What a disturbing episode. Anne Lister saved her lover from a predator in a very cool way. “I have given my friend Ms. Anne Lister surveillance of all my recent correspondence...” then Lister backs it up with a law and order visit to Eliza and asserting her presence in front of the the very rapey reverend. The entire show has stayed faithful to Listers recorded accounts, though Walker had an unconsummated (by her choice) friendship with another man that she felt guilty about. Walker was a dyke - just beset by a nasty closed in crowd of holy rollers.
I loved Listers tender insistence on a more “formal connection” she knew the power & healing that comes with tying ceremony & faith so brilliant, she wanted marriage equality just as we do. Lister was made of Iron and how hard she fought for her marriage to Walker! This is where her place in history is immortalized. Though research about treating PTSD would come nearly 2 centuries later - she could grasp that the confusion in Walker was the result of abuse. Unlike everyone else she wondered about the precipitating event but could only address the current situation.... “Have some courage Ann.”
The heartbreaking mess of Walker had nothing on Lister &all she endured. Lister had endured decades of harassment & heartbreak with weak willed lovers. Each enthralled with her, carried away on mad hormones of newly discovered satisfying lovemaking, still all cowardly opting for a fake heteronormative existence. So who was actually more self involved? Walker with all her money & sycophants certainly.
One particularly cruel Lister biographer would have it “Ann wanted sex, Anne wanted her money.” However the original researcher, Helena Whitbread saw it quite differently, as did her gay daughter Rachel. Rachel understood Lister to be a “stone butch” in control and very clear in mind wanting to declare her right to existence and love.
I am with the later, only a besotted, compassionate, worldly, defiant, lover could deliver this speech to a messy Walker: “We have’nt committed a criminal offense... however if it were a criminal offense I would have to be hanged for it, if it were to become one then you see I would have to put my neck in the noose. Because I love, and only love the fairer sex. (As) If my heart revolts from any other love. These feelings haven’t wavered or deviated since childhood. I was borne like this as my God given nature dictates. If I was to lie with a man then surely that would be unnatural. Surely that would be against God who made us, everyone of us in all of our richness, variety and you are the same. You told me so...”
“Dont let them poison you against me - against us - we can be happy, you know we can. We can have a rich life together....why should I compromise myself to lie with another man’s wife? ... and that is why to me our present connection without any tie for me is wrong. I want you to be MY WIFE. I want you to be my wife and everything that that means.... But everything else “to love, to cherish, to have and to hold according to God’s holy ordinance...with God’s blessing he will give us strength and courage.”
I want this in crewel embroidery 4x2 dammit
Listers diaries from the Walker period (Fall 32- Winter 33) haven’t been fully published as of yet. Researchers use portions of references them for movies, series and one or two books. Again events presented in the joint BBC/HBO special are From Lister.
