The Imperfect Perfection of Anne and Gilbert

Romance novels are unappealing to me because they create every character to be perfect. These flawless humans are lovely, but they make for a boring, unrealistic read because no one is like that. I begrudgingly decided to read the Anne of Green Gables books because I am a good Canadian and those are Canadian books. I ended up falling in love with how L.M. Montgomery wrote Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe's romance.

First of all, Montgomery does the age old "boy teases girl because he likes her." This works because it is true and it sets up the story of their love: imperfection leads to a perfectly imperfect love. Anne detests Gilbert and refuses to like him from this point forward; only engaging with him when it came to academic competition. Anne was too proud to admit that at some point she started liking Gilbert and because of that she almost lost him.

At some point Anne takes multiple marriage proposals, all of which she declines. The only one she accepts is the one she always wanted, but never expected to get a second chance at, the one from Gilbert. Pride and youth already tried to end their romance, but yet they found each other and finally made it...except Gilbert still had three years of medical school. After all that time though, it was a nothing wait for them.

Most of the marriages in Anne of Green Gables are marriages of convenience. Girls have to get married so they marry the first nice boy they meet. Anne and Gilbert's marriage is the exact opposite of that. Anne is the most inconvenient girl for Gilbert to marry and yet he keeps on trying to get her until she matures enough to see that he cares about her and loves her, as she does to him.

Even in their marriage, they are not portrayed as always happy. At the end of Anne of Ingleside, Anne is terribly jealous because Gilbert is distracted by what she thinks is a former flame and is ignoring her own emotional turmoil.  And then she thinks he has forgotten their anniversary and completely does not care about what she wears when they go out. Turns out a sick patient was causing him so much stress that he was not himself and he had noticed all the little things Anne had tried to do for him but stopped because he was ignoring them. Instead of acting like everything was happy all the time in a marriage, Montgomery portrayed the idea that it isn't, but love wins.

Anne of Green Gables is a somewhat flawed series, some books are superfluous and some characters are quite shallow. But the bones of the book are a strong-minded woman who is allowed to remain who she is in a restrictive environment and a man who loves her because of that, not in spite of it. Montgomery's bravery in writing the characters as flawed people instead of perfect humans. In doing so, she wrote near perfect characters who have a near perfect love story.