#anne of avonlea

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In honor of Valentines Day I thought I would post a list of some of my favorite Anne and Gilbert moments. It was hard to narrow it to just ten as I have been going through all nine books and trying to queue posts about all their iconic moments through the series; However I decided to pick the ones that I remember even when I haven’t read the books in a while. I didn’t have the heart to rank them properly so they’re just listed in chronological order.

1.His future must be worthy of its goddess

In the twilight Anne sauntered down to the Dryad’s Bubble and saw Gilbert Blythe coming down through the dusky Haunted Wood. She had a sudden realization that Gilbert was a schoolboy no longer. And how manly he looked—the tall, frank-faced fellow, with the clear, straightforward eyes and the broad shoulders. Anne thought Gilbert was a very handsome lad, even though he didn’t look at all like her ideal man. She and Diana had long ago decided what kind of a man they admired and their tastes seemed exactly similar. He must be very tall and distinguished looking, with melancholy, inscrutable eyes, and a melting, sympathetic voice. There was nothing either melancholy or inscrutable in Gilbert’s physiognomy, but of course that didn’t matter in friendship!
Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and looked approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal woman the description would have answered point for point to Anne, even to those seven tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence still continued to vex her soul. Gilbert was as yet little more than a boy; but a boy has his dreams as have others, and in Gilbert’s future there was always a girl with big, limpid gray eyes, and a face as fine and delicate as a flower. He had made up his mind, also, that his future must be worthy of its goddess. Even in quiet Avonlea there were temptations to be met and faced. White Sands youth were a rather “fast” set, and Gilbert was popular wherever he went. But he meant to keep himself worthy of Anne’s friendship and perhaps some distant day her love; and he watched over word and thought and deed as jealously as if her clear eyes were to pass in judgment on it. She held over him the unconscious influence that every girl, whose ideals are high and pure, wields over her friends; an influence which would endure as long as she was faithful to those ideals and which she would as certainly lose if she were ever false to them. In Gilbert’s eyes Anne’s greatest charm was the fact that she never stooped to the petty practices of so many of the Avonlea girls—the small jealousies, the little deceits and rivalries, the palpable bids for favor. Anne held herself apart from all this, not consciously or of design, but simply because anything of the sort was utterly foreign to her transparent, impulsive nature, crystal clear in its motives and aspirations.
– Chapter XIX, Anne of Avonlea

2.For the first time her eyes faltered under Gilbert’s gaze

“What are you thinking of, Anne?” asked Gilbert, coming down the walk. He had left his horse and buggy out at the road.
“Of Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving,” answered Anne dreamily. “Isn’t it beautiful to think how everything has turned out … how they have come together again after all the years of separation and misunderstanding?”
“Yes, it’s beautiful,” said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne’s uplifted face, “but wouldn’t it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been NO separation or misunderstanding … if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?”
For a moment Anne’s heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her eyes faltered under Gilbert’s gaze and a rosy flush stained the paleness of her face. It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities. Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps … perhaps … love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.
Then the veil dropped again; but the Anne who walked up the dark lane was not quite the same Anne who had driven gaily down it the evening before. The page of girlhood had been turned, as by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and mystery, its pain and gladness.
Gilbert wisely said nothing more; but in his silence he read the history of the next four years in the light of Anne’s remembered blush. Four years of earnest, happy work … and then the guerdon of a useful knowledge gained and a sweet heart won.
– Chapter XXX, Anne of Avonlea

