Anne's orphanhood

Anne Shirley's orphanhood is the foundational condition of her life before Green Gables, shaping her identity, her hunger for love and belonging, and her reliance on imagination as a survival mechanism. Born to Walter and Bertha Shirley, both teachers who died of fever when she was three months old, Anne was passed from household to household—first to the impoverished Thomas family, then to the Hammonds, who had eight children including three sets of twins—before landing in the Hopeton orphan asylum. This history of rejection, hard labor, and emotional neglect left her with a deep sense of being unwanted, a fierce longing for a real home, and a richly developed inner world that she used to endure hardship. Her orphanhood is not merely a backstory but an active force that drives her behavior, her desperate gratitude when the Cuthberts keep her, and her eventual transformation into a beloved member of the Green Gables community.

Origins and Early Loss

Anne was born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia, to Walter Shirley, a teacher at the Bolingbroke High School, and Bertha Shirley, also a teacher who gave up her profession when she married. Anne later reflected that she was glad her parents had "nice names," considering it "a real disgrace to have a father named—well, say Jedediah." The family lived in a tiny yellow house that Anne, who never saw it, imagined had honeysuckle over the parlor window, lilacs in the front yard, and muslin curtains. When Anne was just three months old, her mother died of fever; her father died of the same illness four days later. Anne later told Marilla that she wished her mother had lived long enough for her to remember calling her "mother," because she thought "it would be so sweet to say `mother.'" With both parents dead and no known relatives—they had come from places far away—Anne was left an orphan. Mrs. Thomas, who took her in, said Anne was "the homeliest baby she ever saw, so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes," but Anne took comfort that her mother thought she was "perfectly beautiful."

A Childhood of Drudgery and Rejection

For eight years Anne lived with the Thomas family, first in Bolingbroke and then in Marysville, helping to look after four younger Thomas children. She later recalled that Mrs. Thomas would reproach her by asking how she could be such a bad girl when she had been "brought up by hand." When Mr. Thomas was killed falling under a train, his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and the children—but not Anne. Mrs. Thomas was at her wits' end, and Mrs. Hammond from up the river took Anne in, seeing that she was "handy with children." Anne lived with the Hammonds in a lonely clearing among stumps for over two years, caring for eight children, including three sets of twins. She told Marilla that she liked "babies in moderation, but twins three times in succession is TOO MUCH," and that she used to get "so dreadfully tired carrying them about." When Mr. Hammond died, Mrs. Hammond broke up housekeeping, divided her children among relatives, and went to the States. Anne was sent to the Hopeton asylum, where she stayed for four months until Mrs. Alexander Spencer came to get a child for the Cuthberts. Anne later summarized her life with a sigh: "nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate."

The Asylum and the Power of Imagination

Anne's four months in the Hopeton asylum were, she said, the worst part of her orphanhood. "I don't suppose you ever were an orphan in an asylum, so you can't possibly understand what it is like," she told Matthew on the drive to Green Gables. "It's worse than anything you could imagine." The asylum people were good, she acknowledged, but "there is so little scope for the imagination in an asylum—only just in the other orphans." To cope, Anne invented elaborate stories about the other children, imagining that the girl who sat next to her was really the daughter of a belted earl who had been stolen by a cruel nurse. She lay awake at night creating these fantasies because she had no time during the day. She attributed her thinness to this habit: "I guess that's why I'm so thin—I AM dreadful thin, ain't I? There isn't a pick on my bones." The asylum's meager resources extended to clothing: all the orphans had to wear ugly yellowish-gray wincey dresses, donated by a merchant who, Anne charitably preferred to believe, acted out of kindness rather than an inability to sell the fabric. When she left the asylum, she felt ashamed of her dress but comforted herself by imagining she wore "the most beautiful pale blue silk dress" and a grand hat.

The Longing for Home and Belonging

Anne's orphanhood instilled in her a desperate, almost aching desire for a real home and family. On the drive to Green Gables, she told Matthew, "I've never belonged to anybody—not really." When she first saw the house, she felt instantly that it was home, and she had pinched herself so many times during the day that her arm was "black and blue from the elbow up" from testing whether it was all a dream. When she learned that the Cuthberts had wanted a boy and might send her back, she cried out, "You don't want me because I'm not a boy! I might have expected it. Nobody ever did want me." Later, after Marilla agreed to keep her, Anne said, "I've never had a real home since I can remember. It gives me that pleasant ache again just to think of coming to a really truly home." The sense of not being wanted haunted her even in small moments: when Mrs. Lynde criticized her appearance, Anne's fury was rooted in the pain of being judged ugly by a stranger, and she later told Marilla that "there's such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it." Marilla, recalling her own childhood hurt when an aunt called her "a dark, homely little thing," understood the sting.

Transformation Through Love and Stability

Anne's orphanhood did not define her forever. The steady love of Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert gradually healed the wounds of rejection. Marilla, who had initially been reluctant to keep her, came to love Anne "as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood," telling her after Matthew's death, "you've been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables." Anne herself recognized the change: on the first anniversary of her arrival, she told Marilla, "I've been here for a year and I've been so happy. Of course, I've had my troubles, but one can live down troubles." The novel's final image of Anne—choosing to stay at Green Gables to care for Marilla rather than pursue her own ambitions—completes the arc from orphaned outsider to beloved daughter who has found her place. As she told Marilla, "I love Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before. No place ever seemed like home."