Anne Shirley

Episode 10

I have been dreading this episode since the adaptation began. I think most of us probably remember our first brush with death – my very first happened when I was five: my great-aunt Sayde died, and in an old barn, I found a beautiful box containing a single braid of hair and a black-edged card reading “Mary Anne, 1906.” My mother explained that it was likely a memento mori, a keepsake of someone who died. Then, when I was eight, I read Anne of Green Gables and Matthew died, my first literary death. All three of these moments have lived somewhere in my soul ever since.

Part of what makes this death have so much impact is how quickly it happens. It's a normal, ordinary morning, and then suddenly it isn't. Matthew reads the paper and…collapses. He's gone. There's no fanfare, no real warning in the moment. The chapter in the book is titled “The Reaper Whose Name is Death,” and that Reaper strikes like a snake. Anne and Marilla have no time to process anything; when Rachel Lynde comes, she knows that Anne fetching the doctor won't be any help. The mourning is what takes up space, from Marilla's feeling that she must sell Green Gables to Anne's telling Diana that she wants to be alone, to Mrs. Allan, the minister's wife, gently guiding Anne through the grieving process. It's not easy to watch, but it is well done.

Matthew's death isn't a much more involved scene in the original novel. The whole chapter is six pages in my copy, and it mentions many of the things we see in episode ten – Matthew lying in his coffin in the parlor (as was typical of the time), Anne sobbing, Marilla trying to comfort her, and Anne planting the rosebush. The procession to the graveyard is an addition, more or less; the hearse (historically accurate) isn't mentioned, although carrying his body out of the house is. But what I appreciate is the small glimpse of Gilbert paying a mourning visit to Green Gables and then later listening to Josie tell two other boys about how Anne isn't going to college. If there's one thing this version of the story has consistently done well, it's showing Gilbert's feelings and his quiet yearning for Anne. He's always paying attention to her, always there supporting her, even if she doesn't see it. (Or doesn't want to see it.) Nothing shows his kindness and devotion like his giving up the Avonlea school for Anne. It's the moment when she realizes that even without her forgiveness, he cares – and that allows her to admit that she does, too.

Over the years, many readers have grumbled that Anne shouldn't have given up her scholarship to stay with Marilla at Green Gables. I can understand that to a point; it's a major opportunity for her. But the decision to stay and teach makes more sense. Anne had nobody before Marilla and Matthew, and now with Matthew gone and Marilla's eyesight failing, she feels like she owes it to her adoptive mother to stay – and maybe to herself as well. It's not a decision made lightly by either Anne or L. M. Montgomery, although maybe it's one that you need to have lived to fully appreciate. I certainly didn't until my mother suffered a catastrophic accident five years ago; I had to completely remake my life to help my parents, but it was the only choice I could have made. I don't regret it. Anne could never have lived with herself if she abandoned Marilla (which is what it would have felt like), and that's what's most important here.

This episode brings us to the end of the first novel, which means that, as some of us feared, both Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island have significantly fewer episodes to use. I'm a bit worried about that, but at the same time, I appreciate how this episode was carried out. Anne reading Marilla Robert Browning's “Pippa's Song,” which you may remember hearing earlier in the season, is a nice way to transition into the final line of both novel and episode: “God's in his heaven, all's right with the world.”

Even when it doesn't feel true, sometimes it helps to softly whisper that or a similar sentiment, and hope that it will become real.

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P.S. Here's a picture of a late 19th-century horse-drawn hearse. Just for your historical notes.

Anne Shirley is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.