Anne Shirley Episode 11

Not too much happened in this week’s episode. It’s been three months since Matthew has passed, and since then Barry has stepped in to manage Green Gables, and Gilbert, Diana and Jane all often frequent at Anne’s place to offer Marilla some extra company, which is always nice to see.

The first half of the episode covered Anne starting her job as a teacher. Since she’s teaching young children, as one would expect, it didn’t go as smoothly as she had hoped. Two troublemakers stirred up a lot of chaos, from releasing cricket in class to startle the others, while the other poured water down a girl’s neck. One of which was Anthony,  who happens to be an orphaned nephew that Josie’s relatives (Mrs. George Pye) had taken in. And as one would expect by now from Josie’s family, of course the kid heard about the chaos Anne had gotten into when she was younger (namely smacking Gilbert on the hate with the writing slate). Even though it has happened a couple of years ago (which is crazy when you think about it), being in a small town means certain gossips are not so easily forgotten. And that one is certainly one to persist because of the absurdity of it.

Thankfully Anne did at least have one sweet pupil, who seems to be quite charmed by her. Paul Irving took note of a lot of things, such as spelling her name with an “e”, and got her flowers at the end of the day.

The second half of the episode focused on the “Village Improvement Society” which was formed by Anne and more or less her fellow peers from Avonlea’s school. The purpose of this ‘society’ is to help maintain and improve things in their community. Right now their first goal is to raise money to fix up the Grand Hall that is in need of maintenance. It is led by Gilbert as the President of the group, Diana as the Treasurer, and Anne serving as Secretary.

In order to do what they are set out to do, they need to look for people to subscribe to help raise the funds for their projects. However they’ve run into a problematic hiccup where all it takes is one person to go on and on about how “Improvers are bad!” to create a headache in the process. So to fix this, they’ve set out to canvass for support. Well, as much as Diana dreaded the fact they were set to be visiting homes along the “Cranky Area” as she put it, there were certainly some ups and downs, but mostly an overall success given what they were walking into. The lowest of the lows was when they visited Catherine’s house, and her super pessimistic sister Eliza was unfortunately there. Goodness the things that came out of that woman’s mouth. ‘Oh Diana, is your mother well? She’s been looking terrible lately!’, ‘Oh Anne, when is Marilla gonna go completely blind?’ like holy shit— the audacity. Had Anne been her twelve years old self, she would’ve EXPLODED, but thankfully she’s matured enough to not do that.

Then they dropped by the Blairs. Dan a husband who just wants to be helpful to his wife, was left with instructions to bake a cake, but he was totally at loss what to do with himself. Thankfully Anne and Diana stepped in to helped him out, because bless his heart he needed it. They at least got 4$ for their help.

The next stop was definitely a part that made me raise a brow with Anne. She didn’t miss a beat when she heard how generous the otherwise mean Lorzeno (Mr. White) was being then. So she had capitalized on the fact the fact Lorenzo was in a very generous mood– and sure enough he was, all because he finally got a boy after having seven daughters (if I counted right). They got 5$ for giving a baby a visit.

The last stop of the day was Mr. Harrison, which…. Anne made a major screw up by accidentally mixing up cows and sold his Dolly. She had though they got along just fine, but nah– he wasn’t as generous as Lorenzo. It wasn’t that he disagreed with their cause, he just didn’t want to financially support them, and understandably so given how he’s still upset over losing his cow. His parrot however voiced out his true thoughts about how angry he is at Anne over the ordeal ‘redheaded snippet’ as it put it.

With that all said and done, while Anne and Gilbert were hanging out together they were talking about their teaching jobs. He shared with her that his goal is to become a doctor. Much of this is inspired not only by the ones that’s been treating his father for his illness, (whom has finally after all these years could return home), but also by those who have supported him. He wants to be able to help fight disease, pain, and ignorance. It really does further highlight the kind of character Gilbert is. It’s more than just helping out and giving back, he wants to help improve people’s lives.

As for Anne, perhaps hers is more simpler, and is one that isn’t so much tied to a career, but more so just being herself. She hopes to be a contributing factor to giving people a nice time/memory. She may not feel like she’s doing that already, but as Gilbert put it, she’s already fulfilling that ambition everyday– well, at least certainly to him anyways hahaha!

Next week, we got two new faces joining the Green Gables family!