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‘The dark night has passed, and day has come again.’

‘Auta i lómë, utúlie’n aurë!’

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"Mary"

American vintage postcard, illustrated by Harrison Fisher

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One thing this chapter impresses on me is how young Rilla really is. My subconscious has her slotted into "17-18" for the entire book, but as she points out, she'll be fifteen - then sixteen - then seventeen. WWI really collides directly with her maturing into an adult. Imagine being a high school sophomore who has a locally popular instagram account and then suddenly being hit with WWI

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I had a similar thought! Although you know much more about it than I do.

I'm choosing to read Miss Oliver as a stand in for LM Montgomery's voice to a certain extent, because LM Montgomery also had what she deemed prophetic dreams about WWI, and her diaries can sometimes show that same bitter cynicism. Rubio (if I'm getting my LMM scholar correct) even theorized that near the end of her life, LMM became obsessed with the idea that her life had been marked as one for misfortune, much like Miss Oliver's hardships. I'm going to have to dig up some salient LMM passages here as we proceed with Miss Oliver, because I think it will be an interesting lens on the discussion

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Anyways canon ravenbarley *is* a win and people who act like they’re too cool and edgy to be happy about it piss me off.

“He didn’t even say his mate was barely” in the kindest way possible, literally how else do you interpret that?? The graphic novels have always been more progressive and I get having low expectations for warriors but genuinely the graphic novels tackle a lot of subjects a lot better than the originals and trying to argue that ravenpaw saying he has a mate at the barn now and then telling them to visit him and barley whenever they want leaves possibility for anything else is. Honestly. Weird as hell. (Also this ravenpaw and barley post by the artist that makes me think they would have said something if the fandom was misinterpreting it en masse but that’s just me idk)

“The graphic novels are different than the originals so it doesn’t really count as a win” oh I’m sorry! Did you want us to hop in our Time Machine and go back to change the originals? There’s quite literally nothing we can do to change that. This is a win

“It’s embarrassing it took this long to get canon gay warriors” yeah it is. Are you gonna make it even more embarrassing by sulking about it when the rest of your community are celebrating

“We probably won’t get any more gay cats though” honestly you’re right. It’s sad. But knowing this, genuinely if you want more representation, if that’s something that’s super important to you, consume different media. If all this happened and you’re still just unhappy, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not going to pretend like canon ravenbarley is going to change the world, I’m not acting like this is the most revolutionary thing any fandom has ever done, I’m simply saying that you need to stop shitting on people who are happy about it. People have been hoping for this for twenty years and honestly getting to see ANY ship canonized after two decades is super fun and cool, but make that the first gay ship in a fandom ever and that’s honestly just super cool okay!!! And it makes me sad to see people act like people who are happy about it are stupid or “””aren’t progressive enough””” or whatever is just. Ugh.

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Travertines of Pamukkale, Turkey by Talip Çetin

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Rilla of Ingleside Book Club, Chapter 1 (“Glen ‘Notes’ and Other Matters”)

The basic dissonance of this book is that it’s World War I as the “home front” in Canada saw it, and as it was presented to them by the government and the news media. This means that, seen through the characters’ eyes, it cannot avoid being a work of political propaganda – to them the war is a terrible but necessary defence against the evil Kaiser, whereas in the reality of history it was a horrifically pointless mistake that achieved nothing but destruction. Characters who question the war, like Whiskers-on-the-Moon, are ridiculed and derided by the text. This can be useful, provided we keep the reality in mind, because it’s a lesson to interrogate the sources and assumptions of our own time: seeing how other people fell for propaganda can hopefully help us to avoid doing the same.

All that said, this is a really great start to the narrative. It reminds me of myself in January 2020 when I thought COVID was a minor thing that would be over soon just like SARS was.

There was a big, black headline on the “front page of the Enterprise, stating that some Archduke Ferdinand or other had been assassinated at a place bearing the weird name of Sarajevo, but Susan tarried not over uninteresting, immaterial stuff like that; she was in quest of something really vital. Oh, here it was—"Jottings from Glen St. Mary." Susan settled down keenly, reading each one over aloud to extract all possible gratification from it.

Since people are already discussing Susan – this feels like the thing you get in British literature where the servants are frequently more conservative, conventional, and change-averse than their employers. (For example, Hannah, the servant of the Rivers family in Jane Eyre.) Susan’s exaggerated conventionality makes her a somewhat comic figure that offsets the drama of the rest of the book. She is, in a sense, the archetype of small-town PEI.

The chapter’s a useful reintroduction to the Green Gables family, with the kids ranging from Jem at 21 to Rilla at 14.

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I love Rilla. I also have some concern about her lack of plan, but at fourteen it’s okay. But your saying that she is the “other girls” that most heroines are not like is so true and absolutely brilliant.

Rilla of Ingleside Book Club – Chapter 2 (“Dew of Morning”)

My gut is saying that the chapter title is a Bible reference. Whether my gut is correct or not, the metaphor is clear – something that is beautiful but very transitory. The chapter’s purpose is dramatic irony, and it lays it on thick. “Sometimes I wish something dramatic would happen once in a while.” “Don't wish it. Dramatic things always have a bitterness for some one.” “Don't wish your youth away. It goes too quickly. You'll begin to taste life soon enough."

