Hi! Not sure if you’ve come across the scene (in the scripts) where Anne asks Ann how close she and mrs ainsworth were and Ann replies “not close like we are, if that’s what your thinking”, because if you did I was wondering if Anne really asked that out of jealousy (seems a little insensitive given Ann’s state)? At first I thought it was genuine curiosity on Anne’s part because mrs. A’s death clearly had a great impact on Ann but after watching a couple of times idk
Hello anon, thanks for your question! Anne doesn’t exactly ask how close Ann was to Mrs. Ainsworth - the exchange in the script (which the aired episode follows) is actually this:
(from the Official Gentleman Jack Shooting Scripts, 1.04)
In the episode, we see Anne first offer Ann some tea - she’s doing her best to be supportive and solicitous, with Ann looking very upset. Ann declines the tea and is emotionally remote, so Anne leans in and gently touches her knee, asking “Do you want to talk about her?”
When Anne says “You must’ve been very close to her,” Ann seems to take that like an accusation - “Why do you say that?” Now the state-of-mind description for Anne in the script says Isn’t it obvious? (i.e. Anne thinks Ann would surely understand why Anne assumes that Ann and Mrs. Ainsworth were close), and so Anne states the obvious - “ Because you’re so upset.” But then Ann responds as if Anne is implying that she and Mrs. Ainsworth were lovers (i.e. close "like we are”), which is not what Anne meant at all. We see Anne taken aback by Ann’s tone and lean back into her chair, maybe a bit irritated, probably a bit at a loss as to how to proceed - she started this conversation wanting to comfort Ann, but they’re not connecting well, the emotional current is messy and Anne doesn’t understand why (she and we the viewers will find out later, of course).
Ann does realize that she’s spoken kind of sharply to Anne - the script says “then she regrets her harsh tone” - and Ann turns to a different reason why the news about Mrs. Ainsworth is upsetting: Ann’s terror about death. And this is reasonable and kind of a half-truth, given all the close family members who have died before her - her parents, her brother. Anne looks troubled by this - there’s nothing in the script re her state of mind - but it may reflect Anne never having seen this side of Ann before, someone so preoccupied and troubled in her dark thoughts. (It’s kind of a preview of Ann’s breakdown in 1.06, although we don’t know that when we first see this ep.) And while in almost all their earlier scenes, Ann so often looks adoringly at Anne, she barely glances at her here, and it ends with only Anne looking at Ann, while Ann is somewhere else entirely.
Anyway, to sum up, Anne was not jealous of Mrs. Ainsworth, it was Ann who misinterpreted the “You must have been very close to her” line, but this conversation gives us the first glimpse of the Ann(e)s not being on the same page emotionally and sets the stage for a rift for most of the rest of the episode, before their final scene together when the truth emerges. Hope this answers your question a bit :).
