Anne's Departure for Redmond

Anne's Departure for Redmond is both a journey to university and a first decisive separation from the home that has become the center of Anne Shirley's life. Leaving Green Gables for Redmond means pursuing an ambition she has held for years, but it also forces her to confront what education will cost: the daily presence of familiar places and people, and the assumption that she can return to life in Avonlea unchanged.

Leaving Green Gables

Anne leaves Avonlea on a Monday morning with Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane. She had hoped for pleasant weather because Diana Barry was to drive her to the station, making their last drive together for some time. Instead, rain and mist darken the morning. As Anne prepares to go, she struggles to contain her tears: the change seems larger than a temporary absence, since she expects Green Gables to become a holiday refuge rather than the place where she lives.

Her attachment is expressed through particular places and objects. She thinks of the little white porch room associated with her girlhood dreams, the Snow Queen at the window, the brook in the hollow, Dryad's Bubble, the Haunted Woods, and Lover's Lane. These are not merely landmarks on the way out of Avonlea; together they hold the memories of the years that formed her. Anne cannot yet imagine being as happy elsewhere, and the departure makes the difference between returning for vacations and living at home feel irreversible.

The farewells at Green Gables give the departure several different emotional registers. Rachel Lynde embraces Anne and advises her to take care of her health. Marilla Cuthbert gives her a brief kiss and speaks brusquely, but a closer look at her eyes reveals more feeling than her manner admits. Dora Keith kisses Anne and sheds two restrained tears. Davy Keith, who has been crying since breakfast, runs upstairs and hides in a clothes closet rather than say goodbye; his muffled howls are the last sounds Anne hears as she leaves. Even breakfast has registered the strain: Davy cannot eat, while Dora calmly eats his uneaten poached egg. The domestic scene makes the departure tangible through ordinary habits abruptly disturbed.

The journey to Kingsport

The rain continues on the drive to Bright River, the station required because the branch-line train from Carmody does not connect with the boat train. Gilbert and Charlie are waiting on the platform, and Anne has only enough time to buy her ticket, check her trunk, say a hurried farewell to Diana, and board. She wishes she were returning with Diana to Avonlea and fears that homesickness will overwhelm her. Gilbert's presence offers little comfort while Charlie is also there, and the rain seems to sharpen her sense that summer and familiar pleasures are being left behind.

The crossing from Charlottetown begins to alter the mood. The rain stops, sunlight breaks through the clouds, and Anne and Gilbert are left alone on deck when Charlie becomes seasick and goes below. The change in weather does not erase Anne's grief, but it gives the journey a quieter space in which to remember. Watching the shores of Prince Edward Island, she recalls crossing to the Island seven years earlier with Mrs. Spencer, when she was a newly arrived child in a worn dress and sailor hat, exploring the boat with curiosity. The two crossings frame a major change in her life: the child who arrived without a home is now leaving the Island home she loves, while setting out for a future she has chosen but cannot yet welcome without reservations.

Anne explains that the Island, rather than Nova Scotia, has become her native shore because it is the land she loves best. She has wanted to attend Redmond for three years, yet now that the journey is under way she wishes she were not going. Her philosophy, she says, has been submerged by loneliness and homesickness; she expects that a good cry will restore her usual cheerfulness. The moment captures the departure's central conflict: ambition has brought her to the threshold, but affection makes crossing it hurt.

Arrival and the shock of the new

The train reaches Kingsport at nine that night. In the crowded station Anne feels bewildered until Priscilla Grant, already in Kingsport, finds her and offers the comfort of a familiar friend. Anne is tired and disoriented, and says that without Priscilla she might sit on her suitcase and weep. The reunion does not make Kingsport home, but it gives her a human point of recognition amid strangers. Priscilla has a cab ready and takes Anne to their boardinghouse; Anne's immediate response is to distinguish this practical shelter from the idea of home.

The emotional dislocation continues when Anne and Priscilla encounter Redmond's scale and unfamiliar social world. At registration Anne feels insignificant among the crowd, as if she could be overlooked or stepped on. Priscilla describes the opposite discomfort: her height makes her feel conspicuous and awkward. Their different reactions expose a shared difficulty. After Queen's University, where they knew everyone and had a place of their own, they had expected to resume life at Redmond as though the smaller world they left behind could simply be carried forward. Instead, the ground seems to have shifted. Anne calls the feeling the end of the beginning: not the collapse of her hopes, but the close of one stage and the difficult start of another.

From estrangement to a place of her own

For the first three weeks, Anne and Priscilla continue to feel like strangers in a strange land. Gradually, Redmond's classes, professors, students, and activities begin to fit together as a life rather than a collection of disconnected fragments. The Freshmen become a class with shared interests and ambitions. Their victory in the annual Arts Rush against the Sophomores gives them the respect of the other classes and a new confidence. Gilbert's strategic leadership contributes to the victory; he is elected Freshman Class president and invited to join Lamba Theta. The change from anonymous newcomers to members of a recognized class supplies a social counterpart to Anne's initial journey away from home: belonging has to be made in the new place rather than retrieved intact from Avonlea.

The university's promise is also bound to money. Anne studies with the aim of winning the Thorburn Scholarship in English, because she is determined not to draw on Marilla's small savings to return to Redmond. After her first year she comes back to Avonlea with the scholarship, but later worries that she may not be able to afford the next year. She considers teaching at a district school until she has earned enough to finish her course. Her departure therefore begins more than an emotional adjustment: it opens an education whose continuation depends on her capacity to support herself.

Redmond also changes the setting of Anne's relationships. Gilbert frequently visits her, escorts her to college affairs, and remains a dependable companion, although Anne resents the gossip linking their names and treats him as the boy-comrade she has always known. She applies herself to her studies while new friendships and college life widen her interests. In time she takes High Honors in English at Convocation. Years after the departure, when Gilbert falls gravely ill, Anne recognizes the depth of her love for him; their renewed relationship eventually leads to an engagement, with three years of medical study still ahead of him. These later developments do not cancel the uncertainty of the first journey. They show how the life begun by leaving Avonlea brings Anne into changes she could not yet foresee.

The departure's significance lies in this double movement: Anne goes away because she wants a wider education, yet the people and places she leaves remain essential to her sense of belonging. Redmond first makes her feel small and displaced, then offers the friendships, achievements, and choices through which she can establish a life there. The journey is thus not a clean break with Green Gables, but the beginning of a more demanding relationship between home and independence.