Episode 15 – Anne Shirley

Okay, Anne Shirley, I will stop grumbling about Anne and Diana and the other girls their age wearing short skirts and their hair down. I see what you were going for now – a clearer visual demarcation of childhood’s end and adulthood’s start. I’ll doubtless keep muttering under my breath about it, because according to my mother, I have been obsessed with the 1880s since toddlerhood, and that includes proper dress, but having Anne put her hair up and let her skirts down once she’s taken the grown-up step of leaving Green Gables and Avonlea does make sense. From a visual perspective. I’m working on it.

This episode, which wraps up Anne of Avonlea, the second novel in the series, is all about transitions. Miss Lavendar marries, Diana and Fred become engaged, Mr. Lynde dies, and Anne and Gilbert decide to leave teaching and go to college – these are all major life events that will echo down the characters’ lives. (Gilbert isn’t particularly subtle about wanting to take another major step, but he’s at least smart enough to recognize that Anne isn’t ready for that yet.) With all of these changes, it makes sense that there would be trepidation as well. Anne remarks that she’s coming up to a bend in the road and that she’s not sure she ought to go round it, and that sums up the feel of the episode nicely. Nothing says you can’t turn back, but it can feel impossible, even when going ahead is equally frightening.

Diana’s engagement to Fred is the first major symbol of this. It doesn’t matter that she’s going to be engaged for at least three years; that she was able to become engaged at all indicates that she’s grown up, or very nearly. (In the late 19th century, women typically married at around age twenty, so her mother’s rule isn’t odd at all.) It’s a frightening new step and a new bump in her friendship with Anne, although of course it doesn’t have to be. But it is a major change, a symbol of how she’s moved on from the daydreams of bad boys and gooey sentimentality to something real. She assures Anne that she’ll never love another girl as much as she does her bosom friend, but things will still change. More than going to Queen’s, Diana’s engagement, and Anne going to Redmond College will mark a new phase for the friends. They’re very aware of that, and at least a little bit scared, too.

It’s also interesting to hear Diana make a comment about Anne understanding when she also finds her man, with Anne’s gentle clapback about using her imagination indicating a small rift between the two. From where I’m standing, there are few things more annoying than someone telling you that you’ll understand when it happens to you, not because they’re drawing a line, but because they’re assuming that we’re all on the same path. Anne’s not ready for romance yet. She doesn’t have to be. (She doesn’t ever have to be, but we all know she will be; L. M. Montgomery’s no Sarah Orne Jewett, plus Anne’s little house of dreams fantasy says a lot she’s not ready to hear.) More than anything, Diana’s remark and engagement are an indication that she and Anne aren’t going to be the same forever. It’s bittersweet, although not sad – just a sign that we all grow up in our own ways, in our own time.

Anne’s college days, and the third novel, Anne of the Island, begin next week. She’s moving forward along her own road, rounding that bend with her head held high.

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Anne Shirley is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.