Warning: If you have a visual impairment, use the manuscript transcript version including the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s foot notes and contextual annotation references.

Chapter 27 - (VERSO)

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“It’s no use, Anne. That is fast dye if ever there was any. Your hair must be cut off; there is no other way. You can’t go out with it looking like that.”

Anne’s lips tu quivered but she realized the (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)bitter(end superscript) truth of Marilla’s remarks. With a doleful dismal sigh she went for the scissors.

“Please cut if off at once, Marilla, and have it over. Oh, I feel that my heart is broken. This is such an unr unromantic affliction. I’m going The girls in books lose their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good dead deed, But there and I’m sure I wouldn’t mind losing my hair in some such fashion(begin strikethrough).(end strikethrough) But there half so much. But


TEXT ANNOTATION

"girls in books lose their hair in fevers": Anne refers to sentimental (and sometimes sensational) fiction that features heroines whose hair is lost to romantic illnesses or noble sacrifice. In Louisa May Alcott’s (1868) Little Women (which Montgomery read repeatedly), Jo March sells her long hair to make money to help her father come home during the American Civil War. In O. Henry’s famous (1904) story, "The Gift of the Magi," a young wife sells her one glory — her gorgeous, long hair — so that she can give her husband a fob for his most precious possession, a magnificent watch. Unbeknownst to her, he sells the watch to buy her a beautiful comb for her hair.