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「こんなおもしろい世界で、いつまでも悲しんじゃいられないわ」 (Kon’na Omoshiroi Sekai de, Itsu Made mo Kanashinjai Rarenai Wa)
“One Can’t Stay Sad Very Long in Such an Interesting World”
We pick up where we left off last week, with Anne refusing to go to school after getting in trouble, sending Marilla to her wit’s end. She consults Rachel Lynde who has the sage advice “leave her be and she’ll come around”. I’d agree with that. In working with kids, one thing I found was that forcing a point always has the opposite effect- you gotta give choices and give them calm down time.
It cracked me up how Anne got herself so worked up over Diana leaving her to get married. Chill out child- that’s like several years in the future, if it happens at all. I can so relate to that though- it can be easy to start worrying far in advance, and once you start imagining a bad case scenario, the imagination just makes it worse and worse the more you think on it. Especially if you have a lot of time on your hands, and not much else to occupy yourself with, as is surely the case with Anne staying home from school.
Next, we have the infamous raspberry cordial scene. Anne has Diana over for tea and serves her what was supposed to be the raspberry cordial on the second shelf. Hilariously, it turns out to be wine and Diana gets drunk. I’m kind of wondering how Anne didn’t pick up on the alcoholic scent of the wine- one of the families she used to live with had an alcoholic husband, so surely she would’ve picked up on the scent. However, I can say from firsthand experience, when you’re hyper focused on some exciting task like setting the tea table, other tasks that should be blatantly obvious are totally overlooked. And to be fair, she did follow Marilla’s instructions to the T, and had never tasted cordial herself before. Diana, naturally, gets super drunk and has to go home without any tea, much to Anne’s dismay. I can’t remember if they mention it or not in the anime, but Diana’s family are staunchly anti-alcohol, which adds delicious irony.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Barry is a humorless woman and forbids Anne from ever coming near Diana again. I appreciate how Marilla owns up to her mistake and even goes so far as to go to Mrs. Barry to plead on Anne’s behalf. I think the lesson it shows here is that even adults like Marilla who have their shit together make mistakes too, and that everyone needs a little leniency.
We then have a tearful goodbye between Anne and Diana, which was meh, much as I love their friendship. It seemed a little too dragged out, especially considering the fast pace they’re adapting everything else. But, Anne and Diana’s friendship is central to the story, and that was the theme around which this week revolved. What did stick out to me is the nature of Anne’s feelings towards Diana. It went totally over my head as a child, but as an adult, it seems obvious. Anne’s longing towards Diana and the stuff she says and does around her very clearly show romantic feelings, and the anime does do a good job of getting that across, although it does lean into the melodramatic. I mean, there’s no mistaking that gaze. I don’t think it’s simply “they just understood friendship differently back then”, because if you compare it to Little Women or the Jane Austen novels or any other novel with straight female friendships written in the past, you don’t see that level of intensity. In reading on the author’s life, apparently she also had intense romantic feelings for her female friends, which makes sense that she would translate that into the relationship between Anne and Diana in her books.
Anne is welcomed back at school with open arms. She’s very popular with everyone, but boy does she know how to hold a grudge. Gilbert totally humbled himself to ask for her help in spelling, and she gave him the brush off. He is not only public enemy #1, but public rival #1, and Anne certainly does enjoy competition, though she could be a little more gracious, especially when he congratulates her for making it to the top. I think making it to the top is partially Anne’s way of proving herself, and getting back at Gilbert by humiliating him in beating him to the #1 spot in the class.
Anne gets the chance to take back her good name (in Mrs. Barry’s eyes) when Diana arrives at Green Gables late one night while the parents are out, begging for help with her sister Minny May, who suffers from the croup. Indeed, a very scary disease for young children, especially in an era before modern medicine. I love how Anne and Matthew have this unspoken understanding- Matthew immediately goes for the doctor and Anne knows what he’s doing, no words needed.
While cooking and serving tea may not be Anne’s area of expertise, caring for sick children are, and she knows exactly what to do. Anne is a total champ here- the normally overly dramatic girl is uncharacteristically cool as a cucumber and administers the medicine, keeping her alive for the doctor to come.
Mrs. Barry immediately changes her tune and rolls out the red carpet for Anne, who just the other day was an urchin. This all has a whiff of falseness to it and is uncomfortable to watch (as it’s supposed to be). Mrs. Barry doesn’t acknowledge that she was wrong in how she treated Anne before, piling on the praise in the most over the top way, as if the tea incident hadn’t happened. There’s a difference between burying the hatchet and sweeping something under the carpet. For example, in Anne’s apology to Rachel Lynde, Rachel acknowledges where she was wrong and becomes aware of the issues in her attitude. Which makes for an interesting contrast to Mrs. Barry. Unfortunately, the anime doesn’t address this two facedness in Diana’s mother, though in other adaptations, a pissed-off Marilla comments on that.
My overall impression of this week was the pacing. If the past few weeks seemed rushed, that was nothing compared to this week. The raspberry cordial scene is one of my many favorites in this series. Part of the humor of the incident is the contrast between Diana getting steadily drunker and Anne’s hyper focus on hosting and talking, and the way the situation slowly builds until shit hits the fan. Unfortunately, the anime didn’t take its time to savor the buildup.
Another thing that struck me was that the anime typically mainly shows Anne when she’s jumping for joy or weeping- like, she has a melt down every week. While those are important parts of her character, there’s a whole lot more that goes on between those emotional highs and lows that kind of gets brushed past, giving a less comprehensive look at Anne. I was relieved they at least showed her brains in school- she is a very intelligent girl and that certainly deserves to be highlighted as much as her free range of emotions. She’s not just intelligent, but incredibly hardworking- math is not her strong suit, but she puts her mind to it and masters her weak point, taking, then tying for top place with Gilbert. We also got to see that scatterbrained as she is, Anne is reliable in emergencies and is capable of staying calm. Anne has so many sides to her personality, I’m glad that the anime at least shows a little of that, even if they don’t linger on it.
Preview
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