#Rilla of Ingleside

[petaltexturedskies]

"Hasn't June been a delightful month?" she asked, looking dreamily afar at the little quiet silvery clouds hanging so peacefully over Rainbow Valley. "We've had such lovely times–and such lovely weather. It has just been perfect every way."

L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

[freyafrida]

rilla of ingleside book club, chapter two

okay I'm already kind of over screencapping the text except for the chapter titles lmao. moving on!

"Her hair was ripely, ruddily brown"

Honestly funny that I'm not sure any of the popular editions of this book have managed to get this right. Rilla's a much brighter redhead on the Bantam cover, and even the unabridged, researched and lovingly restored Viking Press version looks like this:

I have...no real opinions about Miss Oliver; I think her ~visions~ tend to be a little too dramatic (especially once she starts predicting the outcome of the war with them, like come on), although the way she teases Susan and the Blythes is occasionally funny. I'd rather her role be replaced with an actual peer of Rilla's (lots of girls are mentioned as Rilla's friends in passing, but we don't see an actual friendship between them!), but I don't feel that strongly about it. (Actually, having read the rest of the chapter, I had the sobering realization that Miss Oliver is probably the character I'm most like, in that I am pessimistic over things going too well and a little superstitious and also Of An Age and unmarried. Welp. This has been an educational read.)

“Why couldn’t they have called her by her first name, Bertha, which was beautiful and dignified, instead of that silly “Rilla”? ”

This is so funny to me because I don't think there's a single girl in the 21st century who would rather be called "Bertha" than "Rilla." rilla/carl agenda time: you ever think about how they both go by shortened versions of their middle names and nobody ever uses their first names?

I do wish we got a little more of Marilla (Cuthbert) besides Rilla just casually mentioning that she died and Rilla hated her name :(

I def. remember thinking Rilla and Walter's relationship was eye-rollingly saccharine as a kid -- as the elder of two siblings I was like, "Start bullying her or get out of the older sibling club Walter", but thinking about it more -- while my brother and I fought constantly as kids, by the time I was Walter's age and my brother was Rilla's, we actually did get along really well! So, yeah, baby freyafrida was wrong there, lol -- I actually really love Walter as a big brother, reading this now. He's clearly so sweet and patient with Rilla's need for attention from her older siblings ❤️ (Also, while I have never shown my diary to anyone, I do wince in sympathy with Rilla showing hers to Walter, because I def. had that urge as a teenager -- the idea that showing someone you like/admire all your secrets will make them understand the Real You and open up in turn.)

The dynamic between Rilla and the rest of her siblings also intrigues me -- she seems...apart from them, in a way, almost like Shirley? I mean, part of it is probably that there are just no scenes of her spending time with them, and that she was too young to be part of their shenanigans in Rainbow Valley, but it does lend some...legitimacy, I guess, to her being upset that they're all hanging out without her -- while it's understandable that Jem is too old to really want to hang with her, the gap between her and Nan/Di isn't much bigger than the gap between them and Jem iirc. (Just speculating, but I imagine it'd be hard to be the only other sister to a pair of twins.) (That said, every pair of siblings I knew who were only 1-3 years apart in age got along swimmingly -- I really envied them when I didn't get along with my brother -- so Rilla and Shirley should've been besties!!)

Speaking of, love the mention that Shirley teases Rilla by calling her "Spider" 🥹 He's so nonexistent that it's easy to speculate he's not close with his family, so I love that he does have a teasing relationship with her.

“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.”

LMAOOO. I will say I did not particularly enjoy any of the poems attributed to Walter in The Blythes Are Quoted, apart from "The Aftermath" -- maybe it's a personal taste thing, although I do think part of it is that they're very much in LMM's voice, so they come off weirdly twee if you're trying to imagine that a college-age dude wrote them.

Ah, and of course there's Walter writing poems to Faith. Now, the way I jumped when I saw in Readying Rilla that the draft originally explicitly said Walter was in love with Faith! From what's actually published, you could read him writing sonnets to her as a poetic or aesthetic interest (although I do think he had a legit crush on her, see below), so it's v. interesting to see that the original intent was that he was into her, romantically. Also interesting suggestion that it might've caused conflict with Jem and Walter, although of course it didn't -- mentioned before, but it's funny that this whole Jem/Faith/Walter situation gets set up in Rainbow Valley and mentioned at the start of Rilla, and then it goes absolutely nowhere. There's never any drama between Jem or Walter because of it and it never comes up again.

