Oooof, this week’s episode was rough to say the least! This arc has been a hazy one to recall, but one of the things I did distinctively remember was Anne rejecting Gilbert’s proposal– along with yelling: BUT WHY!? And I’m sure there’s many watching this for the first time who did the same. What can I say? This is known to be one of the most frustrating parts of the series!
But you can’t force something that Anne needs to come to terms with on her own. Unfortunately, Anne is stubborn as a bull, so when she’s set her mind on something, which in this case was preserving her friendship with Gilbert, she’s not going to budge. She has also repeatedly convinced herself that Gilbert ‘got the memo’ to cast aside his feelings. (Well no, he didn’t, and it’s up to his own discretion whether to hold onto them or not.) And on top of all of that, she’s simultaneously blind and in a state of denial about her own feelings towards him, all while everyone, from the characters in the story to the viewers can all beg to differ. There’s been enough indications to show that she’s an unreliable narrator, as Anne has repeatedly tried to run away from the fact she has subconsciously envisioned Gilbert standing in her dream home, expressed subtle jealousy of seeing or hearing Gilbert in company with another woman, and so on forth.
But Anne’s instinct to carefully preserve her friendship with Gilbert isn’t the only problem. It’s also the fact Anne has a warped perception of how she expects ‘love’ to be defined. As Phillipa put it, Anne not only sets herself up for disappointment, but you could also attribute it to self-sabotage. It seems that part of it had finally hit her when Phillipa countered Anne’s wish to ‘reconstruct her world’ with asking her: ‘A world without Gilbert?’ That, was when Anne realized she couldn’t imagine a world without Gilbert, and she was devastated.
Up until this point, Anne has taken her friendship with Gilbert for granted. She had completely overlooked the potential consequences that would come with trying to preserve and protect their platonic relationship. What Anne failed to realize, was while she was okay with running away from love, Gilbert wasn’t. And today he made the resolve to face her. And when he was rejected, as painful and as difficult as it must’ve been, he did what was best for him in that moment… And that was to say goodbye. What he and Anne wants out of their relationship are different, and he has gracefully accepted that.
And that’s why we can’t blame Gilbert for this, because his feelings matters too! For the longest freaking time, Gilbert listened to Anne’s pleas, and put off confessing his love to her. He waited and waited, and finally it got to the point where he knew he couldn’t keep up like this. It was just too hard to continue just being friends when his feelings for Anne are so much more than that. He wants her love.
Not only that, but he also understand he can’t put his whole life on-hold waiting for her, and finally he has arrived at the crossroad where he received the opportunity for a job with The Daily, and he readily accepted. That was why he had confessed to her today, because he wouldn’t be returning to Avonlea during the summer. So if there was ever the best time to be rejected, this would be it since they’d be away from each other for a while.
Furthermore Gilbert had truly thought his feelings of love towards Anne were mutual, which was why it was all the more heartbreaking when she firmly rejected him. And god damn it, compared to all of the other guys who just threw the proposal onto Anne and then got angry at her when she refused, Gilbert didn’t. In fact he didn’t blame her at all. He was the only one who had the courtesy to asked her ‘how do you feel about me?’ So when she told him that she doesn’t see him more than a friend, he didn’t lash out at her as though he was entitled to her heart (looking at you, Charlie). Instead, he concluded that he must’ve deceived himself into thinking she had felt the same for him.
Apart from Anne royally screwing herself over, there was another instance of “oof” this episode, but in this case with Diana. Remember how she had asked Anne to write her
a copy of Averil’s Atonement? Well, Diana had other ideas. She saw an opportunity to submit it to another contest on Anne behalf, which ended up being for THE ROLLING RELIABLE BAKING POWDER CO. The contest they had was basically a story advertising their product. In order to make it eligible, Diana tweaked it a little by plugging in how Avril only uses their product when baking cakes.
When that was pointed out, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought: EEK. YIKES. Good intentions, but terrible execution. To Anne’s credit, she didn’t lash out at her, but she was truly upset about it. The idea of writing a story for the sake of advertising didn’t sit well with her, and she also feared being mocked for it at Redmond. The only ones that really understood that Anne was upset about it was Mr. Harrison and Gilbert. Either way, I totally understand why Anne was not happy about the win, even though the prize money was really good for the time, being 25$. I wouldn’t be happy either if someone I had trusted submitted one of my stories to a contest after adding a little tweak to do so without consulting me first.
And finally, on a much lighter note: Anne has been adopted by a cat! That itself is a great honour, as that cat, now named Rusty, was ever persistent in insisting that she was his person. Happy things worked out and that Stella’s Aunt Jimsie is a nice enough lady to not raise a fuss about it!
Next time: A summer without Gilbert has already flown by, and oh boy, Anne’s finally meeting a guy that fits her imagination…
