Setting and Name

When Anne and Diana reached Spencervale after a ten-mile journey, they turned onto Tory Road. The road was green and solitary, with strips of grass between its wheel tracks—a sign of how little it was used. For much of its length, young spruces crowded close to the roadway; occasional openings revealed the back fields of Spencervale farms or stretches of stumps bright with fireweed and goldenrod.

The name was explained as an ironic label: according to Diana, almost nobody lived along the road except the Copp sisters and Martin Bovyer, who was a Liberal. The Tory government had built the road while in power to demonstrate that it was doing something. The contrast between the name’s political boast and the road’s sparse population gives the route its local humor.

The Platter Search

Tory Road became part of Anne and Diana’s effort to replace the willow-ware platter damaged during an earlier supper. Diana had heard from Mary Sentner that the Copp sisters owned one that appeared to match it, and that they might sell it. Anne, needing a replacement before visiting town and facing Aunt Josephine, set out with Diana to look for it.

The journey came after six weeks of dry weather. The day was hot, windless, and dusty, and Anne worried aloud about the parched fields, struggling trees, and her own suffering garden. She also relayed that Mr. Harrison’s pastures were so scorched that his cows could hardly find enough to eat. The road’s dry, dusty approach thus belongs to a larger landscape under drought, even as its secluded greenery and roadside flowers distinguish it from the farms’ hardship.

The Copp Sisters’ Home

At the Copp sisters’ home, Anne spotted the sought-after platter on a shelf through the window of an old duck house. The structure, no longer used for ducks after the sisters gave them up as untidy, had served as a place to confine setting hens. Though whitewashed, it had become shaky. Anne climbed onto its peaked roof to peer inside while Diana advised her to lean on the window sill.

Seeing the platter, Anne forgot her precarious footing and gave an impulsive hop of pleasure. The roof gave way beneath her, leaving her stuck up to her armpits and unable to get free. Diana tried to pull her down, then fetched a keg to support Anne’s feet. The episode turns the search’s hoped-for discovery into a physical predicament: the platter is there, but reaching it brings an unexpected cost, and Tory Road’s quiet destination becomes the scene of the expedition’s central comic mishap.