is "Anne with an E" on Netflix. The quality of acting, the perfectness of the lines, the tender way in which the camera lingers on the faces and on the landscapes... it's got to be among the best shows on Netflix.
It also made me recall why I stopped reading the original books after the first two or three: after the amazing Anne that Lucy Montgomery created, in the latter books, she almost never focuses on Anne. The stories become Gilbert's, or Anne's kids'. If the main reason why L.M.M got her fan following was because of Anne, why in the world didn't she continue to write about her? It's almost as if, after making Anne question and then ultimately follow the accepted path for all women, marriage and motherhood, LMM stops being interested in her. I think she would have had a far more powerful impact if she had continued to show Anne as being curious, questioning and exploding with ideas even after marriage and motherhood. Perhaps she could have a conversation between Anne and Gilbert about whether they should indeed have seven children....perhaps Gilbert could have offered to give Anne some time to write her books by a) spending more time taking care of the kids or b) not having so many of them in the first place. How startlingly novel and blindingly inspiring that would have been for generations of girls, even today! Instead Anne is washed out, apparently even her opinions aren't worth writing about now that she has copped out and married.
So in a lot of ways, LMM sets the stage for a brilliant protagonist and then fails her entire female fan base.
So I pray that the TV show is a bit more respectful, in some sense, towards women and their value. So far it has been that and much more.
I'm waiting for season 3 to air in India!
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