Gilbert Blythe is dead. Can it be?
On hearing the news that actor Jonathan Crombie, who played Anne of Green Gables’ amour, had suddenly died, women everywhere were plunged into the “depths of despair,” as Anne used to melodramatically exclaim. He died last week of a brain tumor at the far-too-young age of 48. And he takes with him to the grave the hearts of girls and women everywhere.
As USA TODAY put it, “For many women of Generation X, Jonathan Crombie was their first PBS crush, even if they didn’t know his name.” In another Blythe ode, Sarah Larson wrote for The New Yorker online that, “Jonathan Crombie, who died Wednesday, gave Gilbert Blythe caring, intelligence, and dreaminess: qualities that enchant seventh-grade girls. Gilbert was many people’s first love.”
He was definitely mine. Not really, but you know what I mean. I devoured those movies annually, and every single time, I swooned hardcore over Gilbert Blythe. The curly dark hair. The intense gaze. The ability to go tête-à-tête with feisty “Ann with an e.” The ability to take a serious slate-smashing in stride. Not only was Blythe a 19th century stud, he was a 19th century feminist. The eventual spouse of the indomitable Anne Shirley became her greatest advocate, encouraging the bookish orphan to pursue her career and celebrate her achievements. He was the platonic ideal of a man.
And he left a real legacy in film in that the girls who grew up watching their love story unfold were shown a version of loving respect that the culture was concurrently destroying. As Anne of Green Gables the movie went from smash hit to cult classic, hook-up culture was on the rise. Girls were being taught that men like Blythe were a silly fantasy, that his and Anne’s romance was a thing of a time when women were oppressed.
I managed to find my own Gilbert Blythe, dark waves and all. And I have no doubt that it was figures like him in literature and film, figures like Mr. Darcy, that kept my eyes up during the years I was dating. Figures like Blythe belong in the background of the female mind. They encourage women to dream, to keep the bar high, to believe that there is a man for them that can challenge them, thrill them, and romance them. They keep fire of our seventh-grade aspirations for romance—the fire that the hook-up culture extinguishes—alive and burning.
Of his sort of one-hit-wonder status, Crombie’s sister said, “I think he was really proud of being Gilbert Blythe… He really enjoyed that series and was happy, very proud of it—we all were.” He should be proud. He contributed to the aspirations of a generation of girls raised on the movie for a good man who was, as Larson put it, caring, intelligent, and dreamy. May he rest in peace, and may every woman find her own Gilbert Blythe.
The post Lessons of Love and Romance from Gilbert Blythe appeared first on Acculturated.