Lynde's Hollow

Lynde's Hollow is the small, steep-sided valley where the Avonlea main road dips down before climbing the red hill beyond, and it is the site of Mrs. Rachel Lynde's house. From her kitchen window, Mrs. Lynde keeps a sharp eye on everything that passes—from brooks and children up—and the hollow is the first place where any traveler entering or leaving the triangular peninsula of Avonlea must pass, running the unseen gauntlet of her all-seeing eye. The brook that runs through the hollow, which has its source in the woods of the old Cuthbert place and is reputed to be an intricate, headlong stream with dark secrets of pool and cascade in its earlier course, becomes by the time it reaches Lynde's Hollow a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum.

Geography and Setting

Lynde's Hollow is a distinct landmark on the road between Avonlea and Green Gables. The main road dips down into the hollow, which is fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by the brook. The hollow lies a scant quarter of a mile down the road from the long lane that leads to Green Gables, and it is already quite dark there by the time the sun has set on the surrounding hills. When Matthew Cuthbert drives Anne Shirley home from Bright River for the first time, they pass through Lynde's Hollow in the deepening twilight, and Mrs. Rachel Lynde sees them from her window vantage, though it is too dark for her to make out details.

Narrative Significance

Lynde's Hollow functions as the novel's initial observational post and as a symbolic threshold. It is from her window in the hollow that Mrs. Rachel Lynde first spots Matthew Cuthbert driving out of Avonlea in his best suit with the buggy and sorrel mare, an event so unusual that it sets the entire plot in motion by prompting her to walk up to Green Gables to investigate. The hollow also marks the boundary between the sociable world of Avonlea's main road, where all the other houses are situated, and the more secluded, orchard-embowered homestead of Green Gables, which is barely visible from the road. When Anne and Matthew drive through the hollow on their way to Green Gables, it is the last stage of their journey before turning into the long lane, and Anne's first glimpse of the house she will come to love is from the crest of the hill just beyond the hollow.

Emotional and Symbolic Associations

For Anne, Lynde's Hollow becomes associated with the bittersweet emotions of arrival and belonging. On her first evening at Green Gables, she passes through the hollow in the dark, and the next morning, looking out from her east gable window, she sees the hollow below the garden where the brook runs and where scores of white birches grow. The hollow is also the site of the Haunted Wood, the spruce grove that Anne and Diana Barry imagine into a place of terror, complete with a white lady who wrings her hands and wailing cries, a murdered child's ghost, and a headless man. When Marilla forces Anne to walk through the Haunted Wood after dark as a lesson against letting her imagination run away with her, Anne must cross the log bridge over the brook in the hollow and go shuddering up the horrible dim path beyond, an experience she never forgets. The hollow thus contains both the comforting, familiar brook that Anne loves and the terrifying imaginary landscape she has created, making it a place where the real and the imagined, the safe and the frightening, coexist.