Most have read the books or watched the series Anne of Green Gables. Anne’s house, Green Gable’s on PEI suffered fire damage. People were emotionally distraught over this fire. Even though Anne is a fictitious character, people from around the world flock to see her supposed childhood home. Why is that? For many of us, for one reason or another, at one time or another, we have suffered the same pain as Anne. I was talking to one elderly gentleman who was orphaned at about twelve years of age and he said “I felt great comfort from Anne’s story.” Over the centuries Christians have suffered rejection, persecution; they were hated by the world. Jesus tells us straight forward “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you” (John 15:19,20). For eleven long heart-breaking years, Anne suffers complete rejection. But there is more to the story than Anne’s pain. She made it! And she did it with courage, grit and determination. Anne’s story gives people hope—hope that they too can triumph over life’s inequities.

L.M. Montgomery’s book echoes and re-echoes the dominant theme in Hans Christian Anderson’s tale of the Ugly Duckling. In this tale, Anderson reveals the plight of the ‘other’, the ‘unwanted’, the ugly youngster’. It also reveals that through normal growth and development the ugly duckling experiences a miraculous transformation. Young Anne is also an ugly duckling. Her innermost longings and prayers echo those of the young ugly duckling: “Please let me be good looking when I grow up.” We too with longing look forward to the day when we too will be transformed ¾ “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52). Like Anne, it is our vision of this future transformation that gives us hope: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

As a preface to Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery has written this unforgettable plea in black, bold, letters:

I’LL TRY AND DO ANYTHING AND BE ANYTHING YOU WANT, IF YOU ONLY KEEP ME.

The helplessness, vulnerability, and desperation of this anguished soul shouts at us from the page! To be a little helpless child and to feel unwanted by a world full of similar humans must be a child’s worst nightmare. Just like the duckling, Anne’s homeliness is reinforced by others she comes in contact with, whether adults or her peers; however, in time, the ungainly ‘duck’ becomes a swan and the awkward adolescent, Anne, becomes a beautiful, elegant young woman.
Anne’s earliest recollections of her birth and childhood are not too pleasant. After Anne’s parents died, she is rejected, unwanted, and unloved by everyone. Perhaps before our calling, some of us felt unwanted, just like ancient Israel described in Ezekiel 6:4-5: “On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.”
How did Anne overcome and survive the severe trials and seemingly insurmountable obstacles of her childhood? Unable to change her circumstances, Anne adapted to and made the most of what came her way. One of Anne’s keys to her success was that she saw through a glass darkly:

I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall. I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a pearl cross on my breast and pearls in my hair. My hair is of midnight darkness and my skin is a clear ivory pallor. My name is the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald.

It was not only Anne’s wonderful imagination, but her vision of a better day, a better world, a more beautiful future that spurred her on and allowed her to rise above her situation; it was also her ability to see the good in everyday mundane things which reflected her deliberate choice to be happy. For example, take the time when Marilla has decided she doesn’t want Anne and she is taking her away to be sent back to the asylum. “Do you know,” said Anne confidentially, “I’ve made up my mind to enjoy this drive. It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.” She took the time not only to smell the roses, but to see the beauty in everything. She refused to be defeated by the unpredictable events of her lowly existence.

Anne gives Matthew glimpses or flashes of what her childhood was like. For eleven long years Anne is shuffled between foster homes and an orphanage. But just listen to her. “Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive—it’s such an interesting world”. Could we say those things if we were in her position? Loveless herself, Anne finds within an abundance of love for others that are less fortunate than her:

I just love trees. And there weren’t any at all about the asylum, only a few poor weeny-teeny things out in front with little whitewashed cagey things about them. They just looked like orphans themselves, those trees did. It used to make me want to cry to look at them. I used to say to them, ‘Oh, you poor little things! If you were out in a great big woods with other trees all around you and little mosses and June bells growing over your roots and a brook not far away and birds singing in you branches, you could grow, couldn’t you? But you can’t where you are. I know just exactly how you feel, little trees. I felt sorry to leave them behind this morning. You do get so attached to things like that, don’t you?

Anne has learned to compensate for her rejection by using her vivid imagination to personify the natural world around her as the only friends she can trust. Without her make-believe friends, and her unbelievably positive outlook, she is truly an outcast in an apparently loveless and hostile world. Anne has one idiosyncratic feature that allows her to get beyond her immediate problems. Without being aware of it, Anne follows the spiritual principles found in Philippians: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things”(Philippians 4:8). Anne emanates a wonderful attitude that is contagious to all that meet her.

Oh, I don’t mean just the tree; of course it’s lovely—yes, it’s radiantly lovely—It blooms as if it meant it—but I meant everything, the garden and the orchard and the brook and the woods, the whole big dear world. Don’t you feel as if you just loved the world on a morning like this? And I can hear the brook laughing all the way up here. Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are? They’re always laughing.

Anne always looks on the bright side. She does not blame, nor does she feel sorry for herself at the death of her parents. She is just glad her mother thought she was beautiful. She is swift to admit to Matthew that she loves pretty clothes: “I’ve never had a pretty dress in my life that I can remember—but of course it’s all the more to look forward to, isn’t it? Anne’s psychological, emotional and physical survival depends on her ability to see beyond the stark realities of her bleak existence. It is her ability to make order out of chaos, to make beauty out of her humble existence.

There comes a time when the ugly duckling looks in the water and sees his reflection, and to his great surprise “he [is] no longer an awkward, clumsy grey bird ungainly and ugly. He is a [beautiful, elegant] swan” (Anderson). Everyone notices a change, even Anne. Mrs. Lynde ,who thought Anne a homely child, now admits that ‘It is nothing short of wonderful how she’s improved . . .she’s a real pretty girl got to be” (Montgomery 249). Marilla acknowledges that she is “tall and stylish and so—so –different altogether in that dress—as if you didn’t belong in Avonlea at all” (276). Anne herself states that:

I laugh a little now sometimes when I think what a worry my hair used to be to me—but I don’t laugh much, because it was a very real trouble then. I did suffer terribly over my hair and my freckles. My freckles are really gone; and people are nice enough to tell me my hair is auburn now (298).

Could this be the same Anne who they had all but rejected just a few short years ago? Anne has matured in many ways, not just in looks, and although the pain of the past has faded it never completely leaves her.

Very few children are spared the agony of an ungainly and awkward body through irregular growth spurts. How can a little child change the color of her hair or the thinness of her rapidly developing body? We in God’s Church cannot always change our circumstances, or the chastening we receive, or the cup that we have been given.

It is the image that Anne has of herself (her vision) when she is first told she can stay at Green Gables that foreshadows her future transfiguration. It sustains her just as our hope of a better body, a better world, sustains us. Her dreams and prayers are eventually answered and Anne is transformed through her natural growth from child to woman.

It is no wonder that people worldwide are affected by the story of this skinny waif of a girl. There is much we can learn from her. Under impossible odds, Anne did not give up the struggle, but continued to fight the good fight and, thus, prevailed through much heartache, loneliness and misery. Anne touched the lives of all those who knew her; they quickly grew to love and treasure her spirit and her extraordinary example. She succeeded and so can we. Our cup runneth over!