Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe’s Friendship, Love, and Engagement

Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe’s friendship, love, and engagement develop through a long mismatch between what they feel and what each believes the other wants. Childhood familiarity becomes a sustaining friendship at Redmond College; Anne’s rejection of Gilbert and her courtship with Roy Gardner deepen their separation, until Gilbert’s grave illness makes Anne understand that she loves him. His recovery allows them to speak openly and choose a shared future on terms shaped by affection rather than wealth or romantic display.

From old comrades to college companions

At Redmond College, Anne initially feels painfully anonymous, as if she has lost the familiar place she had at Queen’s. The students around her appear divided into unfamiliar groups, and she fears that the transition marks not a beginning but an ending. Her confidence returns as the Freshmen become a class and win the annual Arts Rush against the Sophomores. Gilbert helps lead that victory, is elected Freshman Class president, and becomes a prominent figure in their new college world.

The change in their surroundings does not immediately change their relationship. During Anne’s second term, Gilbert frequently visits her at Thirty-eight, St. John’s, escorts her to nearly all the college affairs, and is publicly linked with her by Redmond gossip. Anne resents the speculation, yet she does not want to discard an old friend. Gilbert, meanwhile, has reason to notice other young men visiting Anne, but he conceals his own feelings and maintains the position of her boy-comrade. Anne finds him the most satisfactory companion and tells herself that he has abandoned any romantic hopes. Her private wonder about why he has changed suggests that his restraint is not as emotionally simple as she assumes.

Their friendship also gives Anne a dependable connection while she negotiates the uncertainty of university life. She studies with the aim of winning the Thorburn Scholarship so that she can return to Redmond without drawing on Marilla Cuthbert’s limited savings. Gilbert is pursuing a scholarship as well, but the shared pressure does not erase the unspoken difference between them: Anne takes his companionship as friendship, while he continues to love her without believing that she will return that love.

Courtship, expectation, and refusal

Anne’s connection with Roy Gardner grows while Gilbert remains her trusted companion. During the winter before Convocation, Anne spends much of her social time with Roy’s family, becomes intimate with Dorothy Gardner, and comes to expect that she and Roy will become engaged. Others expect it too. At Convocation, Anne has violets from Roy and lilies-of-the-valley from Gilbert, whose card accompanies the latter. Although she has seen little of Gilbert over the winter, she sets Roy’s flowers aside and chooses Gilbert’s. The gesture brings old Avonlea friendships and memories close, though Anne cannot explain her choice to herself.

The contrast between an advantageous match and a chosen attachment recurs around Anne. Mrs. Skinner recounts that she had to choose between a wealthy suitor whose house needed a caretaker and Thomas, a poor man whom she loved and who loved her. She chose Thomas and describes herself as comfortable and happy with him. Jane Andrews, by contrast, is reported to be marrying Mr. Inglis, a millionaire, and preparing for a grand life in Winnipeg. These stories establish the material and social expectations surrounding marriage, but neither wealth nor public approval can settle Anne’s own feelings for her.

Roy proposes in the harbor pavilion where they had first spoken on a rainy day. His proposal is sincere and carefully expressed, and Anne recognizes the romance of his choice of place. Yet the expected answer does not come: she feels no answering excitement, draws back from accepting, and tells Roy she cannot marry him. The refusal breaks with the future that she and others had anticipated. It also exposes the gap between a courtship that appears flawless from the outside and the inward certainty Anne needs before committing herself.

Separation and recognition

Anne returns to Green Gables amid uncertainty about whether she can afford to continue at Redmond. Her academic achievement does not remove the financial obstacle, and she considers teaching again if necessary. Gilbert is also away from her life in a more personal sense: she has little news of him, while social talk about Anne’s engagement to Roy has encouraged him to believe that she will marry someone else.

The decisive change begins when Davy Keith tells Anne that Gilbert is dying. The news leaves her unable to respond at first. Alone that night, she recognizes that she has always loved Gilbert and that losing him would mean losing the person to whom she belongs. She also believes that she has understood this too late: after rejecting him, she thinks she has no right to go to him, and that he will die believing she does not care. Her earlier attraction to Roy now seems to her a mistaken reading of her own feelings, while the bond with Gilbert becomes unmistakable precisely when she fears it can no longer be acted upon.

This recognition completes a separation that had been sustained by both silence and assumption. Anne had interpreted Gilbert’s restraint as evidence that he had put aside his feelings; Gilbert had accepted her rejection and, later, the apparent prospect of her marriage to Roy. Neither had stopped caring, but each had taken the other’s outward choices as proof that a shared future was impossible.

Mutual disclosure and engagement

Gilbert recovers from his fever, and Anne eventually learns that her despair was founded on a mistaken expectation of his death. When they meet again in Hester Gray’s garden, Gilbert tells her that Christine Stuart was not his beloved. Christine was engaged to someone in her home town; Gilbert had agreed to look after her when she came to Kingsport to study music, and he grew fond of her as a friend. College gossip had misrepresented their connection, but Gilbert had not cared to correct it after Anne told him she could never love him.

Gilbert explains that he has loved Anne since their school days. After her rejection, he tried to give up hope, then struggled with the belief that she would marry Roy. His understanding changed when Philippa Gordon wrote to him that Anne and Roy had no real attachment and urged him to try again. What had appeared to be a new opening was therefore not a sudden change in Gilbert’s devotion but a chance to act on feelings he had carried through years of friendship and disappointment.

Gilbert asks Anne again the question he had asked more than two years earlier. Anne answers without needing to put her acceptance into words. Their reunion gives them room to revisit what they had misunderstood: Anne had thought Gilbert loved Christine, while Gilbert had believed that Anne’s expected engagement to Roy was real. Their conversation turns old hurts into shared knowledge rather than allowing them to dictate what comes next.

Their engagement does not promise immediate comfort or wealth. Gilbert says that he must finish his medical course, which will take three more years, and that he cannot offer grand houses or costly luxuries. Anne tells him that she wants him, not those things, and accepts the waiting as part of a future they can work toward together. Their relationship ends not with effortless fulfilment but with a mutual commitment: the old friendship has become love, and their shared life remains something to build and anticipate.