Anne dyeing her hair green

Anne Shirley's disastrous attempt to dye her red hair green is one of the most vivid and humiliating episodes in her early life at Green Gables, a self-inflicted catastrophe born of vanity, credulity, and the same impulsive imagination that so often leads her into trouble. The incident forces her to confront the limits of her own romantic fantasies and to accept a punishment that cuts to the very core of her sense of self, leaving her with a shorn head and a hard-won resolution to abandon the pursuit of beauty for the pursuit of goodness.

The Temptation and the Purchase

The trouble begins on a spring afternoon when a traveling peddler—a German Jew, not an Italian, as Anne is careful to note—comes to Green Gables while Marilla is away. Remembering Marilla's strict instructions never to let such strangers into the house, Anne goes out to the step and examines his wares. The peddler speaks feelingly of working to bring his wife and children from Germany, and Anne, touched by his story, wants to buy something to help him. Then she sees the bottle of hair dye. The peddler warrants it will turn any hair a beautiful raven black and that it will not wash off. In a trice, Anne envisions herself with raven-black hair, and the temptation becomes irresistible. The bottle costs seventy-five cents, but Anne has only fifty cents left from her chicken money. The peddler, showing what Anne takes for a kind heart, agrees to sell it for that price, saying he is just giving it away. Anne buys it and, as soon as he is gone, hurries up to the east gable to apply it with an old hairbrush, using the entire bottle.

The Green Result and Immediate Repentance

The result is immediate and horrifying. Instead of the promised raven black, Anne's hair turns a queer, dull, bronzy green, with streaks of the original red remaining to heighten the ghastly effect. Never in her life has Marilla seen anything so grotesque. Anne, who had counted the cost and decided it was worth being a little wicked to get rid of her red hair, now repents bitterly. She had meant to be extra good in other ways to make up for it, but the green hair is proof enough that she has been deceived. She washes her hair vigorously with soap and water, but the dye does not wash off, just as the peddler had promised. For a week, Anne goes nowhere and shampoos her hair every day, but the color remains fast. Only Diana knows the secret, and she solemnly promises never to tell.

The Forced Haircut and Aftermath

Marilla finally declares that there is no other way: Anne's hair must be cut off. Anne, realizing the bitter truth, fetches the scissors and asks Marilla to do it at once, weeping all the while. Marilla does her work thoroughly, shingling the hair as closely as possible. The result is not becoming, and Anne promptly turns her mirror to the wall. Then, in a gesture of penance, she rights it again, vowing to look at herself every time she comes to her room and see how ugly she is, without trying to imagine it away. She confesses that she never thought she was vain about her hair, but now she knows she was, in spite of its being red, because it was so long and thick and curly. When she goes to school on Monday, her clipped head makes a sensation, but to her relief, nobody guesses the real reason, not even Josie Pye, who nevertheless informs Anne that she looks like a perfect scarecrow. Anne bears this patiently, considering it part of her punishment.

The Lesson and Resolution

The hair-dye incident becomes one of the key mistakes that Anne later catalogs as having cured her of a great shortcoming. She tells Marilla that the affair has cured her of vanity. She no longer thinks about her hair and nose—at least, very seldom. The episode also reinforces her understanding that her imagination, while a gift, can lead her into serious trouble when it overrides common sense. The green hair is a tangible, public mark of her folly, and the forced haircut is a physical humiliation that she must endure daily. Yet, characteristically, Anne turns the experience into a moral lesson, resolving to devote all her energies to being good and to never try to be beautiful again. The incident deepens her bond with Marilla, who, despite her sternness, is the one who cuts the hair and who later, in a moment of shared grief over Matthew's death, confesses her love for Anne. The green hair, like so many of Anne's scrapes, becomes a story that she and Marilla can look back on with a rueful smile, a marker of how far Anne has come from the impulsive child who would dye her hair for a dream of raven-black beauty.