In Anne of Green Gables, a middle-aged brother and sister, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, decide to adopt a young boy to help out around their Prince Edward Island homestead, Green Gables. By mistake, however, an 11-year-old girl named Anne is sent from the orphanage instead. Though Anne’s liveliness and affection quickly win Matthew’s heart, Marilla thinks that Anne won’t be as “useful” as a boy would be and nearly sends her back to the orphanage. Over time, however, Anne’s cheerful presence makes both Cuthberts realize that, while Anne certainly needed shelter and they needed an extra set of hands, they also needed Anne’s love to make Green Gables a real home. Through Marilla’s softening attitude towards Anne, Montgomery suggests that people—especially needy, vulnerable people like the orphaned Anne—should be welcomed for who they are instead of being viewed as assets.
When Anne first comes to Green Gables, Marilla thinks of Anne in terms of her potential utility to the household. Incredulous that Matthew proposes keeping Anne, Marilla asks her brother, “What good would she be to us?” Matthew replies, “We might be some good to her,” but Marilla stubbornly maintains that “I don’t want an orphan girl and if I did she isn’t the style I’d pick out.” Marilla still thinks of Anne in terms of her benefit to the Cuthbert household—and, not only that, she thinks of her as if she’s an object she ordered from a store, only to receive the wrong item in the wrong style. Matthew, on the other hand, sees Anne as a person who needs them.
But when Mrs. Blewett, a neighbor with a reputation for strictness and temper, offers to take Anne, Marilla begins to change her mind: “if I take you you’ll have to be a good girl, you know,” Mrs. Blewett tells Anne, “good and smart and respectful. I’ll expect you to earn your keep, and no mistake about that.” Marilla then notices that Anne looks like “a helpless little creature who finds itself once more caught in the trap from which it had escaped” and decides she cannot “hand a sensitive […] child over to such a woman.” Like Marilla at the beginning of the novel, Mrs. Blewett believes that children must be useful and “earn [their] keep” through hard work. But now softened by Anne’s plight and appreciating her tender-hearted personality, Marilla is beginning to see her as a person and not just a household asset.
When Marilla decides to keep Anne, Matthew is delighted, calling her “such an interesting little thing.” Marilla replies, “It’d be more to the point if you could say she was a useful little thing […] but I’ll make it my business to see she’s trained to be that.” Matthew suggests that Anne won’t be difficult to raise “if you only get her to love you.” Matthew senses that care and affection are more important to helping Anne than strict training aimed at making her “useful,” something that Marilla will realize, too, over time.
Over the years, Anne brings value to Green Gables that goes beyond Marilla’s narrow ideas of usefulness, and Marilla embraces her as a full person and gift in her own right. A few weeks after Anne’s arrival, Anne takes Marilla’s hand, stirring up unexpected maternal feelings: “Something warm and pleasant welled up in Marilla's heart at the touch of that thin little hand in her own—a throb of the maternity she had missed, perhaps. Its very unaccustomedness and sweetness disturbed her.” When she adopted Anne, Marilla wasn’t seeking to feel or act maternally toward Anne whatsoever, yet that’s exactly what Anne’s affection is spurring—contrary to anything Marilla thought she needed.
More than a year later, when Marilla briefly thinks that Anne has been gravely injured, she realizes just how much Anne has come to mean to her. Before now, “she would have admitted that she liked Anne—nay, that she was very fond of Anne. But now she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Anne was dearer to her than anything else on earth.” Though Marilla seldom expresses it and certainly never sought it, she’s developed a deep affection for Anne that far surpasses what she expected when she first accepted the girl at Green Gables.
A couple of years later, when Anne is nearly grown up and preparing to leave Green Gables for teachers’ college, Marilla becomes uncharacteristically tearful over Anne’s mature appearance, the memory of Anne as a child, and the imminent loneliness of Green Gables. Though Marilla had first rejected Matthew’s attitude about adopting Anne, his words now sum up their shared perspective: “She’s been a blessing to us, and there never was a luckier mistake […] It was Providence, because the Almighty saw we needed her, I reckon.” Where once Marilla could only think of Anne in terms of making her “useful,” she’s now grateful that Anne’s love and joy have enlivened Green Gables in ways she didn’t know she needed.
In the end, the story comes full circle: though the Cuthberts originally wanted a child who could help them in practical ways, they gained something they needed much more—a person who needed their love, and what’s more, a person whom they needed to love. And though they originally chose to keep Anne at Green Gables, Anne ultimately chooses Green Gables for herself—deciding to stay and help Marilla instead of leaving Avonlea for college.
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Home and Family Quotes in Anne of Green Gables
[…] [A] discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child of whom shy Matthew Cuthbert was so ludicrously afraid.
[…]
“I suppose you are Mr. Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables?” she said in a peculiarly clear, sweet voice. “I’m very glad to see you. I was beginning to be afraid you weren’t coming for me and I was imagining all the things that might have happened to prevent you. I had made up my mind that if you didn’t come for me tonight I’d go down the track to that big wild cherry tree at the bend, and climb up into it to stay all night.”
“Well, well, there’s no need to cry so about it.”
