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The Girl Who Was Too Much- Through Adult Eyes

Rediscovering Anne of Green Gables

The first story I wanted to revisit for this project is the 1985 adaptation of Anne of Green Gables starring Megan Follows. It is a film I have loved since I was a child. I first watched it around the fourth grade and like many people who grew up with it I can still quote entire scenes from memory.

But watching it again as an adult and now as a parent the story feels very different. What once felt like a charming coming of age story about an imaginative orphan finding a home now reveals something deeper about resilience identity and how misunderstood children survive difficult beginnings. Watching it now as an adult and as a parent, I realized how much richer the story actually is.

Anne is not simply a quirky child who eventually “makes good” as Rachel Lynde proudly declares, she is “a credit to us all.” She is a child who spends much of her early life being told she is simply too much. And that lens changes everything.

Imagination as Survival

Before Anne arrives at Green Gables, her imagination is treated by most adults as defiance or misbehavior. She talks too much. She daydreams too much. She feels too intensely. But looking at those scenes through an adult understanding of psychology, it is hard not to see something else.

Anne’s imagination feels like a coping mechanism.

Her childhood was filled with instability and verbal cruelty. She was passed from home to home and frequently reminded that she was unwanted. In that kind of environment, imagination becomes a form of protection. If the world around you is harsh, you create a better one inside your mind.

What becomes beautiful about Anne’s growth is that her imagination never disappears. Instead, as she finds stability and safety, she simply stops needing to escape into it.

Her imagination becomes a strength rather than a shield.

Matthew, The First Person Who Sees Her

From the moment Matthew meets Anne, he is captivated. Matthew is quite awkward and uncomfortable with conversation, but he never tries to correct Anne’s “notions.” When she describes the world with dramatic excitement, he does not silence her. Instead, he gently validates her joy, even joking that removing grubs from the garden can be exciting too.

By the time they reach Green Gables, Matthew is already besotted with this child.

Anne is his complete opposite. She is loud, expressive, and endlessly curious, while Matthew is reserved and quiet. Yet he never once tries to change her. Matthew’s love is expressed through action rather than words. When Anne dreams of attending the ball with puffed sleeves, he gathers the courage to approach a woman for help even though it clearly terrifies him. He steps outside his comfort zone simply to make her dream come true.

Marilla’s Quiet Fierceness

Where Matthew’s love is gentle and open, Marilla’s is more subtle. She is practical, blunt, and quick to correct Anne, but she is never cruel. Marilla’s love shows itself most clearly in moments when Anne needs someone firmly in her corner.

After the currant wine incident, it would have been easy for the town to blame the orphan girl. Mrs. Barry and Rachel Lynde both lean heavily into those assumptions.

Marilla does not. She defends Anne without hesitation, refusing to let her be reduced to the town’s expectations of what an orphan child must be.

Watching this story as an adult, another moment suddenly carries more weight. When Miss Stacy asks permission for Anne to study for the entrance exams, Marilla says something striking.

She has always believed a woman should be able to support herself.

That line lands differently once you realize Marilla herself never had that option. After a falling out with her suitor, she remained unmarried, living with her brother Matthew. In that era, women had very limited choices. Marriage, teaching, or dependence on male relatives were often the only paths available.

Matthew supporting Marilla all those years becomes an act of quiet generosity.

It also explains why Marilla encourages Anne’s education so strongly. She wants Anne to have choices she herself never truly had.

Anne and Diana The Power of Being Seen

Before Anne finds stability with the Cuthberts, she survives largely through imagination. Her daydreams and dramatic storytelling are more than childish whimsy; they are a shield against loneliness, neglect and the constant reminder that she is unwanted. Adults often interpret this as defiance or excess, but Diana Barry is the first person who does not try to quiet that part of Anne.

While much of Anne of Green Gables centers around Anne finding belonging with Matthew and Marilla, there is another relationship that quietly shapes her world just as deeply as her friendship with Diana Barry.

For a girl who spent her early life being told she was too much, too loud, too imaginative, Diana becomes the first person who simply delights in those very qualities. She does not try to correct Anne or quiet her imagination; she meets it with enthusiasm and loyalty.

Their famous declaration of being bosom friends might sound childish on the surface, but underneath it is something profound, the moment Anne realizes someone her own age chooses her.

Watching this as an adult, the friendship carries even more weight. Diana represents the first safe peer relationship Anne has ever had. She is not competing with Anne or mocking her; she is witnessing her. That kind of acceptance is powerful, especially for a child who spent years feeling disposable.

There is also something beautifully human about Diana herself. She is loyal to a fault sometimes caught between her mother’s expectations and her love for Anne but she never abandons her friend. In many ways Diana grounds Anne while Anne expands Diana’s world.

