Anne Shirley and Anthony Pye

The relationship between Anne Shirley and Anthony Pye is a small but consequential test of Anne’s ideas about teaching: she begins determined to win the affection of a pupil who openly distrusts her, then loses her temper and strikes him, only to discover that his respect may arrive by a route she neither intended nor approves. Their change is not a simple conversion from hostility to warmth. It turns on the distinction Anne recognizes between being liked and being respected, and on the uneasy cost of earning the latter.

First Impressions and the Problem of Authority

At the start of Anne’s teaching, Anthony sits by himself at a corner desk, his dark, sullen face fixed on her with open hostility. Anne immediately decides that she will win his affection and thereby discomfit his family. The resolve is characteristic of her: she sees a difficult pupil not merely as a classroom problem but as a person whose regard might be reached. Yet Anthony is already a challenge to her authority before their first direct exchange.

Anthony’s antagonism is not simply a matter of occasional misconduct. He says that girl teachers are no good, and Anne understands that he has formed an independent judgment rather than merely echoing what he hears at home. Although he seldom openly disobeys her, he obeys with a contemptuous air of tolerance. Anne worries that this manner undermines her standing with the other children. The tension is therefore both personal and public: she wants Anthony’s liking, but she also needs the class to recognize her authority.

Anne’s Attempt to Win Him

Anne first answers the problem with patience and instruction. When Anthony pours the last drops of water from his slate bottle down Aurelia Clay’s neck, Anne keeps him in at recess and explains that gentlemen do not pour water down ladies’ necks. She tells him that she wants her boys to be gentlemen. The lecture is kind, but Anthony remains unmoved; he listens silently and whistles scornfully as he leaves. Anne does not conclude that kindness is useless. Instead, she persists in hoping that there is a good-natured boy beneath his sullenness, and tells Gilbert Blythe that she likes overcoming difficulties.

That hope is genuine, but it is also a source of distress. Anne admits to Gilbert that Anthony does not like her and, more troublingly, does not respect her. She is not describing a boy who constantly defies rules: his outward compliance makes his contempt harder to address, because it leaves her with no clear act of disobedience to correct. She fears that her efforts have failed and that his scorn affects the rest of the class. Her wish to like him and to be liked by him coexists with the practical need to be taken seriously as his teacher.

The Mouse and the Reversal

The conflict sharpens when a mouse is put in Anne’s desk. She asks who is responsible, then looks directly at Anthony; when she asks whether he did it, he admits that he did. Anne takes up a long, heavy hardwood pointer and calls him forward. The punishment is painful enough to break his bravado: he winces and tears come to his eyes, though the narration makes clear that Anne does not punish him cruelly.

The act reverses Anne’s own principles. As soon as Anthony returns to his seat, she drops the pointer and feels ashamed, repentant, and bitterly mortified. Her anger has passed, leaving her to confront the fact that she has whipped a pupil despite the ideals she had proclaimed. She also thinks she has destroyed her last chance of winning Anthony’s affection. At home, she weeps in the east gable room until Marilla Cuthbert, alarmed, comes in and insists on learning what is wrong. The episode makes the relationship more than a contest over classroom control: Anne’s remorse shows that the means by which she asserts authority matter to her as much as the result.

Respect Before Affection

The first sign of a change comes on a snowy morning. Anne has to take the road to school and meets Anthony just after leaving the Green Gables lane. She feels guilty, as if their positions had been reversed. To her astonishment, he lifts his cap and offers to carry her books. They walk to school largely in silence, but when he gives the books back, Anne smiles with spontaneous comradeship rather than the deliberately kind smile she had repeatedly tried on him. Anthony grins in response. The gesture does not establish that he now likes her; Anne instead senses that she may have gained his respect.

Rachel Lynde later confirms that Anthony has said Anne is some good after all, even though she is a girl, and that he considered the whipping as good as a man’s. This report gives the new respect a troubling measure: Anthony’s approval is connected to the very punishment Anne regrets. Anne says she never expected to win him by whipping him and feels that her ideals have somehow failed her. She continues to believe her theory of kindness cannot be wrong, even as the outcome resists a simple moral lesson. Rachel treats the Pye family as an exception to ordinary rules, while J. A. Harrison and Jane Andrews respond to the news with teasing. The episode closes not with a full reconciliation or an explicit declaration of affection, but with a narrow, significant gain: Anthony’s contempt has given way to a grudging recognition of Anne’s standing, and Anne remains unconvinced that the price was right.

Significance of the Relationship

The relationship places Anne’s educational ideal beside the unpredictability of actual discipline. Her first instinct is to make connection the basis of authority; Anthony’s repeated scorn tests whether patience alone can command respect. The mouse incident brings her own anger into the conflict and leaves her ashamed, so the apparent success of punishment cannot be separated from its personal and ethical cost. Anthony’s later courtesy matters precisely because it does not erase that cost or prove that Anne’s kindness was mistaken.

Their progression is therefore partial and carefully qualified. Anne initially wants affection, then realizes that respect may have come first; Anthony, for his part, moves from hostility and insolence to offering practical help and acknowledging her ability. The book does not show him confessing fondness or Anne abandoning her belief in kindness. Instead, their connection ends at a more complicated point: teacher and pupil have crossed from contempt toward regard, while Anne continues to question the route by which that change occurred.