Anne Shirley Episode 4

This week Anne made a genuine mistake that unfortunately led to some painful consequences for a bit. Since she had decided to stop going to school, Marilla had been advised by Rachel to just humour her for the mean time until she decides to go back on her own.

In attempt to humour her after seeing her dramatically crying over the prospects of Diana one day getting married and leaving her (which had Marilla in stitches about because Anne was REALLY emotional about it), Marilla suggested she invite Diana over for a nice gathering. Except this is where Marilla made her error. She had mistakenly said the raspberry cordial was in the cabinet, but instead what was there was currant wine. And since Anne had never tasted or seen either of them before, she had no clue of the difference. between the two, so she genuinely had no of knowing that she had served Diana three cupfuls of freaking wine.

Of course Anne knows well that serving wine to anyone their age or younger is a big mistake. The moment Rachel had explained to her that she had gotten Diana drunk, Anne knew that Mrs. Barry was not going to be very forgiving. Marilla on the other-hand, (contrary to her warning to Anne about Mrs. Barry’s particularity about who she allows Diana to socialize with,) was rather optimistic it would be understood that it was an honest mistake, and Anne’s not to blame. Unfortunately for both of them, Marilla returned home furious on their behest. Anne did try to plead for forgiveness herself, but once Mrs. Barry’s mind was made up, there was no going back. Hell, even Diana had to coax her mother to spare her ten minutes to at least have a chance to talk to Anne before she has to abide not interacting with her at all.

Which leads to the whole dramatic affair of proclaiming their love for each other. I know this is actually quite a serious situation, especially when you consider the way things worked back then… but they way these two went about declaring their love for each other, acting like a pair of star crossed lovers, as though they would never be able to even see each other again was honestly hilariously adorable. But I’d say the most dramatic part of the whole thing was when mutually agreed to snip off a bit of Diana’s hair for Anne to hang onto as a keepsake of their friendship. Like… hahahaha… oh my gosh. That’s really over the top, but you know what- that’s also so typical Anne. The funniest thing really is that Diana is just totally rolling with this too. Had her mother seen this, she would’ve undoubtedly fainted on the spot!

All that said, while Diana was told to stay apart and not talk to Anne at school, they did find a work-around. As we know, Diana is undoubtedly an obedient child and was doing as she was told, except her mother never said anything about exchanging secret notes! So that was the loophole Diana and Anne capitalized on with the help of their classmates for quite a long time.

However there was a turning point. Albeit, it was not one you could say was fortuitous, but it did turn their situation around. One winter night, when Diana’s parents were away from home, her little sister Minnie May had come down with croup, (a serious respiratory infection, when back then, it was quite dangerous to catch.) Diana didn’t know what to do because the woman looking after them had no experience with dealing with croup, so she sought out Anne.

And that’s where Anne came in to save the day. Thankfully Anne actually has experience with dealing with croup, which was super important because even if  Marilla had been around, she never dealt with it before either, so she wouldn’t have been able to help. And Matthew, of course he didn’t know either, but he understood the severity of the situation to wordlessly hurry out the door to seek a doctor as quickly as possible. He did manage to find one, but he had to travel quite a distance away in a snowstorm no less. Either way, the doctor did say that had it not been for Anne’s previous experience of how to treat croup, which involved giving her ipecac, as a mucoactive agent to prevent her from Minne May from choking.

So it’s an understatement why Mrs. Barry’s opinion of Anne completely flipped, as she quite literally saved her daughter’s life!

Other than that harrowing event, when Anne returned to class we saw that she has not forgiven Gilbert yet. In-fact, she’s quite petty in her own right. She really goes out of her way to try and not even say Gilbert’s name whenever he happens to come up in a conversation about school. Even when she’s nodding off after taking care of Minne May, she’s like– nope, refuse to say his name! But it is certainly difficult to keep doing that, as the two currently the brightest students of the lot. You could say say there’s a bit of a ”rivalry’ going on, but it definitely more one-sided on Anne’s part as she’s determined to one-up him. However Gilbert hasn’t teased Anne since, and even sought her out for assistance in spelling since he knows she’s good at that. We also saw him being a good sport about it when she had scored the honour of top sum of the day. So it’s clear that rivalry isn’t really what he has in mind, so we’ll have to see how long Anne decides to keep this up!

Last but not least, there was a thing in the subs that did make me raise a brow, but I genuinely don’t know if is also was put this way in the Japanese script or not. But it still did prompt me to pull out the book and double-check from the source itself for better context, to which there was minor discrepancy “A certain Canadian Premier” VS the subtitle’s “The Canadian Premier”. That said, they did notably gloss over the whole conversation about party politics between Anne and Matthew, which I do think was probably for the best. The adaption can live without that involved, among many other things.