Speaking of...is it too early for Walter Sexuality Discourse? LOL. Tbh I don't have much to say there; my boring Both Sides take is that I see the vision in reading Walter as gay and I don't think it's a reach -- on the other hand, I also think there's evidence that his thing with Una is meant to be a doomed romance where Walter was capable of reciprocating, and I roll with that reading because I love Una too much to think that Walter wouldn't love her back. Anyway, I bring it up because I do read Walter as being legitimately attracted to and interested in Faith. There's not much of it in Rilla, but in RV I do think he has a clear crush on her. ("Walter did not want to ride a pig through Glen St. Mary, but whatever Faith Meredith dared him to do must be done.") It jives a lot with his worship of beauty for beauty's sake and his Anne-like tendency to get swept away by ideals and surface-level perceptions (e.g. fearing the pain of getting his tooth pulled in RV even though having the chronic toothache is worse).

(Once again an interesting choice -- Faith briefly thinks Jem is handsome at the start of RV, and they get a brief scene together at the end of that book, then are nearly engaged in Rilla. And yet, much of RV is actually devoted to Faith and Walter's friendship -- although I think it's kinda obvious straight off that they wouldn't work as a couple, see Faith telling Walter to just suck it up re: his toothache and get it pulled. She'd get sick of his poetry and dramatics so fast, lmao.)

“I don’t half like that,” said Miss Oliver, with a sigh. “It’s ominous—somehow. A perfect thing is a gift of the gods—a sort of compensation for what is coming afterwards. I’ve seen that so often that I don’t care to hear people say they’ve had a perfect time. June has been delightful, though.” “Don’t wish it. Dramatic things always have a bitterness for some one. What a nice summer all you gay creatures will have! And me moping at Lowbridge!”

Miss Oliver, you don't have to respond to everything Rilla says with how moody and emo you are, lmao.

“I heard some one say once that the years from fifteen to nineteen are the best years in a girl’s life.”

I love how weirdly specific that is to encompass the years of the coming war. Like, haha, get it??

“Father says I toil not neither do I spin.”

This is interestingly exactly what Phil Gordon says about herself in Anne of the Island!

“And then,” continued Anne, “there will be a good deal of work to be done. Stella’s aunt can’t do it all. We all expect to have our chores to do. Now, you—” “Toil not, neither do I spin,” finished Philippa.

Although I have to wonder...if Rilla's not doing chores and not studying, what exactly is she planning to do every day for the next four years? Genuinely I'm not super up on what she would've been able to fill her days with (social calls all the time?), I'd be interested in any insight there.

Anyway, this is basically another chapter that sets up the idyll of Ingleside life before war invades it, this time setting Rilla's character up for us. I always liked Rilla -- she was a fave upon first read and I still like her now! Idk, I've always liked silly, frivolous female characters -- I think it's because growing up, I felt like such characters in children's/YA books were often portrayed disproportionately negatively -- I never felt like their behavior was offensive enough to warrant them having to be humbled, you know? (don't ask for examples because I can't think of any off the top of my head lmao, I'm just recalling Vibes from when I was young that shaped my opinion in this direction!) I think the fact that the narration has a sense of humor about her ("...sighed Rilla, a little importantly”) also makes her frivolity more palatable and even relatable -- who doesn't love a good self-important sigh every now and again, you know?

Readying Rilla stuff:

Rilla originally just refers to Walter having "the flu" (or, well "the fl", LMM apparently cut that idea off before it even finished lmao) instead of typhoid; interesting to think if he was meant to have nearly died from the flu, or if his illness was initially much less serious!

Walter is initially referred to as being 19 instead of twenty. Not sure if he was intentionally aged up or this is another example of "Shirley is eighteen for two years"-esque math.

Dog Monday's name was originally some variation of "Jink/Jack/Jacks" and then Rags.

[roses-red-and-pink]

Rilla wanting to wear the green dress because it’s an inch longer and is as much as her mom will let her get away with is giving the same energy as a modern teenage girl choosing a dress because it’s an inch shorter and that’s as much as her mom will let her get away with.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Rilla of Ingleside Book Club – Chapter 4 (“The Piper Pipes”)

This chapter is two stories in parallel: Rilla’s teenage ups and downs, and Everyone Being Wrong About World War I. The latter is striking for all the different ways to be wrong.

