Anne Shirley

Episode 23

Of all of Anne's college friends, I've always liked Stella the best. She may not have Phil's verve, but she also sees through the rosy social glow that others get caught up in. As far as Phil and Prissy are concerned – and Aunt Jimsie, for that matter – Roy is the perfect man for Anne. He's handsome, well-off, and devoted to the point where everyone can see what's coming next. But Stella alone seems more ambivalent about whether or not he's right for Anne, specifically. In her eyes, he's more prince than person, and that's a definite problem.

Anne seems to know it too, even if her refusal of his proposal at the end of this episode appears to take her by surprise. We saw her begin to have doubts when she studied his orchid in her hair, her facial expression indicating that it felt too fine for her. We see it again when she eschews his elegant purple pansies for Gilbert's simple lily of the valley at convocation. Pansies are garden flowers, planted and carefully cultivated for maximum curated beauty. They're not artificial, but they're high-brow as far as flowers go. But lilies of the valley are wildflowers, popping up unexpectedly in shady glens. They have deceptively simple little bells rather than deeply colored, bright petals. A lily of the valley is the ultimate wildflower, and as such, fits Anne's image much more – and when he gifts it to Anne, Gilbert is sending the message that she, too, is an unexpected bright blossom. Royal's blooms say that he will treat her with the care lavished on a garden plant, but Gilbert's says that he knows she can flourish anywhere, all on her own.

That's essentially what Anne's journey has been about: flourishing despite everything. She hasn't always liked the answers that have been put in her path, like Diana sending her story to a baking powder competition, but winning that allows her to rewrite an old sketch and take a chance by sending it to a magazine. Even if she doesn't say it, Diana's faith in her novella gives her the faith to try her hand at publishing again. And when she reads back through her juvenilia, she can recognize that maybe life isn't about melodrama and high-strung tragedies. But if she hadn't written those, she couldn't have written the baking powder story, and if Diana hadn't sent it in, she wouldn't have realized that she could publish. Maybe it was the hard road, but it was the one Anne needed to take.

Roy represents an easy life. But that's not necessarily what Anne wants or needs. Plus, if she married him, she'd be stuck with a truly unpleasant mother-in-law and one obnoxious sister-in-law, both of whom might whittle Anne down to a sliver. It's still a shame things got so far with Roy, but again, Anne was doing what she thought she wanted, what she had convinced herself was her romantic dream. Rejecting it is as much a surprise to her as it is to anyone, but also the surest sign that she's really, truly growing up.

That's something everyone has to do on their own time. As we reach the end of Anne of the Island, more changes and evidence of that await. Anne's just realized that she doesn't want a (Victorian) textbook romance – she's about to learn that she doesn't want to live a Victorian melodrama, either.

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Anne Shirley is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

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