Imagination should be treasured.
The sentiment is one that Anne Shirley lives by in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, where Anne’s imaginative, curious spirit consistently defines her character through her five years at Avonlea.
Anne is an orphan who seems to keep falling into bad luck. But when she’s brought to Avonlea, a small town on Prince Edward Island, to be adopted by siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, she’s hopeful to finally have a place to call home.
She falls in love with the town immediately, but her dreams are crushed when she realizes that the Cuthberts never meant to adopt her at all. They wanted an 11-year old boy to help with their land, instead.
The story may be lighthearted, but questions keep readers turning each page. Whether or not Anne will be allowed to stay at Green Gables, if she’ll find the “kindred spirits” she yearns for, or if her luck will finally turn around.
Anne is talkative—she speaks for a full page more than once—and she clashes with several people throughout the story, but she’s earnest, making her likeable and easily forgivable for readers and townspeople alike. Many other characters aren’t initially the most welcoming, including Gilbert Blythe, a boy who quickly becomes her (academic) rival, and even Marilla. However, the majority of the characters are just as loveable as Anne—even if Anne doesn’t accept it.
The book spans five years of Anne’s life, and despite it being over 300 pages, the story feels shorter and Anne seems to grow up all too quickly. From all the conflicts she encounters, she grows and learns to let go of her vanity, be more careful, and the importance of being grounded in reality at times. Still, through it all, she never loses her imaginative, hopeful nature that since the beginning, has helped her see the best in things.
Anne might not be the boy that the Cuthberts originally hoped for, but she ends up being everything they needed. She becomes someone to care for, be proud of, and someone that always opened their eyes to the beauty of the world.
