Rochelle Robinson

A fairly spoiler-free review

While deep in production mode on our first feature Just Like the Men, many of the Talking to Crows crew have chosen unique ways of decompressing–or rather, we are all binge watching different television shows after each day of filming wraps. Cassidy is revisiting a constant comfort, HBO’s Sex and the City, and offering sage observations that we chat about over plates of craft service (apparently I’m a Samantha-Charlotte, who knew?). Laura just wrapped another go-around with our favorite Gilmore Girl wordsmiths. Ashton is living a marvelous Mrs. Maisel life, hunny. I am ALL. ABOUT. QUEER EYE! Yas Queen, the QE reboot is OMG gorg. And Stacy is finally digging into Season 2 of Anne with an E, the CBC + Netflix Original Series — created by Moira Walley-Beckett — based on Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables.

Many women in Canada and the States fell in love with the fictional character Anne Shirley as young girls. Others found her as adults. More still are experiencing the precocious orphan for the first time in 2017–18, one-hundred-and-ten years after she was first penned. Whether on the page, on the stage, or embodied by Megan Follows in the 1985 cult-classic television miniseries, each major adaptation maintained the Anne canon: an eleven-year-old orphan girl is accidentally sent to live with elderly siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert who intend to adopt a boy to help on the farm. Set against the backdrop of late 19th century Prince Edward Island’s made-up town Avonlea, Anne must face rejection, adversity, insecurity, and the mismatch of being an intelligent, talkative, awkward girl in a seen-and-not-heard world.

The Anne Canon: Set against the backdrop of late 19th century Prince Edward Island, a young orphan must face rejection, adversity, insecurity, and the mismatch of being an intelligent, talkative, awkward girl in a seen-and-not-heard world.

The most recent installment’s first season, which premiered in March of 2017, is rich with familiar characters and content, including a temper-off with busybody Rachel Lynde, classroom knowledge-spars with Gilbert Blythe, and a raspberry cordial snafu with bosom friend Dianna Barry. Marilla and Matthew maintain their familiar uncertainty of having a child — let alone an Anne-girl — in and around Green Gables, both warming to her in their own distinct and essential way. Anne herself is hot headed, dramatic, loquacious, brass, and as seemingly impervious to humdrum reality as ever. She is also loving. For many, what stood out most about the original Anne was her capacity to find goodness, to create something positive out of the doldrums of an unfair situation, and in doing so was able to apply a learned appreciation for imperfect blessings. Above all, Anne Shirley’s chosen people are unconditionally loved. Such is the message continued and expounded upon by Walley-Beckett.

The Lady of Shalott, No Infringement Intended

Anne Season 2 hit Netflix on July 6, 2018, offering audiences even deeper messages of love, tinged in Lady of Shalott darkness. In the Lord Tennyson 1842 poem, the Lady of Shalott is imprisoned in an island castle, cursed to never gaze directly at the world, but instead is relegated to weave images upon her loom cast from a mirror and the bustling of Camelot’s main thoroughfare. These images are described as “shadows of the world”, implying the lack of direct understanding and sight. In the 1985 CBC miniseries, Anne (Follows) lies in a rickety little boat to play-act the part of the Lady of Shalott, a visual recreation of the same scene from the original publication. As she drifts along, reciting the Tennyson poem stanza by stanza, Mr. Barry’s dingy begins to take on water and Anne is forced to abandon ship until her Lancelot arrives. Though relegated to a “tragical romance” in 1985, the similarities between early Anne themes and the Lady of Shalott’s plight converge in the second season of Anne with an E. Themes of feminism, racism, and homosexuality, handled with intention and love, cast an explicit light on the shadowed, real-world truths omitted from previous Anne narratives, effectively lifting a hundred-years’ curse.

… similarities between early Anne themes and the Lady of Shalott’s plight converge in the second season of Anne with an E.

Upon completing the currently aired seasons I felt overwhelming thankfulness, especially after meeting Bash and Cole and being reintroduced to Miss Stacy and Aunt Josephine in Season 2. None of these characters fell outside of canon for me, as none had ever been fully represented in the Anne universe. That Charlottetown — a major metropolitan city — is only a train ride away, yet somehow every version that came before Walley-Beckett’s Anne managed to have no black or gay people is appalling. I doubt anyone is surprised by the lack of diversity in 1908; however, that more of us in 2018 aren’t reeling back, once again (and again and again and again), to honestly reevaluate our own personal acceptance of white-washing and hetero-normalization in our most beloved stories is devastating. To me. The continued mishandling of accurate historical accounts, even in forms of entertainment, is appalling and devastating to me because it perpetuates a confounded reality. It keeps the social world in shadowed truth and omits stories deserving of attention and love from the creative loom.

Will Anne with an E challenge die-hard Anne of Green Gables lovers? Potentially. As viewers, can we hold original source material preciously in one hand while equally weighing the merit of hindsight that only adaptation offers with the other? Maybe. I hope so. Otherwise I fear majority-society will remain bound to the curse of obscured sight. Spoiler alert: Lancelot isn’t coming to save you. It’s well past time we kill off the pervasive predilection for biased narrative, which only focuses on the “thoroughfare” instead of the complex world. After all, in 2018 the Anne we all know’s unconditional love learned to reach beyond Matthew, Marilla, Dianna, and a marginally radical Miss Stacy to include a closeted schoolmate, a black immigrant, a progressive feminist, and a widow grieving the loss of her wife. What a beautiful, empowering, and canonic example.

“I’m not a bit changed–not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real ME–back here–is just the same.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables