Food and Flicks

Sweeten teeth, hearts with family flick

by Kendra Evensen EVE00002@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

Orphaned and up for adoption, Anne Shirley (Megan Follows), is mistakenly sent to the home of Mathew (Richard Fransworth) and Marilla (Colleen Dewherst) Cuthburt, an elderly brother and sister, living in Green Gables. The Cuthburts requested a boy for help with chores on the farm, but they got Anne instead.

Full of passion, pride and error, Anne Shirley is quite the addition to Green Gables. Even though she can’t seem to control her imagination or temper, she wins the Cuthburt’s hearts and they decide to adopt her.

While attending a picnic, she becomes acquainted with a “kindred spirit,” her soon-to-be best friend, Diana Barry. The two become inseparable.

Anne is always romanticizing life, which is constantly getting her into trouble. But if there is one thing she can’t dream away, it is her red hair, which she hates. When a boy at school, Gilbert Blythe, calls her “carrots,” she smashes her slate over his head and refuses to speak to him again. Gilbert spends most of his school years trying to get her to forgive him.

Spoiled by Mathew and lectured by Marilla, Anne comes to love both them and Green Gables and adjusts to her new circumstances. However, her ever-wondering imagination and stubborn pride cannot be adjusted.

She accepts dares to walk across roof ledges, walks through haunted forests to avoid Gilbert, sells her neighbor’s cow, falls into a well and almost drowns while acting out a poem. As best friends do, Diana accompanies her through it all.

When Anne accidentally gets her best friend drunk, mistaking wine for raspberry cordial, Mrs. Barry tells her she can never speak to Diana again. The bosom friends are heart broken by their separation.

Meanwhile, a new schoolteacher reminds Anne that “tomorrow is a new day, with no mistakes in it.” Not yet anyway.

Anne is soon able to redeem her reputation when she saves the life of Diana’s sister, and the two become attached once again.

As part of her serving of “humble pie” Mrs. Barry invites Anne to attend a Christmas ball. Dreaming of fancy dresses with “puffed sleeves” Anne desperately wants to go. After several refusals, Marilla consents to her attendance, although she thinks it’s nonsense. Mathew secretly buys her a dress with puffed sleeves.

At the ball she pridefully informs Diana that Gilbert would do anything for her. She is dared to see if she can get him to dance with her, which, of course, she accepts. When she is snubbed by the knowing Gilbert Blythe, their relationship does not improve.

Getting into mischief is not her only talent. Anne excels in her schoolwork. She graduates at the top of her class, tying with Gilbert. She is accepted into Queen’s College, for a teaching education, making both her family and neighborhood proud.

Although her imagination, pride, temper and mistakes never decrease, the characteristics of the orphan help her to win a home in the hearts of the community, and all those she comes in contact with.