Gentleman Jack (2019) tells the story of Anne Lister, a real-life woman who lived in Halifax, England in the early 1800s. Lister is often credited as “the first modern lesbian,” as her diaries, which contained explicit accounts of her relationships with women, made a bit of a splash when they were first published in the late 1980s. Lister was a prolific diarist, writing nearly 5 million words over the course of her life, most of which chronicled her day-to-day affairs as well as the social, economic, and political state of Halifax at the time. One sixth of her diaries, however, were written in a special code that Lister devised from a combination of Greek, Latin, mathematical symbols, punctuation, and the zodiac. These sections, which dealt with her private life and relationships, were initially deciphered in the 1930s by John Lister, the last person to inhabit Shibden Hall, the Lister family estate. Upon discovering their content, a friend of John Lister’s advised that he burn the diaries, but Lister instead hid them behind a wall panel at Shibden, where they remained untouched for another 50 years.
The first season of Gentleman Jack picks up with Anne Lister (Suranne Jones) in 1832, when she’s 41 and landing back at Shibden after a failed relationship. Heartbroken but hiding it well, Anne plunges herself into the business of running the estate, which was left to her by her uncle some ten years prior. The series sets up the question of whether she might finally find a life companion in her sweet and delicate-seeming neighbor, Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle). This is easier said than done of course, but what’s brilliant about the show is the way that these two women go on to challenge and illuminate the other, consistently subverting expectations as to how their relationship might progress. And while their courtship does form the heart of the show, Gentleman Jack also follows Anne Lister’s business endeavors as she attempts to sink a coal pit on her land, improve the family estate, and generally surprise everyone around her. In this way, the show is more than just a tender, unexpected period love story, it’s also a rollicking good portrait of a whip-smart, avidly curious, relentlessly energetic, perpetually stubborn woman making a go of building a life that fits her in a time when women were supposed to sit quietly and smile sweetly at whatever befell them.
This docility (or lack thereof) is, at first, the apparent difference between Anne Lister and Ann Walker. Ann Walker is the perfect 18th century woman— beautiful, rich, mild-mannered, accomplished in the feminine arts. Her only fault is a perceived “fragility” and “tendency towards melancholy” by the rest of her extended family. Anne Lister is everything that Ann is not, and then some. She is bold and confrontational, determined to do everything herself and unafraid to break whatever societal conventions might get her in her way. Within the first fifteen minutes of the pilot episode alone, Anne Lister has broken half a dozen rules of how women were supposed to behave at the time. She’s driven her own carriage, worn a top hat, attended a post-mortem out of scientific interest, clambered over a ten-foot stone wall, walked stridently through a public street, and decided to collect the rents from her tenants herself.
In a stylistic mirroring of this subversion of convention, Anne also regularly breaks the fourth wall, looking directly to camera and delivering key information and reactions directly to the audience. On the one hand, this can be seen as an allusion to the diaries upon which the series is based, however it also works brilliantly on a symbolic level, adding to Anne’s agency as a character and giving us the sense that at any moment she could tire of us too and send us packing. In the beginning of the series, these asides are supremely confident, even a bit preening, as Anne throws smirks, winks, and playfully exasperated looks towards the audience. However, once she meets Ann Walker and begins to fall for her, these looks begin to falter, revealing a deep vulnerability beneath her brazen exterior. It’s the same device that Fleabag uses to a similar end— the structure that initially reinforces the protagonist’s control eventually becomes the means through which we witness their breakdown. By the end of episode 6, Anne is visibly emotional, lamenting to camera, “I don’t know how it is, whenever I see the girl, she always manages to unhinge me.”
This is the spectacular thing about Gentleman Jack, the way these two women illuminate one another, drawing out depths each was previously unaware of. To circle back to Andrea Cohen’s poem, each of them is, in their own way, “unfathoming what it is to be lit,” what it might be like to be seen and loved fully by another. Ann Walker is tired of being seen as an invalid by her family and longs for some kind of independence. She has also been sitting in literal “bereaved rooms,” as her parents passed away when she was young, her brother died tragically on his honeymoon in Naples, and her sister moved away to Scotland when she got married. The rest of her extended family sees her “melancholy” as an innate personal trait to be whispered about and carefully sidestepped, whereas Anne Lister takes one quick glance at the situation sees that what Ann actually needs is adventure—something to do, something to see, something to make her feel alive.
