Anne Shirley's infatuation with Roy Gardner

Anne Shirley's infatuation with Roy Gardner grows from a striking resemblance between a real man and the romantic hero she has long imagined. The attraction offers the promise of a storybook love, but the narrative steadily sets that promise beside less theatrical measures of intimacy: humor, shared history, and the choices Anne makes when her long-awaited college graduation arrives. Her feelings for Roy are genuine, yet the ideal that first draws her to him proves less decisive than the bond she has with Gilbert Blythe.

A Romantic Ideal Takes Shape

Anne's romance with Roy begins in her junior year at Redmond College, after she has become more settled in a place that initially made her feel like an insignificant stranger. Her early adjustment had been difficult: she and Priscilla Grant felt out of place, and Anne feared that the larger college offered no place for her. As the Freshmen became a class and won the Arts Rush, however, college life gathered into a more coherent world of studies, friendships, and shared ambitions. By her second term, Anne was enjoying its activities and working toward the Thorburn Scholarship, determined not to draw on Marilla Cuthbert's limited savings. This growing confidence forms the backdrop to her encounter with Roy, rather than a cure for the uncertainty that remains in her life.

The first meeting is shaped by weather and timing. A gust turns Anne's umbrella inside out on the harbor road, and Roy offers her shelter beneath his. Tall, handsome, and distinguished in appearance, with dark, melancholy eyes and a sympathetic voice, he seems to Anne to have stepped directly out of her private ideal. She accepts his offer to wait out the rain in a pavilion at Prospect Point. The shower lasts for nearly an hour, though the time seems short to Anne; when it clears, the two walk home together. By the time they reach the gate of Patty's Place, Roy has asked permission to call, and Anne has agreed. Her flushed cheeks and racing heart register the intensity of the encounter, while Rusty's attempt to climb into her lap meets an unusually distracted welcome.

That evening, a box of a dozen roses arrives for Miss Shirley, accompanied by Roy's name and a poetic inscription. Philippa Gordon recognizes him as a well-known and wealthy member of one of Kingsport's prominent families. She explains that Roy had left college two years earlier when his mother's health failed and he went abroad with her; his father had died. Philippa has heard that he bore the interruption of his studies sweetly. For Anne, these details add a life story to the figure encountered in the rain. Awake that night, she wonders whether the real prince has finally appeared and finds herself strongly inclined to believe it.

Courtship and the Work of Idealization

Anne's attraction rests not only on Roy's appearance but on the romantic significance she assigns to it. His dark eyes and pleading voice seem to confirm that he is the hero she has imagined. The public signs of their courtship reinforce that reading: Roy sends her birthday violets with a sonnet addressed to her, and Anne commits the poem to memory. Its extravagant praise of her eyes, cheek, and lips thrills her in part because the verse is meant for her personally. She understands that it is not poetry on the level of Keats or Shakespeare, but considers it pleasing magazine verse all the same. Its emotional force lies in its direct address and in Anne's sense that the imagined romance has chosen her as its heroine.

Anne's friends help make that romance appear settled. When Philippa speaks of Roy as Anne's destined partner, Anne does not object in the way she once did when others assumed she would marry him. She tells Philippa that she will neither accept nor refuse a man before he has asked her, but when Philippa asks whether she loves Roy, Anne reluctantly says that she supposes she does. She reasons that she must be in love with him: he is her ideal, and other students are envious of his attention. By then, the expectation that Roy will propose has spread beyond her friends; Anne herself expects an engagement announcement. The language of inevitability makes it easier to accept the romance as a completed story before Roy has actually asked her to marry him.

Gilbert as a Different Measure of Intimacy

The ideal is not entirely secure. Anne recalls telling Roy a funny story that he failed to understand, then remembers the easy, companionable laughter she shares with Gilbert. She wonders whether life with someone who has no sense of humor might become uninteresting, but dismisses the doubt as unreasonable: she cannot expect her melancholy hero to see every joke. That comparison exposes a tension at the center of her infatuation. Roy answers the image Anne has cherished, while Gilbert offers a kind of closeness that depends on ordinary shared understanding rather than elaborate romantic gestures.

The contrast also has a history. During Anne's earlier college terms, Gilbert visits her often and escorts her to nearly all the college affairs. Their names are linked in Redmond gossip, which annoys Anne, but she cannot bring herself to cast aside an old friend. She regards him as the boy-comrade of Avonlea and values him as a companion, even as she wonders why he seems to have dropped his former romantic intentions. By the time Roy enters her life, Gilbert has become less present: during the winter before graduation, he visits Patty's Place only once after Christmas, studies hard, and takes little part in college social life. Anne, meanwhile, sees much of the Gardner family and is close to Dorothy Gardner. The separation in their daily routines helps make the possibility of a future with Roy appear increasingly settled, even while Gilbert remains the friend against whom Anne unconsciously measures that possibility.

Graduation and the Turn Toward Gilbert

The distinction between romantic expectation and attachment comes into focus at Convocation. Anne has taken High Honors in English, and the day fulfills an ambition she has carried for years. On her table are Roy's violets and, in another box, lilies of the valley from Gilbert, whose card accompanies them. Anne has seen little of Gilbert during the winter and knows that he has been working toward High Honors and the Cooper Prize. She has spent more time with the Gardners, and the college community expects her engagement to Roy at any moment. Anne expects it too. Yet, just before leaving for Convocation, she puts aside Roy's flowers and takes Gilbert's lilies.

The choice connects the ceremony to an older shared hope. Anne and Gilbert once imagined the day they would graduate together, and the lilies recall both Avonlea and the plans they had made as friends. Roy's violets, though associated with a courtship she has accepted as likely, do not seem to belong to this fulfillment. Anne cannot explain her decision, which is precisely what makes it a meaningful turn: an action precedes the clear understanding of what it signifies. The day's strongest memory is not her degree, Gilbert's response to the flowers, or Roy's puzzled, pained glance, but an inexplicable pang that leaves the long-anticipated celebration touched with bitterness.

That evening, Anne wears the small gold chain Gilbert had sent her at Christmas, with its tiny pink enamel heart. The trinket recalls the childhood occasion when Gilbert had tried to make peace after teasing her, and Anne has previously thanked him for it without ever wearing it. Now, as she walks to the graduation dance, its meaning is no longer safely confined to an old joke. When Philippa lightly suggests that Gilbert's feelings may still matter, Anne remains silent, her face burning in the dark. She catches the chain beneath her collar and breaks it with one forceful twist, then hides the broken pendant in her pocket. At the dance she is conspicuously cheerful and tells Gilbert she has no room on her dance card. Her outward composure contrasts with her trembling hands and smarting eyes.

Significance and Limits of the Infatuation

Roy's role in Anne's story is to make the difference between an imagined romance and lived intimacy visible. Roses, violets, a sonnet, and the promise of a handsome, melancholy hero give the courtship the shape Anne has long desired. But the story places these signs beside less showy evidence: Gilbert's humor, their shared plans, and the particular meaning his lilies carry on the day Anne graduates. Anne does not immediately settle the conflict; she can still dance gaily while concealing the broken heart pendant. The infatuation therefore ends this stage not with a neat declaration, but with a contradiction between what Anne expects of herself and what her gestures reveal. Her attraction to Roy has exposed the power of romantic ideals, while her choices at Convocation show that the ideal alone cannot tell her whom she loves.