Anne Shirley and Diana Barry

The friendship between Anne Shirley and Diana Barry is one of the steady emotional relationships of their lives: it gives Anne the affection she had lacked as a child, and it gives both girls a trusted companion through the changes of growing up. Their closeness is neither a perfect likeness of temperament nor a bond untouched by change. Diana is often more practical where Anne is fanciful, and adulthood brings new commitments; what holds them together is their long habit of candor, loyalty, and affection.

A Friendship That Gives Anne a Home

Anne and Diana’s friendship reaches back to the beginning of Anne’s life at Green Gables. Looking back on their first meeting and their childhood pledge of eternal friendship, Anne recalls how deeply Diana’s love mattered to her. Before coming to Green Gables, Anne had felt lonely and uncared for, and she had imagined the friends and affection she wanted. Meeting Diana made that longing part of a real relationship: Anne describes her friend’s affection as warm and true, and thanks her for sustaining it over the years.

The friendship is presented as unusually free of rupture. Anne remembers that the two have never quarrelled or even grown cool toward one another. Their closeness is not simply a cherished memory: when Anne speaks of leaving for college, she still imagines new friends as one of life’s attractions while knowing that none will be as dear as her old ones. She playfully identifies the friend she means by her black eyes and dimples, turning a teasing exchange into an affirmation of Diana’s singular place in her life.

Companions in Work, Play, and Imagination

The girls’ companionship is active as well as confiding. On a drive to Carmody, Diana accompanies Anne on a shopping expedition, and much of their conversation concerns the Improvement Society. Diana is a pledged member, and together they discuss improvements they hope to make, including the shabby Avonlea Hall. Their talk shows them sharing public interests as well as private feeling: Diana proposes an ambitious first project, while Anne counsels patience and the need to educate public sentiment. They can work toward a common purpose even when Anne’s way of approaching a problem is more hopeful and imaginative.

That difference is clearest when Anne begins to invent a story about an old house. Diana explains that she no longer likes imagining frightening histories for places, remembering how the girls’ childhood imaginings about the Haunted Wood once troubled her. Anne does not press Diana to follow her into fancy. Instead, she recognizes that when she wanders into that imaginative realm, she must sometimes go alone. Her acceptance matters: intimacy does not require Diana to share every part of Anne’s inner life.

Their friendship also has a physical, impulsive energy. On the drive home from Carmody, Anne sees a cow standing in the middle of a wet field and leaps down to drive it out. Diana first calls after her, worried that Anne will ruin her dress; when Anne does not hear, Diana ties the horse securely, gathers up her own skirt, climbs the fence, and runs after her. She cannot prevent the girls from leaving a damaging track through the grain, but she does not leave Anne to face the task alone. The episode turns their affection into action: Diana’s concern begins with Anne’s dress and becomes practical help, even at the cost of getting her own clothes wet.

On another outing, the two ride through the September countryside on a plump brown pony, sharing the pleasure of the day. Anne gives the landscape an almost Edenic, poetic character and imagines that the fragrance of dying fir might belong in heaven; Diana answers more practically, agreeing that the scent is lovely and proposing to make a cushion from fir needles. Neither response cancels the other. Anne’s heightened way of seeing and Diana’s grounded answer can occupy the same conversation, as they do in the girls’ friendship itself.

Trust Through Growing Up

As they grow older, the girls use their closeness to speak honestly about changes in feeling and ambition. Diana asks Anne whether she cares for Gilbert Blythe, and Anne answers that she loves him as a friend, not in the way Diana suggests. The exchange presents Diana as a confidante willing to raise a serious question, and Anne as able to answer directly. Their intimacy does not depend on having identical expectations about love or adulthood.

When Anne is offered the chance to continue her education at Redmond College, their bond is tested by separation before Anne has even left. Marilla Cuthbert explains that Anne has enough money for two years and that Rachel Lynde may come to live at Green Gables, making it possible for Anne to go. Anne is reluctant to leave Marilla and the twins, but Diana’s friendship forms another emotional stake in the decision. Later, Anne tells Diana that the chance of making new friends helps make life fascinating, yet insists that those friends will not replace the old ones. Her confidence in college and her attachment to Diana are not opposites: she can welcome a wider life without treating their friendship as disposable.

Diana’s engagement to Fred Wright brings that tension into sharper focus. Anne comes upon the pair together in the Barry garden and realizes that they are in love. The sight surprises her, although she has already suspected that Diana’s earlier romantic daydreams were giving way to something real. Anne feels a small loneliness, as though Diana has entered a new world and closed a gate behind her. She wonders whether she will still be able to share all her secrets, since Diana might tell Fred. This is a moment of apprehension, not a lasting break: Anne is registering that adult intimacy may alter the shape of their friendship.

Reassurance, Promises, and the Bond’s Future

The following evening, Diana comes to Green Gables and tells Anne the whole story. The two girls cry, kiss, and laugh together. Diana’s confidence restores the openness that Anne feared might be lost, while Anne’s response shows that she can try to understand life from Diana’s perspective. The scene does not erase the change: Diana is engaged, and Anne recognizes that their lives are moving forward. Instead, it lets them meet that change through their familiar habits of confession and affection.

Diana asks Anne to be her bridesmaid, wherever Anne may be when the marriage takes place. Anne solemnly promises to come even from the ends of the earth if necessary. The promise gives their enduring friendship a practical future form: distance and new responsibilities may intervene, but Diana expects Anne to stand beside her at a defining event, and Anne commits herself to doing so. Diana says the wedding will be at least three years away, in part because she is only eighteen and her mother will not allow her to marry before twenty-one. Fred’s father also expects the Abraham Fletcher farm to be two-thirds paid for before it is transferred to him. Diana is already thinking about housekeeping and intends to make thirty-seven crocheted doilies, matching the number Myra Gillis had when she married. Anne teases her about whether a household could manage with only thirty-six, preserving the light, private humor that accompanies their more serious promises.

Their friendship thus holds both continuity and difference. Diana’s engagement and Anne’s plans for college bring new attachments and separate futures into view; neither girl pretends that nothing will change. Yet the childhood pledge still has force in the present: Anne names Diana as irreplaceable, Diana promises to love her always, and both respond to adult milestones by drawing the other closer. Their relationship is not built on shared imagination alone, nor on remaining unchanged, but on the confidence that a trusted friend can grow into a new life without ceasing to be beloved.