Their friendship reminds us that growing up is not only about finding family it is about finding the people who recognize us and say yes you belong here.

Teachers Who Shape a Future

The contrast between Anne’s teachers illustrates this shift in thinking as well.

Mr. Phillips represents an older style of authority. When Anne excels in class, especially when she outperforms Prissy Andrews, her punishments are not corrective. They are humiliating. Anne is disciplined for being too expressive, too imaginative, too different.

Miss Stacey, however, sees Anne’s potential. She corrects with kindness and encourages ambition, while teaching Anne that imagination has a time and place. Instead of suppressing Anne’s spirit, she helps her shape it.

The Rivalry That Was Not Really One

Anne’s rivalry with Gilbert Blythe is one of the most entertaining elements of the story but watching it as an adult reveals something interesting. The rivalry largely exists on Anne’s side.

Gilbert simply wants to do well in school because he hopes to become a doctor. Anne, however, holds tightly to that first moment when he calls her carrots and refuses to forgive him. Over time, Gilbert matures and learns how to meet Anne where she is. His friendship and admiration for her intelligence remain steady even during their competitive years.

That steady respect becomes important later.

When The Community Finally Sees Her

At the beginning of the story, the town of Avonlea views Anne as peculiar.

She talks too much, imagines too much and generally disrupts the calm expectations of small town life. Many people believe Matthew and Marilla have lost their minds by adopting her.

Yet over time, the town’s perspective changes. Anne’s intelligence, her ambition, and her ability to connect with people gradually earn her a place in the community. 

The true depth of that belonging becomes clear when Matthew dies. The community quietly steps in to support Marilla and Anne. Mr. Barry takes over working the fields and rents them so Marilla can continue living at Green Gables.

Anne herself chooses to postpone her college plans to stay and teach. Both women are stubborn and determined, but their devotion to each other reveals the strength of their bond.

Morgan Harris and the Romance Fantasy

During her time teaching, Anne is courted by Morgan Harris, a wealthy widower who seems to embody the romantic ideals Anne imagined as a girl. He offers marble halls, diamond sunbursts, and a life of elegance. But Anne slowly realizes something important.

Morgan loves the idea of Anne but not necessarily Anne herself. In his world, she would become a society wife and mother to his daughter rather than an equal partner. What once looked like a dream begins to feel like a cage.

Gilbert Blythe and the Romance Reality

Gilbert Blythe represents something very different. While Morgan offers fantasy, Gilbert offers partnership.

When Matthew dies, Gilbert quietly asks the school board to swap teaching positions so Anne can remain at Avonlea and stay close to Marilla. He boards elsewhere, making his own life more difficult because he knows Anne will refuse the sacrifice if given the choice.

Gilbert has always admired Anne’s intelligence and independence. Where Morgan sees novelty, Gilbert sees an equal.

Katherine Brooke The Shadow Anne

In Anne of Avonlea, another character appears who adds a fascinating layer to Anne’s story.

Katherine Brooke.

Katherine is almost a shadow version of Anne. She was also an orphan passed from relative to relative, but unlike Anne, she never found a Matthew or Marilla to soften her childhood. Her bitterness and sharpness feel like the result of a life without belonging.

When Anne invites Katherine to spend the summer at Green Gables, something remarkable happens. For the first time, Katherine experiences a home where intelligence and independence are valued. She begins to soften. In helping Katherine Anne almost saves the version of herself that might have existed if she had never found the Cuthberts.

Green Gables: A Quiet Community of Women

Something else stood out to me during this rewatch that I never noticed before. Green Gables slowly becomes a small community of women supporting each other. Marilla,  Anne, Rachel Lynde, and later Katherine.

These women live unconventionally for their time, supporting each other emotionally and practically.

Historically, there were communities like this. Beguines in medieval Europe and later women’s land communities, where women built lives together outside traditional expectations.

Green Gables begins to resemble a much smaller version of that idea. A place where women who do not perfectly fit society’s expectations can still build meaningful lives together.

A Feminism I Never Expected

Honestly, when I started this rewatch, I expected nostalgia. What I did not expect was how much quiet feminism was woven into the story. Not the loud modern kind but the quiet kind where women encourage each other’s independence, protect one another, and create spaces of belonging in a world with very limited choices.

Anne of Green Gables is still a charming coming-of-age story. But looking at it through adult eyes reveals something deeper. Anne was never really too much. She simply needed a place where she was allowed to be exactly who she was.

Revisiting the Script is where I return to the movies and shows that shaped my childhood to see what they reveal through adult eyes.