Violetta

Violetta is one of the two imaginary companions Anne Shirley created during her childhood years of poverty and neglect, the other being Katie Maurice, the reflection in a broken bookcase door at Mrs. Thomas's house. Unlike Katie Maurice, who lived in a glass door and could be spoken to by the hour, Violetta was an echo that lived in a long green little valley just up the river from Mrs. Hammond's house. Anne imagined that this echo was a little girl, and the two became great friends, with Anne loving Violetta almost as well as she loved Katie Maurice—though not quite, as she was careful to specify. The echo answered back every word Anne said, even when she did not talk a bit loud, which made it feel like a real companion in a place that was otherwise desperately lonely.

Creation and Nature of the Imaginary Friend

Violetta came into being because of the particular circumstances of Anne's life with Mrs. Hammond, who lived in a little clearing among the stumps up the river and had eight children, including twins three times in succession. Anne was taken in by Mrs. Hammond because she was handy with children, and she spent her days carrying babies about until she was dreadfully tired. The place was very lonesome, and Anne later told Marilla Cuthbert that she was sure she could never have lived there if she had not had an imagination. There was no bookcase at Mrs. Hammond's house, so the Katie Maurice solution was unavailable; instead, Anne found the echo in the green valley and transformed it into a friend. The echo was a perfect companion for a child who loved to talk, because it always responded, giving Anne the sense of being heard and answered that her caretakers, busy with their own troubles, never provided.

The Parting and Its Significance

The night before Anne went to the asylum at Hopeton, she went to say good-bye to Violetta, and her good-bye came back to her in such sad, sad tones that the memory stayed with her. She had become so attached to the echo that she had not the heart to imagine a bosom friend at the asylum, even though there was little scope for imagination there anyway. This parting was a genuine grief, and Anne carried it with her. When she later told Marilla about Violetta and Katie Maurice, she explained that their memories were too sacred to talk about with everybody, but she wanted Marilla to know about them. Marilla, who did not approve of such goings-on and thought Anne seemed to half believe her own imaginations, warned her not to let Mrs. Barry hear her talking about her Katie Maurices and Violettas, or she would think Anne told stories.

Violetta's Place in Anne's Emotional Development

Violetta's role in Anne's life was that of a transitional companion, a substitute for the real friendship she desperately wanted but had never had. After Anne came to Green Gables and formed her great friendship with Diana Barry, she reflected that little dream girls were not satisfying after a real friend. When Diana was forbidden to play with her after the currant wine incident, Anne mourned that she was really worse off than ever before, because she no longer had Katie Maurice and Violetta to fall back on. This marked a significant change in Anne: her imagination had once been her only resource against loneliness, but now that she had tasted real friendship, the imaginary companions could no longer fill the void. The abandonment of Violetta was thus not a loss but a sign of growth, as Anne learned to invest her emotional energy in real people rather than in echoes and reflections. Yet the memory of Violetta remained a part of Anne's history, a testament to the imaginative resourcefulness that had kept her spirit alive through the hardest years of her childhood.