The Entrance

The Entrance examination to Queen's Academy stands as the decisive academic milestone in Anne Shirley's adolescence, the formal gateway through which a country girl could earn a teaching license and, with it, a measure of independence. Miss Stacy organized a special Queen's class for advanced students who meant to study for the examination, offering them extra lessons for an hour after school. Anne joined the class with fierce determination, seeing in the Entrance not merely a test of knowledge but a proving ground for her rivalry with Gilbert Blythe and a chance to make Matthew and Marilla proud.

Structure and Stakes of the Examination

The Entrance examination covered English, history, geometry, Latin, French, and algebra—subjects that Anne had studied under Miss Stacy's rigorous guidance throughout the winter. The pass list would determine not only who received a teacher's license but also who would win the Avery scholarship, a prize of two hundred and fifty dollars a year for four years at Redmond College, awarded to the graduate who made the highest mark in English and English Literature. For Anne, the stakes were intensely personal: she wanted to "pass high" for Matthew's sake, who had declared his conviction that she would "beat the whole Island," and she burned to surpass Gilbert Blythe, knowing that all Avonlea junior was wondering which of them would come out first. The thought of failing haunted her waking hours and invaded her dreams, where she saw pass lists with Gilbert's name blazoned at the top and her own absent entirely.

Anne's Experience of the Examination Week

Anne traveled to Charlottetown and stayed at Beechwood with Miss Josephine Barry. Miss Stacy had made the students promise not to open a book during examination week, advice Anne found hard to follow—she had originally planned to sit up half the night cramming, as Prissy Andrews had done. On the first morning, Anne found the Academy crowded with students from across the Island. Moody Spurgeon sat on the steps repeating the multiplication table to steady his nerves. When the English examination sheet was distributed, Anne's hands grew cold and her head whirled; for one awful moment she felt exactly as she had four years earlier when she asked Marilla if she could stay at Green Gables. Then everything cleared, her heart began beating again, and she knew she could do something with that paper. The geometry examination, which she dreaded most, came the next day. Anne wrote to Diana that if she thought the multiplication table would help her, she would recite it from then until morning.

The Pass List and Its Aftermath

For three weeks after the examinations, Anne haunted the post office with Jane, Ruby, and Josie, opening the Charlottetown dailies with shaking hands. Her appetite failed, her interest in Avonlea doings languished, and Mrs. Lynde blamed the Tory superintendent of education. When the pass list finally appeared, Diana came flying through the firs with the newspaper. Anne had passed—and her name stood at the very top of a list of two hundred, tied with Gilbert Blythe. Diana declared she would have gone crazy with joy; Anne, starry-eyed and rapt, ran to the hayfield to tell Matthew, who said he always knew she could beat them all easy. That night Anne knelt by her open window in the moonshine and murmured a prayer of gratitude and aspiration.

The Bend in the Road

The Entrance victory opened the path to Redmond College and the Avery scholarship, but Matthew's sudden death and Marilla's threatened blindness closed that path almost as soon as it appeared. Anne decided not to take the scholarship, choosing instead to teach at the Avonlea school—a position Gilbert Blythe had withdrawn from in her favor when he learned she had applied. The Entrance had been the straight road she thought she could see for many a milestone; now there was a bend in it, and she did not know what lay around it. But she declared she would believe that the best did, and that the bend had a fascination of its own. The examination that had once seemed to mean everything became, in retrospect, merely one turn in a longer journey—a journey that now led back to Green Gables rather than away from it.