Anne Shirley—Gilbert Blythe

Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe are friends whose closeness carries an unspoken imbalance: Anne still understands their bond as friendship, while Gilbert hopes it may eventually become love. Their relationship is shaped less by declaration than by restraint, admiration, and the contrast between Anne’s imagined ideal and the real young man growing beside her.

A Friendship with Unequal Hopes

Gilbert’s feelings are more advanced than Anne’s, but he does not make them her burden. He has learned that she may respond to sentimental advances by stopping them cold or laughing at them, and he fears either response. Instead, he protects the friendship he already has, keeping his deeper hopes private. The possibility of love remains distant and conditional in his mind, not something Anne has promised or even recognized.

Anne, for her part, can admire Gilbert without interpreting that admiration romantically. At the sight of him near the Dryad's Bubble, she recognizes that he is no longer simply a schoolboy and thinks him handsome. Yet she immediately sets that impression apart from her idea of an ideal man: Gilbert lacks the melancholy, inscrutable appearance she and Diana Barry had agreed they admired. The mismatch does not trouble her, because she considers it irrelevant to friendship. Her ease in placing him there underscores the distance between her present understanding and Gilbert’s private anticipation.

Growing Up Beside One Another

The relationship unfolds alongside the pair’s studies and movement toward adulthood. Earlier, as Gilbert passed on his wheel, Anne was discussing their progress with Mrs. Allan. Anne and Gilbert planned to finish Virgil that evening; with only twenty lines remaining, they intended to stop studying until September. This shared academic undertaking gives their friendship a practical, everyday setting, even as Gilbert’s passage marks the school vacation and the interval before their studies resume.

Anne’s future remains uncertain in a way Gilbert’s romantic hopes do not resolve. Asked whether she might ever attend college, she considers Marilla Cuthbert’s impaired eyesight and the twins’ uncertain future: she doubts their uncle will actually send for them. College seems possible, but only somewhere farther along her road, and she avoids dwelling on it lest she become discontented. This moment places her immediate obligations and concern for others ahead of any imagined future with Gilbert. It does not show that she rejects him; rather, it establishes how firmly her attention is occupied by the life and responsibilities already before her.

Ideals and Influence

Gilbert’s imagined future woman resembles Anne in detail. He pictures a girl with large, clear gray eyes and a delicate face, even including the seven freckles whose presence still vexes Anne. The affection in this private ideal is not simply a response to appearance. Gilbert also values Anne’s character: he sees her as free of the small jealousies, deceits, rivalries, and bids for favor he associates with some other Avonlea girls. Her transparency and high aspirations make her an example he wants to deserve.

That admiration becomes a form of self-discipline. Although Gilbert is popular beyond Avonlea, including among young people at White Sands whom the narration describes as fast, he intends to watch his words, thoughts, and actions as if Anne’s judgment were upon him. She exerts this influence without trying to do so. The relationship therefore works in two different registers: Anne experiences straightforward companionship, while Gilbert’s friendship includes a private ethical aspiration, the wish to remain worthy of her esteem and perhaps, one day, her love.

A Quiet Encounter, Still Unresolved

In the twilight, Anne walks to the Dryad's Bubble and sees Gilbert coming through the dusky Haunted Wood. The scene gives her a fresh measure of how he has changed: he is tall, frank-faced, broad-shouldered, and open in expression. She finds him handsome, but his appearance still does not match the romantic type she has imagined. Beside the water, Gilbert stretches out on the ferns and looks approvingly at her; he nevertheless keeps his thoughts to himself. Their exchange remains playful rather than confessional, with Gilbert teasingly comparing Anne beneath a birch tree to a dryad, and Anne answering through her affection for birch trees and a gentle gesture against the trunk.

Nothing in this encounter settles the difference between them. Gilbert’s hopes remain unspoken, and Anne continues to treat him as a friend rather than as the answer to her romantic ideal. The relationship’s significance lies in that suspended state: ordinary companionship gives Gilbert’s devotion room to deepen, while Anne’s unselfconscious independence prevents his hopes from becoming a mutual promise. At this point, the future he imagines is possible only as a hope, not an outcome.