Anne Shirley and Marilla Cuthbert

Anne Shirley and Marilla Cuthbert share an adoptive mother-daughter bond whose strength appears in moments of uncertainty as much as in moments of tenderness. Marilla’s decision to take in the Keith twins reopens the story of how Anne came to Green Gables, while their later conversation about Davy reveals how deeply Marilla has come to understand Anne: she remembers not only Anne’s scrapes, but the good intentions behind them.

An Adoptive Family Recast

The relationship’s history is made visible through a parallel. After returning from Mary Keith’s funeral with the twins, Marilla is seen by Rachel Lynde, who remembers an earlier spring when Matthew Cuthbert brought Anne home as an orphan. At the time, people laughed at the idea of Marilla raising a child. Now she has adopted twins. Rachel’s comparison places Anne’s arrival within a continuing story of a home unexpectedly remade by children who need one.

That history gives Anne’s response to Marilla’s new responsibility particular force. When Marilla confides that Mary is failing and that the children’s uncle cannot take them until spring, she admits she suspects Mary wants her to provide a home. Anne clasps her hands, thrilled, and immediately urges Marilla to agree. Her excitement is not a detached wish for something new: she is responding to a situation of loss and uncertainty by imagining the children welcomed into the household that once welcomed her.

Marilla does not simply follow Anne’s enthusiasm. She points to the children’s young age, the responsibility of caring for twins, and the distant family connection, and says that she has not made up her mind. The contrast between Anne’s impulse and Marilla’s hesitation gives their bond its shape: Anne presses toward compassionate action, while Marilla considers the practical weight of what that action entails. Their different temperaments meet around a shared concern for the children.

Care Expressed Through Responsibility

The account of the twins’ arrival shows that taking them in is more than a formal decision. On the ten-mile journey from East Grafton, Davy cannot keep still, and Marilla spends the trip fearing he will tumble from the wagon. At last, exasperated, she threatens to whip him when they get home. Davy responds by climbing into her lap, hugging her, and telling her he does not believe she means it. His affectionate confidence sits alongside Marilla’s anxiety and irritation: care here is not effortless, but it is already present in the attention she gives to keeping him safe.

Anne’s place in this new family is also apparent in Rachel’s expectation that she will help Marilla through the winter. Rachel observes that Anne has a knack with children and is delighted about the twins’ arrival. Her remark makes Anne’s enthusiasm practical as well as emotional: she is not only glad that Marilla may take the children, but is understood by the household’s neighbor as someone who can help with them. The new responsibility thus extends the family relation between Anne and Marilla into shared care for others.

Recognition and Moral Difference

The clearest statement of Marilla’s understanding of Anne comes when she is discouraged by Davy’s behavior. Marilla recalls that he questioned the point of praying before he was important enough for God to notice, and admits she does not know what to do with him. Anne asks her not to despair, remembering that Marilla once considered her badly behaved too. In answering, Marilla rejects that comparison: Anne, she says, was never truly bad, even though she repeatedly got into scrapes; her motives were good. Davy, by contrast, seems to her to misbehave for the pleasure of it.

Marilla’s distinction is affectionate but not sentimental. She does not deny Anne’s history of trouble; she interprets it differently, separating the consequences of Anne’s actions from the intentions behind them. Anne, in turn, does not accept Marilla’s bleak judgment of Davy. She argues that his conduct is mischief, notes that he has no other boys to play with, and suggests that the twins should go to school. Their disagreement shows each of them exercising judgment, rather than merely agreeing to preserve harmony.

Marilla answers Anne’s suggestion with a firm boundary. Citing what her father and Mr. Allan believe about children’s schooling, she says the twins may have a few lessons at home but will not attend school until they are seven. The exchange sets Marilla’s caution beside Anne’s sympathy for Davy’s need for activity. It also shows a familiar pattern within their bond: Anne advocates for a child’s needs, while Marilla makes the final decision about the household’s care and rules.

A Bond of Trust and Perspective

Together, these moments present Anne and Marilla as family through shared responsibility and honest conversation. Marilla trusts Anne enough to share her worry about Mary and the twins; Anne answers with both affection and decisive encouragement. Later, Anne feels able to invoke her own childhood in a disagreement, and Marilla responds not by dismissing her but by offering a more generous account of who Anne was. Their relationship is therefore marked by change in perspective: Marilla can now look back on Anne’s unruly episodes and see the good motive within them.

The adoption of the twins echoes Anne’s own arrival without making the two situations identical. The echo lies in Marilla’s household once again becoming a home for children who need care, and in the community’s recognition that Marilla’s life has taken a surprising course. Anne, formerly the child being raised, now welcomes this enlargement of the household and is expected to help. The bond between her and Marilla is shown as both lasting and active: a family connection that makes room for new dependents while drawing strength from what the two have learned about each other.