Are there any better literary love stories than Anne & Gilbert [Anne of Green Gables] or Elizabeth & Darcy [Pride and Prejudice]?
They are so different, yet oddly the same in many respects.
Anne and Gilbert were childhood acquaintances [saying that they were friends would be saying that the mongoose and cobra were the best of comrades].
Gilbert, being the typical boy at age 12 who didn’t know how to treat a girl he likes, decides to enrage Anne to get her attention.
Anne, a stubborn redhead with a temper, not intrigued by Gilbert’s attention; but rather disgusted, decides to erase him from her life. So starts the many years of watching and waiting, and avoiding and ignoring.
Darcy and Elizabeth were high society; sophisticated. They knew the rules that the culture demanded, and stayed within them.
Darcy, a shy, reserved, incredibly wealthy landowner, was mistaken as a stuck-up, proud aristocrat in the small town of Meryton. Elizabeth, not thinking anything different than her neighbors, was convinced that he believed himself above the local population.
Elizabeth, a feisty and stubborn woman is resolute in her opinion that Darcy is not someone to waste her time with, and is determined to think the worst of him.
In both these stories, the male protagonist falls for the lady almost instantaneously. The girl, however, takes her merry time figuring out what the heck is going on.
Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship is probably the classiest you will ever find in literature. From the way that Elizabeth resents him, to the way that he admires her from afar.
Anne and Gilbert have the playful relationship that most of us long for. Someone with whom we can have fun.
At first glance, there might not seem to be much in common with the wealthy aristocrat and the farm boy from Prince Edward Island. But they are more alike than you might think. Both knew what they wanted, and didn’t stop hoping, when it all seemed lost.
Gilbert is the one who waited. The one who would have waited indefinitely for his girl. Darcy is the one that protected and provided, with no recognition. Solely for the benefit of the woman he loved, despite the fact that she all but loathed him.
Both Darcy and Gilbert had been rejected at their first proposal. One had no doubt that he would be accepted with the utmost humility, for clearly, he was her superior. While the latter, not being able to suppress his feelings for another moment, was hoping, that by some miracle, his proposal would not be dismissed.
After revealing his love to Anne, Gilbert went through two years of heartache, watching her in a relationship with another man, hearing from every corner that her engagement was imminent. Through this however, his love and affections did not waver. This he reveals to Anne in his second proposal.
“I have a dream, I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true… I asked you a question two years ago, Anne. If I asked you today will you give me a different answer? … There won’t ever be sunbursts or marble halls.”
While Darcy does not have to wait the two years, nor watch Elizabeth with another man, he does not have any confidence of her ever returning his affections, up until the time he asks for her for her hand a second time.
“You are too generous to trifle with me.” [he said.] “If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”
They were both willing to put their hearts on the line, again, to obtain the one thing that they wanted most, the love of their beloved.
With baited breath they waited after their declaration of adoration. The seconds feel like hours. They wait, not knowing what the reply will be. They wait for the words that will either bring them eternal joy, or will take them back to a longing and wistful yearning.
We do not read the exact response of Elizabeth; that is up to the imagination of the reader. We do know that the usually articulate and well-spoken Elizabeth is taken aback and thrown into a moment of astonishment by the sincerity and steadfastness of Darcy’s attachment. She manages to stammer out that her opinion of him had completely changed for the better.
Anne’s response to Gil is one that will forever ring in my ear. She simply looks up into his face, smiles, and whispers,
“I don’t want sunbursts, or marble halls, I just want you.”
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