Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery is the fifth novel in the Anne of Green Gables series. It revolves around the lives of the newly married Anne and Gilbert Blythe.
The novel opens with a description of Anne and Gilbert’s wedding in the orchard of Green Gables, and her arrival at the little house at ‘Four Winds’ in the village of Glen St Mary where Gilbert begins his medical practice.
At ‘Four Winds’ Anne meets Captain Jim, a retired sailor, Cornelia Bryant and Leslie Moore. Leslie Moore appears aloof at the beginning, but Anne finds out that Leslie was forced into marriage with the wrong man Dick Moore by her cruel and selfish mother who sacrificed Leslie for her personal gain.
Anne’s understanding of Leslie’s predicament is brought to the fore through the lines, “She had never known anyone like her; her friends had hitherto been wholesome, normal, merry girls like herself, with only the average trials of human care and bereavement to shadow their girlish dreams.
Leslie Moore stood apart, a tragic, appealing figure of thwarted womanhood. Anne resolved that she would win entrance into the kingdom of that lonely soul and find there the comradeship it could so richly give, were it not for the cruel fetters that held it in a prison not of its own making.”
Leslie is set free by the truth, and Anne and Cornelia Bryant facilitate a relationship between Leslie and Owen Ford who loves her.
The novel combines tragedy and happiness and explores the lives of diverse characters in different circumstances.