3.I just want YOU

“I have a dream,” he said slowly. “I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends—and YOU!”
Anne wanted to speak but she could find no words. Happiness was breaking over her like a wave. It almost frightened her.
“I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne. If I ask it again today will you give me a different answer?”
Still Anne could not speak. But she lifted her eyes, shining with all the love-rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a moment. He wanted no other answer.
They lingered in the old garden until twilight, sweet as dusk in Eden must have been, crept over it. There was so much to talk over and recall—things said and done and heard and thought and felt and misunderstood.
“I thought you loved Christine Stuart,” Anne told him, as reproachfully as if she had not given him every reason to suppose that she loved Roy Gardner.
Gilbert laughed boyishly.
“Christine was engaged to somebody in her home town. I knew it and she knew I knew it. When her brother graduated he told me his sister was coming to Kingsport the next winter to take music, and asked me if I would look after her a bit, as she knew no one and would be very lonely. So I did. And then I liked Christine for her own sake. She is one of the nicest girls I’ve ever known. I knew college gossip credited us with being in love with each other. I didn’t care. Nothing mattered much to me for a time there, after you told me you could never love me, Anne. There was nobody else—there never could be anybody else for me but you. I’ve loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.”
“I don’t see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a little fool,” said Anne.
“Well, I tried to stop,” said Gilbert frankly, “not because I thought you what you call yourself, but because I felt sure there was no chance for me after Gardner came on the scene. But I couldn’t—and I can’t tell you, either, what it’s meant to me these two years to believe you were going to marry him, and be told every week by some busybody that your engagement was on the point of being announced. I believed it until one blessed day when I was sitting up after the fever. I got a letter from Phil Gordon—Phil Blake, rather—in which she told me there was really nothing between you and Roy, and advised me to ‘try again.’ Well, the doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery after that.”
Anne laughed—then shivered.
“I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert. Oh, I knew—I KNEW then—and I thought it was too late.”
“But it wasn’t, sweetheart. Oh, Anne, this makes up for everything, doesn’t it? Let’s resolve to keep this day sacred to perfect beauty all our lives for the gift it has given us.”
“It’s the birthday of our happiness,” said Anne softly. “I’ve always loved this old garden of Hester Gray’s, and now it will be dearer than ever.”
“But I’ll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne,” said Gilbert sadly. “It will be three years before I’ll finish my medical course. And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls.”
Anne laughed.
“I don’t want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU. You see I’m quite as shameless as Phil about it. Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more ‘scope for imagination’ without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn’t matter. We’ll just be happy, waiting and working for each other—and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now.”
Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.
– Chapter XLI, Anne of the Island

4.Gilbert, I’m afraid I’m scandalously in love with you.

“Gilbert darling, don’t let’s ever be afraid of things. It’s such dreadful slavery. Let’s be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let’s dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!”
Today has been a day dropped out of June into April. The snow is all gone and the fawn meadows and golden hills just sing of spring. I know I heard Pan piping in the little green hollow in my maple bush and my Storm King was bannered with the airiest of purple hazes. We’ve had a great deal of rain lately and I’ve loved sitting in my tower in the still, wet hours of the spring twilights. But tonight is a gusty, hurrying night … even the clouds racing over the sky are in a hurry and the moonlight that gushes out between them is in a hurry to flood the world.
“Suppose, Gilbert, we were walking hand in hand down one of the long roads in Avonlea tonight!”
Gilbert, I’m afraid I’m scandalously in love with you. You don’t think it’s irreverent, do you? But then, you’re not a minister.“
– Chapter 9, Anne of Windy Poplars

5.Suitable Places

”(Are you sure you kiss me in suitable places, Gilbert? I’m afraid Mrs. Gibson would think the nape of the neck, for instance, most unsuitable.)”
– Chapter 12, Anne of Windy Poplars

6.He narrowly escaped bursting with pride

“Anne, this is Captain Boyd. Captain Boyd, my wife.”
It was the first time Gilbert had said “my wife” to anybody but Anne, and he narrowly escaped bursting with the pride of it. The old captain held out a sinewy hand to Anne; they smiled at each other and were friends from that moment. Kindred spirit flashed recognition to kindred spirit.
– Chapter 6, Anne’s House of Dreams

7.Queen of my heart and life and home

“Gilbert, would you like my hair better if it were like Leslie’s?” she asked wistfully.
“I wouldn’t have your hair any color but just what it is for the world,” said Gilbert, with one or two convincing accompaniments.
You wouldn’t be ANNE if you had golden hair—or hair of any color but"—
“Red,” said Anne, with gloomy satisfaction.
“Yes, red—to give warmth to that milk-white skin and those shining gray-green eyes of yours. Golden hair wouldn’t suit you at all Queen Anne—MY Queen Anne—queen of my heart and life and home.”
“Then you may admire Leslie’s all you like,” said Anne magnanimously.”
-Chapter 12, Anne’s House of Dreams

