Anne Shirley

Episode 18

If last week I compared Anne to Jo March in Little Women, this week she's more Lizzie Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. The proposal scene with Charlie Sloane doesn't quite play out like Mr. Darcy's disastrous proposal, but it's not hard to see the similarities – like his more noble predecessor, Charlie makes an offer of his hand in a way that Anne couldn't possibly accept, mostly because he takes her refusal so immaturely. You'll tell your daddy, Charlie? Anne should be grateful because she's an orphan? Step off, Charlie Sloane, you miserable little twit.

In all fairness, being an orphan is often framed as a personal failing in 19th and early 20th-century literature, as if the orphaned party had personally murdered their parents. (Lemony Snicket pokes fun at this attitude in A Series of Unfortunate Events.) It's the worst insult Charlie can think to lob at a girl he sees as ungrateful for the offer of his name, and yet another way L. M. Montgomery pokes at the many orphan novels she likely grew up reading. Truly, Charlie could not have made Anne the offer of his hand in any possible way that would have tempted her to accept it.

So that's two proposals turned down. Technically, there ought to have been a third, as readers of Anne of the Island know. But in keeping with the trend of the second two novel adaptations, this episode jumps around in the book in a way I'm not entirely happy with. Episode eighteen covers chapters nine and ten, then hops over a bunch of others to adapt chapter twenty-one. The preview makes it clear that they're going to go back to cover chapter twelve, possibly through fourteen, next week, so this may just be a reordering rather than an actual intent to skip crucial bits of the story. And to be perfectly honest, this was a good episode. It did a beautiful job of showing Anne's visit to the home she was born in, and how that grounded her. She'll always be Anne of Green Gables, but now she has a firm sense of where she came from. Matthew and Marilla provided her with a place and an identity, but it came without a foundation. I wouldn't say that it hampered her growth; she's always been clear who she is. But now she also knows where she came from, and, most importantly, that she was wanted and loved. That can't be underestimated – especially in light of Charlie's jerk comment about Anne being an orphan.

Anne is about to embark on a new phase of her life, too, which feels all the better now that she's been reassured about her heritage. The dream of Patty's Place is in reach (china dogs and all; how Victorian are those?), Stella is coming to Redmond, and the ladies will be in charge of their own lives. That's a heady feeling for Anne, Phil, and Pris, and in many ways more exciting than the possibility of marriage – with anyone. But as the preview for next week shows, there are no roses without thorns, and the flashback to Anne's parents, dead of fever when she was a baby, may be more prophetic than anyone would like.

Rating:

Anne Shirley is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.