Mr. Bell

Mr. Bell is the superintendent of the Avonlea Sunday-school and a prominent local figure whose formal, uninspired religiosity stands in stark contrast to Anne Shirley's vivid, personal faith. As a trustee of the Avonlea school and a pillar of the community, he embodies the institutional authority—both ecclesiastical and educational—that shapes the boundaries of Anne's world, even as his own limitations as a spiritual leader and educator are quietly exposed through Anne's irreverent but perceptive observations.

Role as Sunday-School Superintendent

Mr. Bell presides over the Sunday-school with a style that Anne finds profoundly lacking in imagination and genuine feeling. During her first Sunday at Avonlea Sunday-school, Anne endures what she considers "an awfully long prayer" from Mr. Bell, a prayer she feels he delivered as if "God was too far off." Rather than attending to his words, Anne gazes out the window at the Lake of Shining Waters and silently thanks God for its beauty. When the minister later announces the Sunday-school picnic from the pulpit, Anne experiences a thrill of certainty: "When a minister says a thing in the pulpit you just have to believe it." Yet even this moment of faith is undercut by her earlier assessment that Mr. Bell "doesn't seem to get any comfort out of" being good, a judgment that captures the gap between his dutiful piety and the joyful Christianity she later discovers in Mrs. Allan. Anne privately wishes she could be a Christian like Mrs. Allan rather than "one like Mr. Superintendent Bell," a preference that Marilla sternly rebukes as "very naughty."

Authority in School and Community

Beyond the Sunday-school, Mr. Bell exercises authority as a school trustee and a landowner whose property shapes the children's daily lives. The Avonlea schoolhouse is set back from the road with a dusky fir wood behind it, and the pupils spend their noon hour picking gum in Mr. Bell's spruce grove over the hill—a grove that proves seductive enough to make them late for afternoon classes. When Mr. Phillips, the teacher, punishes Anne for tardiness by making her sit with Gilbert Blythe, the incident unfolds against the backdrop of Mr. Bell's land. Mr. Bell also owns the birch grove where Anne and Diana build their playhouse Idlewild, and it is Mr. Bell who later "ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring," ending that phase of their childhood. At the local Exhibition, Mr. Bell takes first prize for a pig, a fact that Diana finds incongruous for a Sunday-school superintendent, though Anne sees no contradiction. When Anne is laid up with a broken ankle, even Mr. Bell comes to visit her, and Anne revises her earlier opinion, admitting he is "really a very fine man" and feeling sorry she ever criticized his prayers. She now believes he genuinely means them, though she thinks he has "got into the habit of saying them as if he didn't."

Contrast with Anne's Spirituality

Mr. Bell's formal, institutional religion serves as a foil to Anne's intuitive, nature-infused spirituality. Where Mr. Bell recites prayers by rote, Anne composes her own, thanking God for the White Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters. Where he seems to find no joy in his faith, Anne declares that if she were good she would "dance and sing all day because I was glad of it." Mrs. Allan, the new minister's wife, becomes the model of a Christianity that is "such a cheerful thing," directly countering the somber example set by Mr. Bell. Yet Anne's growth includes learning to see past her own judgments: by the time she is recovering from her broken ankle, she has come to appreciate Mr. Bell's visit and to recognize that his prayers, however uninspired in delivery, may still be sincere. This shift marks a step in Anne's moral development toward a more charitable, less categorical view of others.

Significance in the Narrative

Mr. Bell functions as a representative of the established social and religious order of Avonlea—an order that is well-meaning but limited, especially in its capacity to nurture a child like Anne. His presence in the story highlights the contrast between institutional religion and personal faith, between rigid authority and imaginative freedom. Anne's evolving attitude toward him—from critical dismissal to grudging respect—mirrors her broader journey from impulsive judgment to a more nuanced understanding of human character. In the end, Mr. Bell remains a fixed point in Avonlea's firmament, unchanged by Anne's passage through his world, but his role helps define the very qualities—imagination, warmth, sincerity—that make Anne's own spiritual and moral growth distinctive.