The narrator of Anne of Green Gables has a multifaceted tone that enhances the novel's emotional range and depicts Anne's character with great affection and sympathy. For instance, in Chapter 3, the narrator describes Anne's room at Green Gables from her point of view:
When Marilla had gone Anne looked around her wistfully. The whitewashed walls were so painfully bare and staring that she thought they must ache over their own bareness. The floor was bare, too, except for a round braided mat in the middle such as Anne had never seen before.
Anne, who has just arrived at Green Gables, feels unwelcome. Words like "wistfully", "painfully," and "bareness" create a sense of discomfort and loneliness that communicate the narrator's sympathy. The whitewashed walls, "painfully bare," echo Anne's loneliness. She perceives them as such because she feels painfully alone. The narrator uses this subtle detail to suggest Anne's emotion without adding too much melodrama.
In later chapters, the narrator depicts small-town life and stifling Victorian customs in an occasionally satirical tone. The narrator also seems to approve of Anne's honest review of Sunday school and reveals Marilla had a similar experience "deep down in her heart for years," and suddenly some forbidden sentiments take shape in the person of Anne, "this outspoken morsel of neglected humanity." By permitting insight into Marilla's hypocrisy, the narrator gently hints that plenty of people feel as Anne does, but don't dare say so. And finally, the narrator adopts a sincere and sentimental tone when describing nature. In contrast to the stifling effect of religious and social customs, the natural aspects of Avonlea permit the freedom of soul and imagination.
The function of the narrator's third-person omniscient perspective is to depict the range of tones above and to shift among the characters' perspectives, especially those of Anne and Marilla. This gives the reader a greater understanding and sympathy toward the characters during their development as people. Anne is not the only character who experiences great changes; Marilla and Matthew grow into sympathetic adoptive parents, and Gilbert Blythe matures into a generous young man. The narrator's multifaceted tone covers the range of emotions that these characters experience as they evolve.
