I couldn’t decide precisely what I wanted to say about the dance scene tonight but I’ve figured it out I’ve figured it out and it’s this:
“I take you, matched to my intellect, proponent of my happiness, friend of my heart, to be my life mate. Let us dance together as equal partners through the years.”
Just... the incandescent poetry of the fact that, when considering her ideal of a lifelong romantic relationship, Anne explicitly envisaged life as a dance and one’s life mate as one’s partner in said dance.
Just... could this moment for them have come in any better setting than a dance?
And the relevance of the way in which this particular dance was constructed: each pair as part of a larger set, with no ‘leader’, wherein Anne and Gilbert were not directly dancing together the whole time except they always were because they kept their eyes on each other even when they weren’t in contact, they were always absolutely aware of where the other was as they each navigated their way through their own steps and around the other dancers, coming back together every single time. The way they seemed to need to pay no attention to the other’s moves specifically, always trusting the other to meet them exactly where they were supposed to, but payed diligent attention to each other’s faces, expressions, what they’re feeling and the subtle ways in which they can push each other further, better the dance. The fact that the dance isn’t just about them—there are other people they dance with or have to move around, but that absolute unbroken thread of returning to each other. How we got that beautiful shot of Gilbert letting go of Anne’s hand only for the shot immediately after it to be their smiles as they come back together, the temporary separation no shock or hardship because they never lose sight of each other or worry that the other won’t meet them for the next step in the dance.
This dance is a perfect metaphor for everything Anne wants out of her life mate: an equal partnership, not restrictively bound together but each able to follow their own path (through life, through the steps of the dance) with absolute support and trust from the other, always attuned to each other and always coming home to each other, bouncing off each other and the world they exist in together to create something beautiful.
And then the shining loveliness of that one tiny moment where Anne’s supposed to be ducking under the raised arms opposite her, but Gilbert grabs her hand and spins her so she’s next to him. That little moment of bending the rules, not for the purposes of cruelty but in persuit of joy, of living one’s truth—Gilbert’s truth being, in that moment and in life, that he wants Anne beside him. Just that tiny disobedience as an indication of being willing to—wanting to—carve out a little space of their own which is different, which doesn’t follow the rules, which is just their’s within the comparatively ridgid structures of the dance, of Victorian society. Just a little mischief, harmless but bringing so much joy.
The added weight and relevance, then, of them finding it so hard to step away from each other once the dance is over—to step back from the comfort and trust and happiness (‘proponent of my happiness’, she said, and look at how she smiles!) and rightness of having, in that dance, secured for a few moments what they want in life: a partner with whom to dance through it all.