First, there’s all the people who can’t imagine this will meaningfully affect their lives at all.

Then there’s Jem, who’s raring to go, convinced this will be a brave and gallant adventure

Then there’s Kenneth Ford, similar to Jem in his attitude (he wants to go, and is disappointed to “miss out on everything” because of his ankle), but also exemplifying the now-infamous “home by Christmas!” conviction

And finally there’s Walter, with his accurate premonitions of how horrible the war will be, but convinced it’s a evil plot the Kaiser has been brewing for two decades instead of a clusterfuck of epic proportions contributed to by a heck of a lot of different people.

If you want a good history of the origins of WWI, I recommend Margaret MacMillan’s The War That Ended Peace (her book of the end of the war, Paris 1919, is even better). What I’m saying here is an extremely rough summary that academics could probably take issue with on a number of fronts (and is mostly from pretty boilerplate history classes as my memory of The War That Ended Peace is fuzzy), but it is at minimum a heck of a lot more accurate than the opinions of anyone in Rilla of Ingleside, so I feel the need to put it here.

One of the things that stands out when you play Diplomacy, a tabletop strategy game based on World War I (each player plays one of the major powers) is that the places you are vulnerable stand out much more than the places you are strong. Everyone looks like a potential threat to everyone else, which makes everyone feel they need to go on the offense to maintain an advantage.

Austria-Hungary (ally of Germany) was a declining major power. Its leaders felt it needed to exact heavy reprisals on Serbia. Their demands included Serbia allowing Austria-Hungary to suppress ‘subversion’ withing Serbia; Serbia rejected this as an infringement on its sovereignty.

Russia (ally of France) had no vital strategic interests at stake. If they had stayed out of it, the First World War might not have happened. But in an age of nationalism, Russia was emphasizing “pan-Slavism”, and the idea of supporting their “little brothers” in Serbia (similar to Jem’s feeling of the need and duty to back up “mother England”, led them to get involved, as did national prestige – they had backed down in previous Balkan crises and felt that doing so again would make them look weak.

Germany was pretty much egging Austria-Hungary on – not because the Kaiser was the supervillain in search of world conquest that Walter imagines (though he was an arrogant, insecure, and ill-judging man, a bad combination), but because the German government expected a European war to happen at some point and they preferred it to happen now, when they were strong, rather than later, when they might be weaker.

The basic structure of Europe was that Germany and France hated each other, due to Germany baiting France into a war in the 1870s that France lost very badly. Germany was more populous and more industrially powerful than France. This led France to look desperately for allies within continental Europe, and they ended up with Russia – a very strange partnership, with France being the only real democracy among the major powers (no, not Britain! setting aside the question of women’s suffrage, which none of the great powers had, in 1914 it did not even have universal male suffrage) and Russia the most autocratic. (Germany had some representative institutions, putting it somewhere between Britain and Russia on the democracy scale – another reason why the “democracies vs tyrannies” narrative that takes hold in Rilla of Ingleside was propaganda.) This in turn made Germany feel vulnerable, because now they had enemies on both sides (they called this ‘being encircled’), and their ally Austria-Hungary was getting weaker by the day. The German government – Kaiser Wilhelm II does merit some serious blame for this – then got in a fairly unnecessary rivalry with Brutain that led to Britain allying with France and Russia, which only added to Germans’ sense of vulnerability. So the overwhelming impetus from Germany here is not ‘world conquest, yay!’ but ‘we have to beat them now or they’ll beat us later!’ Did Wilhem II have many negative traits? Yes! But so did Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

Germany thought the only way they could win a two-front war with France and Russia was invade France through Belgium (since the Belgian-German and Belgian-French borders were much less defensible than the French-German border), knock France out of the war fast, and then be able to turn around and deal with Russia. Ironically, the opposite happened: the Western Front turned into, well, the Western Front of grinding trench warfare while Germany had some major victories against Russia.

So, Britain joins both due to its alliance with France and the German invasion of neutral Belgium (and btw, if you want to know the shit Belgium was up to in Africa around this time, I recommend the book King Leopold’s Ghost), and Canada as part of the British Empire is automatically at war with Germany and Austria-Hungary too.

