HBO’s period drama series Gentleman Jack first aired on April 22, 2019, and has just returned for its second season this year after filming stalled due to COVID. The show is based off of “modern lesbian” Anne Lister’s extensive journals, in which she vividly details her love affairs with various women, as well as her everyday, high-society business and social engagements. Though there’s no denying that Suranne Jones’ distinguished portrayal of Lister, the highly charismatic landowner of 1800s Halifax, makes for an exceptionally intriguing and inspiring TV character, the real woman was even more remarkable and complex.
Anne wrote over four million words in her journals, many of which were encrypted by a code that she herself made up. The code, which consisted of algebraic symbols and Greek letters, was used to hide Anne’s explicit descriptions of her sexual and romantic encounters – which often included details like how many orgasms she’d had. Since Anne was alive during an era when homosexual relationships would have been condemned, it was vital that she keep her lesbianism a secret in order to preserve her life. Unfortunately for the world, the diaries were not fully deciphered and published until 1988 by Helena Whitbread. For reasons pertaining to paranoia and stigmatization towards homosexuality, it took almost a hundred years after the pages’ discovery for Lister's incredible life to be shared.
Anne Lister was born in 1791, a member of a well-known landowning family. From a young age, Anne is known to have been very intelligent and tomboyish, claiming in her journals that she often beat her brothers in fencing, and was “a curious genius, and had been so from [her] cradle, a very great pickle.” Anne was eventually sent to an all-girls boarding school in York, where she was forced to stay in the attic due to her bad behavior. According to BBC documentary The Real Anne Lister, Anne was not like the other girls in that she saw school more as a place to socialize than learn (since her intellectual abilities surpassed the others’), and therefore was always distracting her peers. It was in this attic where Anne’s sexual nature was truly developed, as she engaged in a full-blown relationship with her roommate Eliza.
Though “romantic friendships” between females were acceptable at the time because they were seen as practice for marriage, Anne and Eliza’s relationship was deemed as being taken too far after Anne’s love letters were discovered. Anne was then expelled, and shortly after Eliza was sent to an insane asylum. Despite Anne’s social status likely putting her in a position to help Eliza, she never did. Instead, there are no more mentions of the relationship in the journals. Although Eliza was Anne’s first love, Anne was able to move on like it never really mattered.
One reason why it may have been so easy for Anne to move on from Eliza was her adherence to societal expectations. Anne’s station required that she not fraternize with those considered below her, and because Eliza was part Indian, Anne likely deemed her an unacceptable match, according to The Real Anne Lister. This is one of the facets of Anne’s personality that may seem utterly perplexing, since she was so forward-thinking in every other regard. However, as seen on multiple accounts within her journal and even a bit in Gentleman Jack, Anne was very self-serving. Anne was also a Tory, which means that she believed in hereditary inheritance — not too surprising since she benefited from that law. Anne’s love of being upper class, especially after her inheritance of Shibden Estate, encouraged her to look over not only Eliza but other romantic conquests that she deemed unworthy of her status.
But unfortunately for Anne, karma came back around to get her. In 1813, Anne moved back to York, where she met Mariana Belcombe. The two women quickly hit it off and had a fiery relationship for three years, until Mariana married a wealthy Englishman. However, Anne and Mariana kept the affair going for years after the marriage, until Mariana ended things due to embarrassment of Anne’s masculine appearance. People would stare at the two women when they were out because Anne looked and acted like a man, and Mariana couldn’t take it anymore. This is touched upon in the series, but the full extent of Anne’s distress – which was heavy – isn’t fully depicted. Though Anne was rather thick-skinned, the woman she loved telling her that she doesn’t like her appearance broke her heart. For a while after, Anne focused mostly on her affairs at Shibden.
After Anne inherited Shibden from her uncle, she was on the lookout for a wealthy heiress who she could marry. This is around when Gentleman Jack starts, seeing Anne return from abroad to run things at the estate. Anne learns about Ann Walker, who is a single, very wealthy heiress. Seeing that Ann is a very quiet, malleable woman, she believes it likely to be easy to “shape” her into the perfect wife (along with wanting her money and influence). After a fairly short courtship, the two women basically tricked a priest into giving them a special blessing after mass that effectively recognized their communion in the eyes of God – AKA, they got married. For two women to get married in the 1800s is basically unheard of, making the Ann(e)s true pioneers for autonomy in a lesbian relationship.
From here on, much of what happened in Anne’s life, though on a slightly different timeline, is also illustrated in Gentleman Jack: her love of travel and adventure, her running the Shibden Estate with Ann by her side, and her dealings with Christopher Rawson over their coal rivalry. One event that took place in real life that hasn’t been shown in the series (yet) is Rawson inciting a mob to go to the center of Halifax and burn effigies of Ann and Anne in order to scare Lister away from the coal business. Instead, like her character does after being beaten in the show, Anne doesn’t give up. The real Anne ended up getting an even bigger coal pit and eventually forced Rawson to back down.
Anne died in 1839 during a trip to Russia with Ann, during which she was bitten by a fever-carrying tick. Though her death was not as dramatic as her life, it does say something that she was in Russia when it happened. Not many women in the 19th century would have traveled so far, especially when only accompanied by another woman. Anne Lister, though possessing questionable politics and oftentimes morals, was undeniably a force to be reckoned with and a woman far ahead of her time. Her tenaciousness in pursuing her romantic conquests reveals her bravery against a world that marked her as "other." Anne’s brilliance is demonstrated by her detailed and skilled writing, as well as her ability to develop her own personal alphabet, of sorts. Anne wasn’t afraid to act outside prescribed gender roles, think outside the box, or go after what she wanted. Though Gentleman Jack puts in a wonderful effort, it’s hard to know if any TV portrayal could ever do her justice.