8. Annest of Annes

But the best of all was when Gilbert came to her, as she stood at her window, watching a fog creeping in from the sea, over the moonlit dunes and the harbour, right into the long narrow valley upon which Ingleside looked down and in which nestled the village of Glen St. Mary.
“To come back at the end of a hard day and find you! Are you happy, Annest of Annes?”
“Happy!” Anne bent to sniff a vaseful of apple blossoms Jem had set on her dressing-table. She felt surrounded and encompassed by love. “Gilbert dear, it’s been lovely to be Anne of Green Gables again for a week, but it’s a hundred times lovelier to come back and be Anne of Ingleside.”
– Chapter 3, Anne of Ingleside

9.I couldn’t live without you

Anne felt like a released bird … she was flying again. Gilbert’s arms were around her … his eyes were looking into hers in the moonlight.
“Youdo love me, Gilbert? I’m not just a habit with you? You haven’t said you loved me for so long.”
“My dear, dear love! I didn’t think you needed words to know that. I couldn’t live without you. Always you give me strength. There’s a verse somewhere in the Bible that is meant for you … ‘She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.’”
Life which had seemed so grey and foolish a few moments before was golden and rose and splendidly rainbowed again. The diamond pendant slipped to the floor, unheeded for the moment. It was beautiful … but there were so many things lovelier … confidence and peace and delightful work … laughter and kindness … that old safe feeling of a sure love.
“Oh, if we could keep this moment for ever, Gilbert!”
“We’re going to have some moments. It’s time we had a second honeymoon. Anne, there’s going to be a big medical congress in London next February. We’re going to it … and after it we’ll see a bit of the Old World. There’s a holiday coming to us. We’ll be nothing but lovers again … it will be just like being married over again. You haven’t been like yourself for a long time. ("So he had noticed.”) You’re tired and overworked … you need a change. (“You too, dearest. I’ve been so horribly blind.”) I’m not going to have it cast up to me that doctors’ wives never get a pill. We’ll come back rested and fresh, with our sense of humour completely restored. Well, try your pendant on and let’s get to bed. I’m half dead for sleep … haven’t had a decent night’s sleep for weeks, what with twins and worry over Mrs. Garrow.“
–Chapter 41, Anne of Ingleside

10.Old love light

DR. BLYTHE:- “The old, old love light that was kindled so many years ago in Avonlea … and burns yet, Anne … at least for me.”
ANNE:- “And for me, too. And will burn forever, Gilbert.”
– Page 189, The Blythes Are Quoted

Feel free to respond to this post with any of your favorite shirbert moments that I missed!

#shirbert #anne shirley #gilbert blythe #anne of avonlea #anne of the island #anne of windy poplars #anne of ingleside #annes house of dreams #the blythes are quoted

@shirbertshitposts

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 14:56:34

A conversation that might as well have happened during an A.V.I.S. meeting:

Anne: Who isn’t a little bit in love with their best friend?

Diana: Awww

Gilbert: Define a little

Fred: I can’t tell if you’re talking about Diana or Gilbert

Anne: Yes

#anne of avonlea #anne of green gables #anne shirley #diana barry #gilbert blythe #fred wright

@shirbertshitposts

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 17:41:38

weirwolves:

― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

Post link

#anne of avonlea #anne of green gables #lm montgomery

@Shirbert Shitposts

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 08:40:32

One scene that I really wish was in the books is Gilbert finding out Anne is going to Redmond too.

There is a scene where Marilla tells Anne they can afford to send her to Redmond in the fall with Gilbert. And there is another part where it’s said that no one is more happy about Anne going to Redmond than Gilbert, but we never see his initial reaction.

How does he find out? Does Anne excitedly go run over to his house and tell him after Marilla tells her? Does Mrs. Lynde spread the gossip such that it reaches Mrs. Blythe and then his mom tells him? Does he hear from a mutual friend? How excited was he? Did he exclaim with joy? What was his reaction?

Imagine if you and your best friend that you’re secretly in love with were bummed out that they couldn’t go to university with you in the fall even though you’d both been working towards this goal for years, then suddenly you find out that’s not the case! They are going to university too!

Anne and Gilbert must have both been absolutely giddy with excitement.

We’re they just screaming at each other with joy?