Shoes and ships and sealing wax · And cabbages and kings

Anne Shirley uses Shoes and ships and sealing wax / And cabbages and kings as a playful answer when Davy Keith asks what she expects to study at college. The expression’s significance lies in that contrast: Anne presents education as an expansive pursuit of knowledge, while Davy repeats a crude rumor that reduces her plans to catching a husband.

The Expression in Conversation

Davy asks Anne whether she is going to college to find a man, repeating what Milty Boulter says his mother believes. Anne is briefly angered, then answers that she is going to study, grow, and learn about many things. When Davy asks what, she recites the list. Its deliberately wide-ranging subjects give her answer a light, imaginative turn without retreating from its point: college is for learning, not courtship.

The exchange also shows Anne meeting a dismissive social assumption without accepting its terms. She does not offer a solemn defense of her ambition; instead, the comic sweep of the list makes the breadth of her interests the answer. The conversation ends with Davy still curious about how one might attract a man, and Anne telling him to ask Mrs. Boulter, whose views supplied the rumor in the first place.

A Phrase Against Narrow Expectations

The list moves from shoes and ships to sealing wax, cabbages, and kings, placing ordinary and grand subjects side by side. In Anne’s reply, this variety works as a small verbal emblem of intellectual openness: what she hopes to learn cannot be reduced to one practical or romantic objective. The playfulness matters, but so does the seriousness beneath it. Anne names study, growth, and learning as her reasons for going on to college.

That answer also places women’s education against the expectation that a young woman’s college years should be understood primarily through marriage prospects. Anne’s immediate purpose is not to announce a career or specify a curriculum; the evidence instead establishes her determination to learn broadly. The expression gives that ambition an imaginative register rather than a narrowly utilitarian one.

The College Years Around the Answer

Anne’s transition to Redmond initially unsettles her. On registration day, she feels insignificant in the large university and fears she will never be anything more than a minor presence there. She and Priscilla Grant miss the familiarity and sense of belonging they had at Queen’s, and Anne calls the disorientation the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end. The expression’s expansive promise thus stands beside a real uncertainty about whether she can find her place in college life.

That uncertainty changes as the Freshmen form a class and win the annual Arts Rush against the Sophomores. Redmond becomes less a collection of disconnected fragments and more a shared world of classes, friendships, societies, and ambitions. Anne later enjoys those varied parts of college life while studying hard for the Thorburn Scholarship in English, which would allow her to return without drawing on Marilla Cuthbert’s small savings.

Financial insecurity remains a serious limit on that aspiration. In the winter, Anne fears she may have to leave Redmond because she will not use Marilla’s money and sees little prospect of earning enough during the summer. Even then, she resolves not to be a coward and recognizes that she can earn her way through if necessary. The earlier declaration of eagerness to learn therefore sits within a plot where access to education requires effort and may be threatened by money.

Learning and Achievement

By Convocation, Anne has taken High Honors in English. Priscilla Grant earns Honors in Classics, Philippa Gordon in Mathematics, and Stella Maynard achieves a good all-round showing. Anne’s academic result gives concrete weight to her earlier statement: learning is not merely a humorous answer to Davy but a sustained undertaking that shapes her college years. The expression remains a miniature of her outlook—curious and broad-ranging—while her scholarship and final honors show the discipline that supports it.