Anne Shirley—Matthew Cuthbert

Anne Shirley’s relationship with Matthew Cuthbert is a bond of care that persists after his death. As the first person to give Anne the love and sympathy her childhood had craved, Matthew remains present in her life through her faithful remembrance and repeated visits to his grave.

The Foundation of the Bond

Matthew’s importance to Anne rests not on public standing but on what he gave her personally. He was the first to offer the love and sympathy her starved childhood had needed. Anne remembers him as a kind, quiet, shy man, and the intimacy of that early care outlasts his life.

Remembrance in Avonlea

Anne makes a weekly pilgrimage to Matthew’s grave, beginning with the earliest mayflowers of spring. At the close of the school year, after locking the schoolhouse and setting out toward a two-month vacation, she carries a basket of flowers to the grave. The visit is part of her ordinary calendar of care, not an occasional gesture prompted by a public commemoration.

Most people in Avonlea have forgotten Matthew, whom Anne recalls as quiet, shy, and unimportant in the eyes of the community. Marilla Cuthbert is the exception. Anne’s continued visits set her private loyalty against that general forgetting: Matthew’s memory remains green in her heart, and she knows she will never forget the man who first made her feel loved and understood.

A Continuing Practice of Care

The graveyard visit also places Matthew’s remembrance within Anne’s wider practice of tending to the dead. After laying flowers on his grave, she visits Hester Gray’s grave in a poplar-shaded corner. Since the spring picnic, she has brought flowers for Hester whenever she visits Matthew; on this occasion, the white roses come from Hester’s own deserted garden, which Anne had revisited the previous evening. The separate acts of remembrance share one journey, while Matthew’s grave remains the place Anne visits as a weekly expression of gratitude and enduring attachment.