At the novel’s beginning, Anne is a “child of about eleven” (13), dressed poorly with a carpetbag to match, but whose eyes reveal a vivid imagination and a sense of hope for the future. Her waifish appearance, coupled with “decidedly red hair” (13)—the bane of her existence and the one thing keeping her from being “perfectly happy” (20)—endears her immediately to Matthew but startles the practical and sensible Marilla, who sees no use in having an orphan girl around the home.

Anne’s nature to be excessively talkative and fill any silence with her imaginative fantasies conveys her rough backstory; the realities of her life have been painful, and the world she creates through her imagination is one of her choosing. However, her past as an orphan does not ruin her, as it does to many children, but instead gives her hope for a future that she knows must be good. As she ages, she fights off many of those fears from her childhood—the feelings of inadequacy and never being loved resurface many times as she adjusts to life with people who care for her. Her initial connection to Matthew is central to the novel; he is her silent warrior, the one on her side when everyone seems against her, even Marilla.