Mr. William Bell

Mr. William Bell is a landowner and the Sunday-school superintendent in Avonlea, a figure whose properties repeatedly become the stage for Anne Shirley's adventures and whose official role places him at the center of the community's religious life. Though he never speaks a line of dialogue in the novel, his name marks the physical and social boundaries of Anne's world, and his land—a birch grove, a spruce grove, and a pond-side field—provides the settings for some of her most memorable experiences of play, danger, and loss.

Landowner and Provider of Playgrounds

Mr. William Bell owns the birch grove where Anne and Diana Barry build their playhouse Idlewild. Anne describes it as "a little ring of white birch trees—the most romantic spot" and tells Marilla that she and Diana "have our playhouse there." The grove is the site of their elaborate imaginative games, furnished with broken dishes and a "fairy glass" Diana found in the woods. But Mr. Bell's ownership is absolute: in the spring, he "ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture," and Anne "sat among the stumps and wept." The destruction of Idlewild marks the end of her childhood playhouse phase and a forced step toward growing up.

He also owns the spruce grove where Avonlea schoolchildren spend their noon hour picking gum. It is from this grove that Anne, lingering to gather rice lilies and sing, is late returning to school, leading Mr. Phillips to punish her by making her sit with Gilbert Blythe—a humiliation that drives her to refuse to return to school. The grove is also the site of the "Haunted Wood" that Anne and Diana invent, a romantic fiction that later terrifies Anne when Marilla forces her to walk through it after dark. Mr. Bell's land, in other words, is the physical ground on which Anne's imagination both flourishes and recoils upon her.

Sunday-School Superintendent

As superintendent of the Avonlea Sunday-school, Mr. Bell leads the opening exercises that Anne finds so tedious. During his "awfully long prayer," Anne gazes out the window at the Lake of Shining Waters and "imagined all sorts of splendid things" instead of listening. She later tells Marilla that she "wouldn't want to be one like Mr. Superintendent Bell" if being a Christian meant being like him, though she quickly adds that "of course he's good." Marilla rebukes her, saying "Mr. Bell is a real good man," but Anne's distinction between goodness and joy—between Mr. Bell's solemn piety and Mrs. Allan's cheerful faith—reveals a key theme in her moral development.

Mr. Bell also takes a prize for a pig at the Exhibition, an event that Diana finds "ridiculous for a Sunday-school superintendent" and that Anne reports to Marilla with a mixture of amusement and loyalty. When Anne is laid up with a broken ankle, Mr. Bell visits her, and she revises her earlier judgment: "He's really a very fine man. Not a kindred spirit, of course; but still I like him and I'm awfully sorry I ever criticized his prayers." She even gives him "a good broad hint" about making his prayers more interesting, a gesture that shows her growing capacity for empathy and her belief that even adults can improve.

The Man Who Planted the Avenue

Mr. William Bell is also the original planter of the "Avenue," the stretch of road arched over with apple trees that Anne first sees on her drive from Bright River to Green Gables. The novel notes that the trees were "planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer," and the Avenue is the place that strikes Anne dumb with wonder, the first thing she ever saw "that couldn't be improved upon by imagination." She renames it "the White Way of Delight." Though Mr. Bell is not named in this passage, the Avenue is part of his legacy—a physical embodiment of the beauty that Anne finds in Avonlea and that she will spend the rest of the novel learning to love.

Narrative Significance

Mr. William Bell functions in the novel as a representative of adult authority and community structure—the kind of respectable, dutiful, unimaginative figure against whom Anne's vivid inner life is measured. He owns the land where she plays, presides over the worship she finds dull, and visits her when she is injured. He is never cruel, never unkind, but he is also never a "kindred spirit." His presence in the novel helps define what Anne is not—and, by contrast, what she is becoming: someone who can appreciate goodness even when it is not accompanied by imagination, and who can learn to value people for their solid virtues even when they do not share her romantic soul.