The Elaine Incident

The Elaine Incident is a pivotal summer episode in which Anne Shirley, playing the drowned lily maid Elaine from Tennyson's poem, nearly drowns when the flat boat leaks and sinks, and is rescued by Gilbert Blythe, leading to a crucial moment of reconciliation that Anne rejects. The episode crystallizes Anne's romantic imagination, her physical vulnerability, and the stubborn pride that sustains her long feud with Gilbert, while also marking a subtle turning point in their relationship that Anne herself does not yet recognize.

The Dramatization of Elaine

The incident grew out of Anne's love of romantic play. She and Diana Barry, along with Ruby Gillis and Jane Andrews, had spent much of that midsummer afternoon on and about the pond below Orchard Slope, where a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank and a small wooden platform was built out into the water for fishermen and duck hunters. Idlewild, the playhouse in Mr. William Bell's birch grove, was a thing of the past, for Mr. Bell had ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring, and Anne had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the romance of it. But she was speedily consoled, for, as she and Diana said, big girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for such childish amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating sports to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout over the bridge, and the two girls learned to row themselves about in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting.

It was Anne's idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied Tennyson's poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent of Education having prescribed it in the English course for the Prince Edward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all left in it for them, but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Anne was devoured by secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot. Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present.

Anne's plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that if the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down with the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had often gone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playing Elaine. Anne, though she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yielded reluctantly to the role of Elaine, for her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her limitations made impossible. "But it's so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine," she mourned, though Diana assured her that her complexion was just as fair as Ruby's and that her hair was ever so much darker than it used to be before she cut it. Ruby was to be King Arthur, Jane Guinevere, and Diana Lancelot, and they were also to double as the brothers and the father, since there wasn't room for two in the flat when one was lying down.

The Voyage and the Leak

The black shawl of Diana's mother was procured to serve as the pall of blackest samite, and Anne spread it over the flat and then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her breast. "Oh, she does look really dead," whispered Ruby Gillis nervously, watching the still, white little face under the flickering shadows of the birches, and she asked whether it was really right to act like this, for Mrs. Lynde said that all play-acting was abominably wicked. Anne, in character, rebuked her: "Ruby, you shouldn't talk about Mrs. Lynde. It spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Lynde was born." Jane arranged the scene, substituting an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe for the cloth of gold coverlet, and, since a white lily was not obtainable just then, placing a tall blue iris in one of Anne's folded hands. The girls kissed her quiet brows, Diana saying "Sister, farewell forever" and Ruby "Farewell, sweet sister," as sorrowfully as they could, and then pushed the flat off, scraping roughly over an old embedded stake in the process.

For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The flat began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for Elaine to scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall of blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her barge through which the water was literally pouring. That sharp stake at the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Anne did not know this, but it did not take her long to realize that she was in a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink long before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the oars? Left behind at the landing!

The Rescue by Gilbert

Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was white to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There was one chance—just one. She prayed most earnestly, but she did not shut her eyes to pray, for she knew the only way God could save her was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge piles for her to climb up on it. The piles were just old tree trunks with lots of knots and old branch stubs on them. Her prayer was answered, for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and she flung the scarf and the shawl over her shoulder and scrambled up on a big providential stub. The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream. Ruby, Jane, and Diana, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw it disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Anne had gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, white as sheets, frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of their voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, never pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge. Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold, saw their flying forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile her position was a very uncomfortable one. The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily maid. She looked at the wicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily shadows, and shivered. Her imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome possibilities to her.

Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her arms and wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under the bridge in Harmon Andrews's dory. Gilbert glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white scornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also scornful gray eyes. "Anne Shirley! How on earth did you get there?" he exclaimed. Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended his hand. There was no help for it; Anne, clinging to Gilbert Blythe's hand, scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious, in the stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. It was certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances. "We were playing Elaine," explained Anne frigidly, without even looking at her rescuer, "and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge—I mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile. The girls went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the landing?" Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, disdaining assistance, sprang nimbly on shore.