"Taste life! I want to eat it," cried Rilla, laughing. "I want everything—everything a girl can have. I'll be fifteen in another month, and then nobody can say I'm a child any longer. I heard someone say once that the years from fifteen to nineteen are the best years in a girl's life. I'm going to make them perfectly splendid—just fill them with fun.”

“I can't be sober and serious—everything looks so rosy and rainbowy to me. Next month I'll be fifteen—and next year sixteen—and the year after that seventeen. Could anything be more enchanting?"

"Rap wood," said Gertrude Oliver, half laughingly, half seriously. "Rap wood, Rilla-my-Rilla."

By the time the war ends, Rilla’s girlhood will be over – in terms of age. In terms of life experience, it will be over sooner than that.

The other purpose of the chapter is to introduce Rilla, amd wow is it a contrast to LM Montgomery’s other characters. Anne’s central characteristic is her imagination (and temper), Emily’s her love of writing (and her pride), Jane’s (in Jane of Lantern Hill) her desire for responsibility and usefulness as expressed in domestic tasks. Rilla…Rilla is the “other girls” that novel protagonists aren’t like. Rilla is the silly, shallow girls who thonk of nothing but beaux and parties and dresses, and who want beaux – plural! – not because they love anyone in particular, but because it’s a mark of admiration. Sure, she’s, 14, but – girl! At some point you are going to have to do something with your life! Whether you get work and support yourself or get married and become a housewife, you are going to need some kind of skills! This isn’t an Austen novel! You can’t count on some rich guy to be enchanted and sweep you off to live a life of leisure surrounded by servants, so you need to have some actual abilities beyond being pretty and charming!

In some ways she feels like Anne’s young friend with all the italics in Anne of Windy Poplars (she’s even trying to be besties with her teacher in the same way!). The girl whose life has largely been free of bitterness affects to speak “bitterly” to echo the gravitas of someone with real life experience – not to put on a facade for others, but to feel more interesting to herself. (I may be being too hard on her. Her favourite brother being so sick he was hospitalized is a kind of hardship most present-day people haven’t experienced by 14).

Rilla is possibly the least ‘exceptional’ or unusual of LM Montgomery’s heroines, amd I think her frivolity here is the point, as a contrast to how the war will shape her. Someome who was already serious and forward-thinking wouldn’t have the same kind of arc.

“Wordsworth never wrote anything like Walter's poems—nor Tennyson, either."

"I wouldn't say just that. Both of them wrote a great deal of trash," said Miss Oliver dryly.

This made me laugh out loud. I do like Walter – it’s just, the enthusiasm of the young vs the perspective of the older.

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…that is mindblowing. I confess I do not like Dean Priest myself, but since Gertrude’s fiancé is not twelve years old, I have no reservations about liking her.

Gertrude Oliver was twenty-eight and life had been a struggle for her. She was a striking-looking girl, with rather sad, almond-shaped brown eyes, a clever, rather mocking mouth, and enormous masses of black hair twisted about her head. She was not pretty but there was a certain charm of interest and mystery in her face, and Rilla found her fascinating. Even her occasional moods of gloom and cynicism had allurement for Rilla. These moods came only when Miss Oliver was tired. At all other times she was a stimulating companion, and the gay set at Ingleside never remembered that she was so much older than themselves

I will not lie, I’ve always had a crush on Gertrude Oliver and I finally figured out why. It’s because she described so exactly like Dean Priest. She’s the female entry of Maud’s cynical, mocking, not-good-looking-but-mysterious-and-fascinating, clever, and old-but-young prototype that I (and Maud’s heroines I guess) have always found so appealing.

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I think at least one person has already pointed out that Dr-Jekyll-and-Mr-Hyde the cat is just acting like, well, a cat, but I was observing Nemesis this morning and thinking of that duality of cats: perfect little angels who can do no wrong and also absolute gremlins.

There is no in-between.

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reminder that "allies welcome" was once secret code for "those not out yet can still participate without putting themselves at risk", and for those who aren't out yet to comfortably exist in these spaces you have to let allies exist in those spaces too.

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Ahhh. I generally don’t approve of the “#just a girl” movement—but that would fully be Rilla, you’re right. At the beginning of the book, that is. I think that while she remains unabashedly feminine to the end, once she learns what she is capable of, she will realize there’s nothing “just” about being a girl.

The thing I really love about Rilla is how unique a heroine she is in the Maudverse. She’s not brainy, she’s explicitly pretty, she’s young for her age instead of precocious, she’s hashtag just a girl. Her tumblr blog would be angelcore and pictures of picnics and fashion inspo. I know Maud tells us Anne is “feminine to the core” in AOGG, but Rilla is the only one who really gets to lean into that cultural femininity—and be empowered by it, especially with Jims—in a way that’s rejected by Emily/Ilse, and played with more slyly with Valancy, and unwittingly pathologized in Pat. (Even Jane the Homemaker isn’t allowed that much freedom, considering her parents, as was well discussed in that book club!)

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Why are you using chatgpt to get through college. Why are you spending so much time and money on something just to be functionally illiterate and have zero new skills at the end of it all. Literally shooting yourself in the foot. If you want to waste thirty grand you can always just buy a sportscar.

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Friends by Ukrainian artist Tetyana Holembievksa. 1959.