"Today in class, Erica and I were talking about her topic of confessions and how it related to the Scarlet Letter. Then, I realized that it also related to my own novel of Anne of Green Gables. In this story, Anne wants to go to a picnic in order to make her neighbors acquaintance and hopefully meet her new "bosom friend" and kindred spirit. Unfortunately, right before the picnic, Marilla finds that her amethyst brooch is missing, and is quick to blame Anne for its disappearance. Infuriated, Marilla tells Anne that she is not to go to the picnic until she confesses her crime. Anne was desperate to get to the picnic, and she had to think of some way, any way to make Marilla let her go. So she comes up with a plan. She finally goes up to Marilla and tells her this charming story:
"Anne's confession made me think of the many reasons that people confess. I have always thought that it would be to get rid of a guilty conscience. However, Anne used her confession as a means to an end. Her confession wasn't true, she just wanted to be able to go to the picnic. Looking at sites like postsecret.com confessionpost.com, the internet seems like a safe place to anonymously spill your guts, and still feel like you aren't letting your problems fester inside of you. But what if your confessions aren't anonymous? What is the purpose behind confession in a place where everyone knows who you are? For example, friends confess their anger towards friends, apologies and feelings about pretty much about anything on facebook daily. So sometimes, confession isn't just confession, but a call for action. Sometimes, it is willing something to change."I took the amethyst brooch," said Anne, as if repeating a lesson she had learned. "I took it just as you said. I didn't mean to take it when I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Marilla, when I pinned it on my breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation. I imagined how perfectly thrilling it would be to take it Idlewild and play I was the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. It would be so much easier to imagine I was the Lady Cordelia if I had a real amethyst brooch on. Diana and I made necklaces of roseberries but what are roseberries compared to amethyst? So I took the brooch. I thought I could put it back before you came home. I went all the way around by the road to lengthen out the time. When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters I took the brooch off to have another look at it. Oh, how it did shine in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it just slipped through my fingers-- so--and went down--down--down, all purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath the Lake of Shining Waters. And that is the best I can do at confessing, Marilla."
"In the Scarlet Letter, Hester never really had a choice about confession, since she had a physical representation of her sin in the form of her daughter Pearl. But Dimmesdale has a choice and does not come forward as the equally guilty. His silence is just as telling. Where confessions can be a call to action, Dimmesdale's is the exact opposite. He wants everything to stay the same. Basically, confession or lack thereof isn't always so cut and dry. There are many reasons and motives behind our confessions. No matter what our intentions are, the internet acts as the perfect medium in which to bring about the desired result, whether it be to "craft a careful front of falsehood" or "fling one's sinful burden.""
(Psst! Did you see that? How she quoted me at the end?? It made my day.)
“But, besides, I could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my hearer with consternation...I checked, therefore, my impatient thirst for sympathy and was silent when I would have given the world to have confided the fatal secret." (Shelley 104)
"Victor Frankenstein gives us one of the main reasons why people keep secrets. They are afraid to hurt or frighten away those that hear what they have done. Even if the secret is a nearly unstoppable monster that is causing havoc and destruction in the lives of everyone you love. You’d think Frankenstein’s father would like to know this information, considering the fact that his son’s monster killed people he loved. But Victor keeps him ignorant, and his father dies a grief-ridden man.
Granted, Frankenstein’s case is extreme. It’s not everyday that someone creates life out of the parts of the deceased and it turns on you. This concept can reach to daily trivial concealments, like telling your friend you loved the nearly inedible meal she made just for you. Or telling your little sister her fish ran away instead of explaining to her how you decided to let Goldy swim in the toilet for a change of scenery...
Unless she reads this blog post... then she might. Either way, thanks Sam and Makenna for taking the time to guest blog for me today, and for adding this depth to my topic. You are the best!
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