Anne of Green Gables
Anne Shirley
The heroine
A talkative, red-haired orphan who arrives at Green Gables by mistake and fills it with imagination, drama, and love.
Anne is an eleven-year-old orphan with fiery red braids, freckles, and an imagination that never rests. She names everything she loves, from the White Way of Delight to the Lake of Shining Waters, and she insists her name be spelled with an E because it looks so much more distinguished. She feels everything at full volume, so joy and despair often arrive within the same hour.
What Anne wants most is to belong. Raised by strangers who used her as a nursemaid, she has never been anybody's own. She longs for a bosom friend, a pretty dress with puffed sleeves, and to be good, though her temper and her daydreams keep getting her into trouble. People in Avonlea find her exhausting at first and then, one by one, cannot imagine the place without her.
“You won't have to sell Green Gables! I'm not going to Redmond. I'm staying here to take care of you.”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Anne is sent to Green Gables in place of the boy the Cuthberts expected. After one night of tears, Marilla agrees to keep her. Her first year is a string of mishaps: she loses her temper at Mrs. Lynde, breaks a slate over Gilbert Blythe's head, flavors a cake with liniment, and dyes her hair green. Yet she also saves Minnie May Barry from croup and wins the love of the whole village.
Under Miss Stacy's teaching she studies for Queen's Academy and ties for first place on the Island, then wins the Avery Scholarship. When Matthew dies and Marilla's eyesight fails, Anne gives up Redmond College to stay and teach near home. She makes peace with Gilbert and ends the story at her window, content in the choice she made.
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