Anne Shirley Episode 6

Anne is thirteen now, and we’re starting to see her and Diana talking more about growing up. In two years they’ll be more grown up, and in four years they’ll be able to start putting their hair up. It was quite funny to see the two talking about that, and especially Anne going on like “What children!” yet not even a few moments later, we either see them going back to their childish selves, or a fellow friend like Ruby, joining in the boy’s game she had considered a ‘childish’ of balancing a book on a pole. So contrary to how Anne may feel or think, it’s as Marilla said: She’s still a child.

That said, we are seeing a shift where Anne’s beginning to explore romance more through fiction. This is thanks to Miss Stacy assigning the class to write a composition, and Anne of course, was able to weave together a dramatic love story that ends in tragedy. But she did face a difficult writer-block on one part of it, and that was the proposal scene between her characters Geraldine and Bertram. Anne typically tries to use the foundations of her experiences and flesh it out further in her imaginations, so having never been proposed to, and neither Matthew nor Marilla having ever gotten engaged, she had nobody to really give her any concrete examples. She was able to find a source for an example from Ruby, whose many sisters have already gotten married. But unfortunately for Anne and Diana, when Ruby gave them the example, it was far from romantic. In-fact, it was the most underwhelming and unromantic thing they’ve ever heard. So Anne concluded she was just better off whipping up something up through her imaginations from scratch.

And that’s how Anne’s protagonist Bertram went from an impoverish guy to a wealthy man, who knelt on one knee and proposed with a ruby necklace and diamond ring, and had him and Geraldine sail off to Europe to get married. Only for them to later get killed off because of Cordelia, Geraldine’s jealous friend. The whole thing had me laughing so hard.

But it was thanks to Anne’s skills in creative writing, Diana and the girls were very enthusiastic with her stories and even asked her to help them by giving feedback on their assignments. And thus, the Story Club was formed, which highlighted another one of Anne’s gifts, the ability to lead and teach others.

While Anne absolutely been loving the compositions assignments, Marilla on the other-hand did not share the enthusiasm. She doesn’t consider ‘writing fictional stories’ practical, and considers it a waste of time of education. But thanks to Matthew’s wordless instance to read Anne’s story, Marilla did finally come around to understand the joy of fiction– hilariously laughing at the bit that Anne just couldn’t understand why everyone found the scene to funny, when she thought it was the characters’ most pathetic moment. At last, Marilla finally got to understand the charm of fiction.

I will note one funny little detail that occurred throughout the episode. As Anne been telling Diana about her story “The Jealous Rival”, is that Gilbert just happened to be around for bits of it. But poor Gilbert, I do feel bad for him. It’s been a long time now, and he’s still stuck walking on eggshells around Anne, because boy, even after all this time, her grudge has not let up the slightest. Nothing sucks more than messing up so badly you’re stuck harbouring a (secret) crush that doesn’t look like it even has a chance!

And then we moved on to the next event of the episode… Hoh boy… The consequences of Anne getting scammed by a peddler.

I must say, the timing and flow of the event was quite good, especially following up from the Story Club. With the stormy night, Anne’s scream and Marilla passing a peddler, you thought maybe this was going to evolve into a murder mystery story that someone had wrote for the club, hahaha. But that wasn’t the case. Rather, poor Anne had been scammed into buying what she thought was permanent black hair dye, which turned out to have been green. The poor girl was justifiably horrified beyond words and in the pits of despair to find her hair in such a state. With no way to get it out, Anne made the difficult decision to just have it all chopped off. I also appreciate Marilla patiently waiting for Anne to make that decision herself, because it was by no means an easy one– despite the how terrible her hair had looked.

But there was one silver-lining that came out of this, and it was an example of realizing what you had when it’s gone.  Through the event of having to chop off her hair and to her credit, bravely go to school despite that, she came to realize that long thick, curly red hair actually suits her best. It’s a big step, because she’s finally accepting the part of herself that she’s disliked for the longest time!