Every year or so, I re-read a book from the Anne of Green Gables series. I was introduced to “Anne” by Mrs. Yahr, my fourth grade teacher, when she read the titular novel, the first in the series, aloud to my class, and I fell in love, truly and deeply, always and forever. Anne was everything I aspired to be and everything I thought myself to be. She was the 19th century, white Canadian parallel of my 20th century, black American self. I cried over the rejection and mistreatment Anne faced as an orphan; as the child of a single parent in a community that was virtually untouched by the dire national divorce statistics, I knew something of her pain. Anne was red-headed, my hair was reddish—you know, for a black girl. She was smart, spirited, and sassy, and no matter the mishap she found herself in, she always triumphed in the end. I liked to think that I had a similar capacity for avoiding consequences.
By the end of the first novel, it is clear to the reader that our heroine would have it all, someday. She proved that a girl could be smart and bookish and still get the guy. Gilbert Blythe, Anne’s romantic foil, started out as a friend and academic rival. I liked to think of Andrew Ashley as my Gilbert. He was smart, and lived nearby, and fit various other Gilbert-esque characteristics. One recent Saturday morning, as I scanned the wedding announcements over tea and toast, Andrew’s name caught my eye. He and his wife are musicians and live in Boston.
The last Anne book I re-read was Anne of the Island, which takes place during Anne’s years at Redmond University, when she is a young woman in her twenties, before we witness her settling into a life of domesticity, marriage and children. In addition to winning various academic awards for her prowess in English literature, Anne must decide between two romantic suitors, Gilbert, our hometown hero, and an interloper, Royal Gardner, who threatens to derail Anne and Gil’s perfect love story with his promises of wealth and urban sophistication. Although I’ve never found myself in a similar situation while also studying English during my college years, this reading of Anne of the Island was particularly poignant for me. The first time I read it, as a girl of 12 or 13, college was still several years ahead of me, and the idea that I might someday have to choose between the boy next door and a wealthy stranger seemed like an exciting future possibility. This time around, my twenties were mostly behind me, and the world I’d created to parallel Anne’s as a fourth grader was lost in prosaic reality. My Gilbert was lost to marriage and the Lone Star state, and Royal Gardner had not yet appeared to replace him. The last books in the series treat Anne mostly as an afterthought, focusing instead on her friends and children. Her disappearance into a supporting role had never bothered me, until now.