The Refusal of Friendship

But Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand on her arm. "Anne," he said hurriedly, "look here. Can't we be good friends? I'm awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn't mean to vex you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it's so long ago. I think your hair is awfully pretty now—honest I do. Let's be friends." For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened consciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy, half-eager expression in Gilbert's hazel eyes was something that was very good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert had called her "carrots" and had brought about her disgrace before the whole school. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time seemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him! "No," she said coldly, "I shall never be friends with you, Gilbert Blythe; and I don't want to be!" "All right!" Gilbert sprang into his skiff with an angry color in his cheeks. "I'll never ask you to be friends again, Anne Shirley. And I don't care either!" He pulled away with swift defiant strokes, and Anne went up the steep, ferny little path under the maples. She held her head very high, but she was conscious of an odd feeling of regret. She almost wished she had answered Gilbert differently. Of course, he had insulted her terribly, but still—! Altogether, Anne rather thought it would be a relief to sit down and have a good cry. She was really quite unstrung, for the reaction from her fright and cramped clinging was making itself felt.

Halfway up the path she met Jane and Diana rushing back to the pond in a state narrowly removed from positive frenzy. They had found nobody at Orchard Slope, both Mr. and Mrs. Barry being away. Here Ruby Gillis had succumbed to hysterics, and was left to recover from them as best she might, while Jane and Diana flew through the Haunted Wood and across the brook to Green Gables. There they had found nobody either, for Marilla had gone to Carmody and Matthew was making hay in the back field. "Oh, Anne," gasped Diana, fairly falling on the former's neck and weeping with relief and delight, "oh, Anne—we thought—you were—drowned—and we felt like murderers—because we had made—you be—Elaine. And Ruby is in hysterics—oh, Anne, how did you escape?" "I climbed up on one of the piles," explained Anne wearily, "and Gilbert Blythe came along in Mr. Andrews's dory and brought me to land." "Oh, Anne, how splendid of him! Why, it's so romantic!" said Jane, finding breath enough for utterance at last. "Of course you'll speak to him after this." "Of course I won't," flashed Anne, with a momentary return of her old spirit. "And I don't want ever to hear the word `romantic' again, Jane Andrews. I'm awfully sorry you were so frightened, girls. It is all my fault. I feel sure I was born under an unlucky star. Everything I do gets me or my dearest friends into a scrape. We've gone and lost your father's flat, Diana, and I have a presentiment that we'll not be allowed to row on the pond any more."

Aftermath and Significance

Anne's presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are apt to do. Great was the consternation in the Barry and Cuthbert households when the events of the afternoon became known. "Will you ever have any sense, Anne?" groaned Marilla. "Oh, yes, I think I will, Marilla," returned Anne optimistically. A good cry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothed her nerves and restored her to her wonted cheerfulness. "I think my prospects of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever." She explained that she had learned a new and valuable lesson that day. Ever since she came to Green Gables she had been making mistakes, and each mistake had helped to cure her of some great shortcoming. The affair of the amethyst brooch cured her of meddling with things that didn't belong to her. The Haunted Wood mistake cured her of letting her imagination run away with her. The liniment cake mistake cured her of carelessness in cooking. Dyeing her hair cured her of vanity. "And today's mistake is going to cure me of being too romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it is no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea. It was probably easy enough in towered Camelot hundreds of years ago, but romance is not appreciated now." But Matthew, who had been sitting mutely in his corner, laid a hand on Anne's shoulder when Marilla had gone out. "Don't give up all your romance, Anne," he whispered shyly, "a little of it is a good thing—not too much, of course—but keep a little of it, Anne, keep a little of it."

The Elaine Incident is thus a double turning point. It is the moment when Anne's romantic imagination, her most treasured possession, nearly costs her her life, and it is the moment when Gilbert Blythe, her sworn enemy, becomes her rescuer. Anne's refusal of his offered friendship, born of a pride she cannot yet surrender, sets the stage for the long, silent rivalry at Queen's Academy, where the bitterness gradually drains out of their competition, and for the eventual reconciliation on the hill by the Blythe homestead. The episode also foreshadows Anne's later stage fright at the White Sands Hotel concert, where the sight of Gilbert's smile in the audience gives her the courage to triumph, and it deepens the novel's meditation on the gap between romantic fantasy and the demands of real life—a gap that Anne must learn to bridge without losing the imagination that defines her.