Why I Don't Like Anne of Green Gables

A girl with a wild imagination and a fiery temper, a setting of the legendary Avonlea, a secretly soft-hearted old woman—what is there not to like about the Anne of Green Gables series?

While I certainly hold an unpopular opinion in this aspect, I have my reasons. In this article, I’ll be going over what I liked about Anne of Green Gables and the series in its entirety, as well as what I didn’t.

First off, I want to acknowledge that L. M. Montgomery does an outstanding job with her description. Describing a very real place, Avonlea, and making it feel like fairyland takes more than a truckload of skill. Of course, that’s not to mention her similes, described in great detail through the character of Anne Shirley.

Secondly, L. M. Montgomery does a fascinating job with Anne Shirley herself—at least in the first book. There’s something about her that just draws readers in. Maybe it’s because she’s gotten into so many “scrapes”. Maybe it’s because she has a (relatable) fiery temper. Maybe it’s because she’s so unexpected and quirky. Either way, L. M. Montgomery does an excellent job with making most readers like Anne Shirley.

So why, you might ask, do I dislike this series?

I’m going to be covering some of my points.

Disclaimer: I did not read the last book in the series, Rilla of Ingleside, but I have read all the others.

1. Her personality grows inconsistent.

The first book delves us into who she is as a person and makes her so much more realistic. An imaginative, fun, quirky little girl with a habit of getting into “scrapes.”

But throughout the story, at least in my opinion, she gets more and more distant from the reader. It could be because she’s growing up. But either way, she’s no longer the same Anne Shirley. The girl who could talk to trees before now attempts to murder a cat in her college years. Though she ends up keeping it, she was the one who contributed to the attempt even though it went against her conscience.

The girl who loved Matthew and was so trusting, in her later years, turns to judge every single person she encounters by their appearance or the way they speak. She only takes those as her “confidente” if they could be of some service to her, or are well-mannered or well-dressed, both outwardly things.

2. Anne doesn’t look at the heart.

Jumping off the last point, the decisions Anne Shirley makes relationship-wise are mainly appearance-based. It is shown throughout the series that Anne approaches or takes people into her circle of closest friends if they are 1) well-dressed, like Leslie Moore or Owen Ford (from Anne’s House of Dreams), 2) look intelligent or pretty, like Miss Lavendar and Phil Gordan (from Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island), 3) they could be of some service to her, like Aunt Josephine Barry (from Anne of Green Gables).

Montgomery never made Anne learn the lesson that everyone deserves a chance, no matter how they look outwardly.

This is not always the case, however. Sometimes, Anne is friends with the prickliest of people (like Nora from Anne of Windy Poplars) because she is certain there’s “good inside”. However, her personality is not at all consistent, as mentioned in the last point.

3. There’s way too much gossiping.

Throughout the whole series, I felt like Montgomery was hammering the point home that gossiping is totally okay. If not okay, at least it should be accepted as a “daily occurrence” as normal—and welcomed—as a cool breeze on a hot summer day.

Even in her later years of motherhood, from Anne of Ingleside, Anne, in her late thirties, gossips with her friend (and housekeeper) Susan and the impeccable Miss Cornelia. They talk of all things—funerals, people in the village, Anne’s children—which personally ruined a lot of the characters’ reputations for me.

Besides, in Anne’s earlier years, Marilla gossips away with Mrs. Lynde, knowing it’s wrong. Now, I acknowledge the fact that it’s a character flaw, and Montgomery used it to share information important to the book and characters. However, I felt like Montgomery completely justified the fact since no real consequences came from it (or were shown) in any of the books.

In some ways, this is rather fascinating to see through their eyes, but in other ways, I thought that it barely contributed to the plot. I knew nothing about most of the characters in the gossiping conversations and found that, unfortunately, I couldn’t care less.

4. The other characters are inconsistent too.

Montgomery definitely wrote many realistic, filled-to-the-brim with personality characters. However, some I found were rather inconsistent, or faded away throughout the series. I don’t mean faded away as in just lost the relationship (see the following point), rather, they changed personality.

Gilbert Blythe, for example, the fun-loving mischievous young man known for calling Anne “carrots” and their ongoing rivalry in their youth, became a sort of misguided, work-addicted teen (and later husband), mainly in Anne’s House of Dreams and Anne of Ingleside.

I never was fully able to grasp the personality of Diana, one of the main supporting characters and Anne’s best friend, though she mainly made her appearances in Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea. She seemed an easy-going sort of friend, but personality-wise, she wasn’t really anything else. I would’ve loved to see more of her personality and who she really is as a person, as I was able to see Gilbert’s in the earlier books.

5. Many characters faded out of the series.

Now, I do want to acknowledge that it does happen in real life, that some people do slowly fade out of your life because the relationship just isn’t there anymore.

However, in Anne of Ingleside, all of the relationships are existing. Marilla is back in Avonlea when Anne moves to her “house of dreams” and later, Ingleside. Diana is caring for her children, but Anne still maintains a good relationship with her, at least as the reader knows of.

Montgomery took a handful of the Avonlea folk from the first two books in the series, Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea, and replaced them with more characters that didn’t rent as much of a significance to the series as the “beginning” characters did. The Avonlea folk were the ones that I loved (at least most of them. Note the past tense). They were the reasons I continued the series.

And now, to see it go away...it was just sad, in a way.

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Overall, whether you like the Anne of Green Gables series or not, we all have to agree that Montgomery had an astounding sense of description, wording, and quality in her writing. There are so many things to learn from this series, and I still enjoy Anne of Green Gables from time to time, but as most sequels often are, I found the following books in it to be less than satisfactory.

So, regarding the series, which characters were your favorites? Which were your least favorites? What are your thoughts on the series in general? I’d love to hear what you think!