Throughout the series, Ann Walker struggles with this conflict between who she is with Anne and who she is with her family. In one moment Anne Lister remarks, “I wonder why you have such a poor opinion of yourself.” Ann Walker replies, “I don’t when I’m with you. When I’m with you I could take on the world.” In this way, Anne serves as a lamplighter for Ann Walker, through no other effort than simply being who she is. Her independence shines a light on Ann that lights her life in a new way and makes new possibilities known. Likewise, Ann Walker’s clear, open-hearted acceptance of who Anne Lister is shines a light back towards Anne that she desperately needs, more so than even she will admit.
In another touching moment, Ann expresses her exasperation with her family, “When one has been an invalid, or at least seen as one by the family for so long, it’s hard to shake off some people’s idea that they have the right to… interfere with one’s life.” Anne Lister replies, “An invalid? How? You don’t look very invalid to me.” This little play on invalid vs. invalid might feel forced if delivered by someone less capable than Suranne Jones, but in her hands the line is a poignant reminder that words can have multiple meanings, that there’s always another way to look at something. It’s this shifting of perspective, this breaking of traditional thought and behavior that Ann Walker so desperately needs, and that Anne Lister is able to provide in spades.
In return, Ann’s gentle kindness allows Anne Lister to finally confront the emotional toll that being brazenly, relentlessly different has taken on her. In one heartrending scene, Anne begins to tear up and apologizes to Ann for not understanding her hesitation towards taking the sacrament together. “I understand… why you can’t commit to me. It’s impossible, I know. How could anyone? What am I? Every day… everyday I rise above it. The things people say. I walk into a room or down a street and I see the way people look at me and the things they say. And I rise above it…because I’ve trained myself to… not to see it and to hear it until it’s become second nature to me and I forget… just how impossible it is for someone else to accept that. But you came so close.” She tucks herself into Ann’s chest, the first time we’ve ever seen her this open and vulnerable, and just weeps. In previous scenes, Anne has been dismissive and even snarky about other women’s inability to commit to her, but in this moment we see just how much it has hurt her, how for all her independence she doesn’t want to be alone.
By the end of the 8th and final episode of Season 1, Anne’s emotional turmoil is roiling beneath the surface, just barely contained. She and Ann have been separated for some time due to Ann’s wavering over the proposal, subsequently declining mental health, and the family having sent her to Scotland to stay with her sister. Anne is feeling Ann’s absence but refuses to admit it, distracting herself first by visiting her friend and former lover Mariana, and then by taking a trip to Copenhagen. She’s become snappy with everyone, and in a particularly humorous moment winds up shouting at Mariana about her right to bring an enormous, unwieldy thermometer with her on their travels. When Anne and Ann are finally reunited, in the hilltop scene I linked last time, Anne initially tries her old tactics— being curt, dismissive, and cynical— but none of it seems to land with Ann. Instead, she just calmly continues with what she has to say, her openness and honesty disarming Anne at every turn until eventually the façade cracks and Anne admits, “God, I’ve missed you.”
This is what I love so much about Gentleman Jack, the way these two women consistently surprise and challenge one another, each casting a light the other had no idea she needed. And no matter how many times I watch this scene, the performances that Suranne Jones and Sophie Rundle give seem invented on the spot, plucked and spun from something otherworldly. It surprises me every time— every gesture, Ann’s little laugh, Anne’s disheveled hair, the horrified tenderness on her face the moment she realizes Ann tried to slit her wrist while she was off gallivanting through Copenhagen. You can see it in her eyes, her whole life collapsing down to a moment, all the disparate threads and winds crossing, it finally hitting her that for all her globetrotting, mine-plotting, and relentless curiosity, nothing would matter if she lost the woman it’s just now fully dawning on her that she loves. It’s fitting that in this moment they’re both bathed in a glowing golden sunlight, finally standing in its warmth together.
When I first watched Gentleman Jack back in 2019, it felt in many ways like someone had turned that light on me too. I was so astounded by the ways that Anne Lister illuminated what a female protagonist could be. She was confrontational, motivated, cunning, bold, always marching fearlessly into her next plan. She was arrogant at times, generous and fair at others, snappish with her family but also unfailingly loyal and protective. She was in control of everything around her, until she wasn’t. In short, she was fully human. We talk a lot about “strong female characters” in the film world, but I think it’s still rare that we get female protagonists who are allowed to be contradictory, ornery, and flawed while also being honest, vulnerable, and likable. Perhaps that’s also what feels so profound about this show, the fact that Anne Lister lived nearly 200 years ago and yet her life and its challenges still feel so relevant today.