Anne of Green Gables
Matthew Cuthbert
Anne's gentle guardian
A painfully shy farmer who is the first person in the story to love Anne without reservation.
Matthew is a broad-shouldered, stooped man with long iron-gray hair and a full beard. He is so shy that he avoids nearly every woman in Avonlea, and he would rather say nothing than say the wrong thing. He is patient, gentle, and quietly humorous, and he lets Anne talk as long as she likes.
He and his sister Marilla expected a boy, but one look at Anne at Bright River station is enough for him. He listens to her chatter on the drive home and decides almost at once that she is a real nice little thing. Where Marilla worries about discipline, Matthew worries that Anne should have one pretty dress like the other girls, and he will brave a store full of clerks to get it.
“She's a real nice little thing, Marilla. It's a pity to send her back when she's so set on staying.”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Matthew is the one who pleads with Marilla to let Anne stay. He slips upstairs to ask Anne to apologize to Mrs. Lynde, and she agrees for his sake. He endures a miserable shopping trip, then asks Rachel Lynde to make a dress with puffed sleeves, which Anne receives on Christmas morning.
He glows with pride when Anne ties for first place on the Island and tells her he would rather have her than a dozen boys. On the evening after Anne wins the Avery Scholarship he tells her she is his girl and that he is proud of her. The next morning he reads of the Abbey Bank's failure, suffers a heart attack, and dies. Anne says he was the first person who ever truly loved her.
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