User blog:Eikakou/Anne (CBC series), season 3, episode 2 - There Is Something at Work In My Soul Which I Do Not Understand review

I'm going to try to keep this shorter than the last review. That was actually exhausting to cover everything that happened.

This was a pretty difficult episode to watch, because there was a lot of emotional tension.

Spoilers ahoy!

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So we have several threads for the episode: Anne is going to Nova Scotia with Cole to find information on her parents, Marilla frets in Avonlea, Miss Stacy is dismayed that Rachel is determined to find her a man, Gilbert goes on a date, and Mary's son Elijah drops by the Blythe homestead. There's a lot going on, and almost nothing ends particularly well. A lot of it seems to involve how everyone is dealing with learning something that could change relationships between people they know, and everyone's reactions indicate that it's not ending well today.

The big part of the episode is Anne's journey to the orphanage she was raised. She sets off feeling excited and optimistic, but there's already a lot that's not going well. First, she's irritated with how overprotective Marilla is - Anne is probably feeling that her growing independence is being stifled, and she's embarrassed with how Gilbert (who is escorting her to Charlottetown) jokes about it, because she snaps at him. They become awkward after that. While her reunion with Cole and Josephine goes well, and Josephine imparts some sage advice that Anne will still be Anne no matter she finds, everything goes downhill from there.

At the orphanage, all of Anne's old wounds open up. The matron is still a cold and cruel figure who doesn't care about her charges. After witnessing a man abandon his young children and telling the matron that she should tell his kids that he's dead when they're older, Anne learns that all the old records of the orphanage were destroyed in a rat infestation. She takes Cole to the upper area of the orphanage where she used to hide out to recover some stories she had written; while Cole finds some of them amusing, Anne sees them as proof of her worst fears. All this time she believed without question that she had been loved with her parents and they died of a fever, leaving her in the orphanage. Now she thinks that like the stories that she wrote about Princess Cordelia escaping were just another delusions she told herself - her parents could have just abandoned her. Cole assures her that she wasn't deluded - it was her imagination that let her cope and survive, and while it was terrible, he admits, selfishly, that it let her become the open-minded and empathetic person who saved him. It gives Anne enough strength when the girl cleaning the doorway on their way out of the orphanage reveals herself to be one of Anne's childhood tormentors, aged out and now working at cleaner at the orphanage, who is left to her bitterness when Anne tells her that she's sorry that the girl never left. Anne leaves Nova Scotia with some hope that maybe she can go back to find other records of her parents; while she seems pretty calm all the way back home, she winds up crying in her room while praying that there's proof that she had a family who actually loved her.

Back in Charlottetown, Gilbert is finishing up his time at Dr. Ward's practice, when he overhears Dr. Ward's cleaner having a rather amusing exchange with a skeleton. The cleaner, Winifred Rose, agrees to Gilbert's request to go out for tea. Winifred makes fun of Gilbert because she can tell he has no experience taking ladies out for tea, but they seem to have a pleasant enough time together that he suggests another tea date and takes a flower from the table. I'm not sure if Gilbert is interested in Winifred as a possible romantic partner or if perhaps he's really asking for Winifred's help with "lessons on what is acceptable on tea dates." But he seems to have enjoyed spending time with Winifred, and judging by his taste, he's interested in confident, intelligent, young women.

Back in Avonlea, Miss Stacy is assembling the printing press with Matthew and asks for his advice to deter Mrs. Lynde. He doesn't have any substantive advice, other than Rachel is unstoppable. Rachel drops by to visit Marilla, who is so fraught with worry for Anne that she can't focus on anything, and then to convince Miss Stacy about the consequences of her current lifestyle will never help her land a man. Matthew wants no part of it and Miss Stacy laughs so much during the exchange that Rachel seems put off with matchmaking. Maybe for now...

At the Blythe homestead, Mary's son Elijah has managed to sneak into town on the train and found his mother. While it's clear that Mary overjoyed to see him and Bash is welcoming, Elijah is deeply affected by his mother's new life. She is living in a beautiful big house and she has a new baby. Elijah gets drunk on moonshine, voices all his hurts and insults Bash, and claims that Mary is just taking advantage of what Bash is offering - a house, all through a supposed friendship with a white man - rather than genuine love. Bash confronts him to basically stop thinking about himself, because his behavior is hurting Mary. By the time Gilbert gets home, Mary and Bash are hoping Elijah's sobered up and Gilbert welcomes the idea of Elijah working on the farm as well... only to find that Elijah is taken off and stolen a number of things that belonged to Gilbert's late father.

Towards the end of the episode, Marilla's anxieties about Anne, unfortunately, come out the wrong way. While she and Matthew agreed to support Anne's decision to find her family, Marilla is deeply afraid for Anne. Anne's words ever since she brought up the topic might be part of it - Anne never refers to Marilla and Matthew as her family, and when Anne returns, Marilla overhears Anne's devastated crying for reassurance that her family loved her. I'm not sure how Marilla actually is feeling up until then, but I can imagine it's a gut-punch each time because it sounds so much like Anne doesn't consider them family or that she doesn't believe the Cuthberts genuinely care and love her. Maybe it's because they don't say it. But just when Anne is about to confront a new day, Marilla discovers that Anne lied to her about going to the Mi'kmaq village. Marilla is furious - she thinks Anne has been deceitful and reckless and dangerous for going alone to a bunch of people Marilla considers savage heathens. She won't listen to Anne's words that the Mi'kmaq aren't awful, because she's focused on how Anne has broken her trust and forbids Anne from going anywhere alone, including Nova Scotia. And when Anne wants to know why, Marilla angrily tells her it's because she loves Anne.

That... did not come out right. For Marilla. Because as Matthew tries to assure her that Marilla meant the part where she loves Anne, it probably hurts Anne to hear Marilla, maybe for the first time, say those words with such anger.

So, this episode was hard to watch. Pretty much everyone's relationships are being rendered pretty taut (except maybe Miss Stacy and matchmaker Rachel Lynde). Even Gilbert's date with Winifred, while it doesn't end on a sour note, his attempt to tell Mary about it is interrupted when everyone in the house discovers that Elijah has stolen Gilbert's father's belongings. There's a lot of trust that's been broken, hard feelings thrown around, and nobody is in a good place right now.