“Yes, there is need!” The child raised her head quickly, revealing a tear-stained face and trembling lips. “You would cry, too, if you were an orphan and had come to a place you thought was going to be home and found that they didn’t want you because you weren’t a boy. Oh, this is the most tragical thing that ever happened to me!”
Something like a reluctant smile, rather rusty from long disuse, mellowed Marilla's grim expression.
“Matthew Cuthbert, you don’t mean to say you think we ought to keep her!”
Marilla’s astonishment could not have been greater if Matthew had expressed a predilection for standing on his head.
“Well now, no, I suppose not—not exactly,” stammered Matthew, uncomfortably driven into a corner for his precise meaning. “I suppose—we could hardly be expected to keep her.”
“I should say not. What good would she be to us?”
“We might be some good to her,” said Matthew suddenly and unexpectedly.
Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes glistening with delight. Oh, wasn’t it beautiful? Wasn’t it a lovely place? Suppose she wasn't really going to stay here! She would imagine she was. There was scope for imagination here. […]
Anne’s beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily in. She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child, but this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed.
Pity was suddenly stirring in her heart for the child. What a starved, unloved life she had had—a life of drudgery and poverty and neglect; for Marilla was shrewd enough to read between the lines of Anne’s history and divine the truth. No wonder she had been so delighted at the prospect of a real home. It was a pity she had to be sent back.
What if she, Marilla, should indulge Matthew's unaccountable whim and let her stay?
“Humph! You don’t look as if there was much to you. But you’re wiry. I don’t know but that the wiry ones are the best after all. Well, if I take you you’ll have to be a good girl, you know—good and smart and respectful. I’ll expect you to earn your keep, and no mistake about that. Yes, I suppose I might as well take her off your hands, Miss Cuthbert. The baby’s awful fractious, and I’m clean worn out attending to him. If you like I can take her right home now.”
“It’d be more to the point if you could say she was a useful little thing,” retorted Marilla, “but I’ll make it my business to see she’s trained to be that. And mind, Matthew, you're not to go interfering with my methods. Perhaps an old maid doesn't know much about bringing up a child, but I guess she knows more than an old bachelor[.]”
“There, there, Marilla, you can have your own way,” said Matthew reassuringly. “Only be as good and kind to her as you can be without spoiling her. I kind of think she’s one of the sort you can do anything with, if you only get her to love you.”
“Don’t you know it’s a terrible wicked thing not to say your prayers every night? I’m afraid you are a very bad little girl.”
“You’d find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair,” said Anne reproachfully. “People who haven’t red hair don’t know what trouble is. Mrs. Thomas told me that God made my hair red on purpose, and I’ve never cared about Him since.”
“Marilla,” she demanded presently, “do you think that I shall ever have a bosom friend in Avonlea?”
“A—a what kind of a friend?"
“A bosom friend—an intimate friend, you know—a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul. I’ve dreamed of meeting her all my life. I never really supposed I would, but so many of my loveliest dreams have come true all at once that perhaps this one will, too. Do you think it’s possible?”
“It’s lovely to be going home and know it’s home,” she said. “I love Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before. No place ever seemed like home. Oh, Marilla, I’m so happy. I could pray right now and not find it a bit hard.”
Something warm and pleasant welled up in Marilla’s heart at the touch of that thin little hand in her own—a throb of the maternity she had missed, perhaps. Its very unaccustomedness and sweetness disturbed her.
Marilla felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. […] Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment. Neither would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as she was.
“Please cut it off at once, Marilla, and have it over. Oh, I feel that my heart is broken. This is such an unromantic affliction. The girls in books lose their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good deed, and I’m sure I wouldn’t mind losing my hair in some such fashion half so much. But there is nothing comforting in having your hair cut off because you’ve dyed it a dreadful color, is there? I’m going to weep all the time you’re cutting it off if it won’t interfere. It seems such a tragic thing.”
Anne sat down on Marilla’s gingham lap, took Marilla’s lined face between her hands, and looked gravely and tenderly into Marilla’s eyes. “I’m not a bit changed—not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me—back here—is just the same. It won’t make a bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly. At heart I shall always be your little Anne, who will love you and Matthew and dear Green Gables more and better every day of her life.” […]
[Marilla] could only put her arms close about her girl and hold her tenderly to her heart, wishing that she need never let her go.
“Well now, I guess she ain’t been much spoiled,” he muttered proudly. “I guess my putting in my oar occasional never did much harm after all. She’s smart and pretty, and loving, too, which is better than all the rest. She’s been a blessing to us, and there never was a luckier mistake than what Mrs. Spencer made—if it was luck. I don’t believe it was any such thing. It was Providence, because the Almighty saw we needed her, I reckon.”
“If I had been the boy you sent for,” said Anne wistfully, “I’d be able to help you so much now and spare you in a hundred ways. I could find it in my heart to wish I had been, just for that.”
“Well now, I’d rather have you than a dozen boys, Anne,” said Matthew, patting her hand. “Just mind you that—rather than a dozen boys. Well now, I guess it wasn't a boy that took the Avery scholarship, was it? It was a girl—my girl—my girl that I’m proud of.”
“I’m just as ambitious 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 your 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. 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 the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does.”
Anne’s horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen’s; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joy of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers. Nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!
“God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world,” whispered Anne softly.
