Chapter 38
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My mind is quite made up, Marilla. I’m not going to Redmond; and I am going to stay here and teach. Don’t you worry about me a bit.”
“But your ambitions—and—”
“I’m just as ambitions as ever. Only, I’ve changed the object of my ambitions. I’m going to be a good teacher—and I’m going to save you eyesight. Besides, I mean to study at home here and take a little college course all by myself. Oh, I’ve dozens of plans, Marilla. I’ve been thinking them out for a week.(begin strikethrough)”(end strikethrough)—N19
“I don’t feel as if I ought to let you give it up,” said Marilla,(begin strikethrough).(end strikethrough) referring to the scholarship.
“But you can’t prevent me. I’m sixteen and a half, ‘obstinate as a mule,’ as Mrs. Lynde once told me,” laughed Anne. “Oh, Marilla, don’t you go pitying me. I don’t like to be pitied and
LMM Notes
LMM Note N19
I shall give life here my best and I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around (begin strikethrough)it(end strikethrough)that bend but I'm going to believe the best does. It has a fascination of its own, (begin strikethrough) Marilla(end strikethrough) that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes—what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows – what new landscapes —what new beauties – what curves and hills and valleys, further on."
TEXT ANNOTATION
"there's a bend in it" [in N19]: The image of the bend in the road, found in this addition to the manuscript, gives the chapter its title since it is clearly metaphoric and appropriate for so many aspects of the story and of Anne’s life. This has become one of the most famous passages in the novel.
Montgomery used the image of the "bend in the road" in later Anne stories to comment on similar unexpected changes, even using it in the last book of the original series Rilla of Ingleside (1921) to suggest how Anne’s youngest child thinks she "hates" the bend in the road (of which her mother speaks so admiringly) because Rilla has seen two brothers, a friend, and a lover disappear — perhaps forever — around a bend as they go to war (Epperly, Through Lover’s Lane, p. 122). Montgomery loved roads with bends. The Bend in the Road was the title of an award-winning CD-ROM created by the L.M. Montgomery Institute in 2000; the title was meant to suggest, in one image, something vital to understanding Montgomery's life, works, and philosophy.