Anne Shirley

Episode 3

In 1910, May Sinclair wrote “The slamming of Helen Huntingdon's bedroom door against her husband reverberated through Victorian England,” speaking of a striking scene in Anne Brontë's 1848 novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but if we tweak the line a bit, I think it holds true for a scene in chapter fifteen of Anne of Green Gables that pops up this week in episode three as well – the breaking of Anne's slate over Gilbert Blythe's head has been reverberating through children's fiction and Canadian literature since 1908.

It's such a recognizable moment, and not just because it's one of the more famous scenes from the book. Anne's fury at Gilbert's teasing is palpable, but it's also so real. Here's a boy everyone worships for no reason she can discern (he's been away from Avonlea for a time, after all), and he acts like all the attention is his due. He strides up to the schoolhouse like it's his castle, is fawned over by everyone, and gets away with teasing the girls as if it's his right to do so. Ruby only squeaks indignantly when he pulls her hair, letting him know that he can get away with such liberties. But Anne, Anne won't stand for it. She didn't survive twins and a drunken foster father for this. When she takes up her slate and cracks it over his head, Anne is acting out of pure fury. It's not well-thought-out, like her “confession” about Marilla's brooch, and it's not calculated, like her melodramatic apology to Rachel Lynde. It's Anne just reacting like an eleven-year-old girl who has been wronged.

It also sets the stage for her relationship with Gilbert and his with her. Although he doesn't speak much in this episode, we get a very good sense of who he is and his immediate feelings about Anne. It never occurred to him that a girl would ignore him, and when Anne does, he's annoyed, but intrigued. Small towns don't often get new students, so he's already primed to be curious, but Anne acting so differently from the other kids makes her even more interesting to him. When she rebuffs his milder efforts, like winking or paper airplanes, he starts to feel desperate. How can this girl ignore him, Gilbert Blythe? Doesn't she know he wants her attention? And so, he goes the fatal step further of going for her hair.

Gilbert isn't a jerk. He's just a thirteen-year-old boy who hasn't figured out how to be nice to a girl he's attracted to. And he immediately realizes that he was wrong and wants to make up for it. That's more than we can say for the teacher, whose decision to make Anne sit with a boy isn't acceptable socially at the time. We do lose the implication that he was particularly upset with Anne for interrupting his time instructing (and courting?) an older student, which is present in the book, but since Gilbert wasn't hurt physically and was taking the blame for making Anne angry, it's not hard to see that the teacher is acting just as badly as the students.

This episode is a beautiful exploration of the various sides of Anne. The amethyst brooch incident shows her melodramatic side again, as well as the way her mind works – she wants to go to the picnic, Marilla says she can't go without a confession, ergo if she confesses, problem solved, even if she didn't take the brooch. It's Anne Logic through and through and shows her busy mind processing all of the melodramatic literature she's consumed and Marilla's ignorance thereof; it never occurred to her that Anne would fabricate a confession in the face of her own stubborn insistence that the girl must have taken the jewelry. Putting this scene with the slate break is a good way to demonstrate the difference between Anne Thinking and Anne Acting – not just for us, but also for Marilla, who is flying blind when it comes to raising this child.

We're up through chapter fifteen now, but again, most of what's being left out are the religious bits, about prayer and Sunday School. Since Gilbert doesn't come in until chapter fifteen and is a major character (we've met Josie Pye, too, although she hasn't been named), I can't blame them. I'm also fine with the cutting of Anne's lines during the slate scene; it's much more powerful to just have her standing there with tears she refuses to shed in her eyes while Gilbert realizes what a terrible thing he's done, ultimately to be left with his hand out while Anne sprints away from him.

It's also fitting that Anne recites Robert Browning's poem “Pippa's Song” in the episode where she meets Gilbert. Book readers will know why.

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Anne Shirley is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.