And contributing to all this you have the railroads. Getting your armies to your border was a matter of railroads. Everyone knew how long it would take them to mobilize their population and get their armies to the border with an enemy state, and how long it would take their enemies to do so. Which meant that if another country mobilized against you – even if it was ultimately a bluff – youhad to mobilize against them right away, or you’d have an enemy army showing up on your undefended border. This was one of the things that helped make it more difficult to get cooler heads to prevail.

And on top of all this, there were dozens of small, individual, personal events involving heads of state and diplomats and cabinet ministers, and who was where at what time, that contributed to everyone making the worst decisions.

There are two quotes from The War That Ended Peace that I want to conclude this bit with. One is from the German Foreign Minister in 1912 (dead by 1914), during a previous Balkan crisis:

“Bluff, everything a bluff. I’ll live to see it now for the third time: Algeciras, Morocco, and now this. Only now, one always attempts to trump the other with bluffs. War could only happen if one were so unfathomably foolish to bluff so badly as to be unable to go back down on it and had to shoot. I really consider none of the current coming statesmen an example of such oxen.”

Unfortunately, he was wrong. But it gets at the belief, that existed even on the verge of war in 1914, that none of this might actually, really, happen; that it would all die down fast. No one wanted World War I to be what it was.

The other quote is Margaret MacMillan’s conclusion at the very end of the book:

…if we want to point fingers from the twenty-first century we can accuse those who took Europe into war of two things. First, a failure of imagination in not seeing how destructive such a conflict would be and second, their lack of courage to stand up to those who said there was no choice left to go to war. There are always choices.

The rest of Rilla of Ingleside is going to have as a major theme the question of having the courage to fight. It does not take into consideration the truly important question of having the courage not to.

[theincorrigiblemagpie]

Rilla of Ingleside - Chapters 3 & 4

What does taffy-pull for those who won't/can't dance mean? Is this a literal taffy-pull (which doesn't seem so bad)? Or a metaphor for something else?

"We couldn't let the 'old grey mother of the northern sea' fight it out alone, could we?" Canada's stance on England was so interesting to me even as a preteen. I know very little about Canada's colonial history and a quick search tells me that the process of gaining independence from England was a gradual one. Is that why all the "good people" in this book are sympathetic to England? Because they didn't have to fight a war of independence? And/or because they were descendants of English (among other) settler colonists? Both Jem and Ken consider this a 'family affair.' In contrast, India with a very different (and violent) colonial past, had public sentiment turning against the British Empire long before 1914, even though Indian soldiers were drafted to fight in WW1 and 2 as part of the British Indian forces.

War was a hellish, horrible, hideous thing—too horrible and hideous to happen in the twentieth century between civilized nations. ���

I don't think I'd appreciated earlier how deftly LMM manages the many, many narrative threads and character arcs in this book. Sure, some are dropped and picked up at whim, but overall, you get such a rich picture of the entire group, their thoughts and hopes and priorities, what the period was like, how they felt about each other!

I have to say it again, Rilla is SO relatable lmao. The excitement around the party, the desperation to seem grown up, the crush on Ken, the impractical fashion choices to appear pretty, the patronizing from various people, the indignity of being forgotten and her barefoot walk home—I swear I've lived through every single incident at some point or other in my life.

[kehlana-wolhamonao3]

Very good points!

I would also add that I think Anne would be less bothered by Rilla's vanity if she wasn't the only one of her children without ambition or any desire for further education. Academic drive was such a big part of both Anne's and Gilbert's lives, and all of their children except Rilla pursue higher education. So I suspect that Anne bemoans the fact that Rilla is satisfied enough with looking pretty and having good time more than just her pleasure in her good looks (after all, Nan is also very pretty and cares about her appearance).

Rilla of Ingleside Book Club: Chapter I, Glen “Notes” and Other Matters

I love that this starts with notes in the newspaper—an immediate callback to the ones Gilbert wrote in “Anne of Avonlea”. I wonder who wrote these?

Susan’s reaction to Jack Frost having kittens, a perfectly normal thing to have happen when you don’t have anyone who knows how to look at the pet’s underside—one of my favorite songs is based on this, and my own mom had a female dog named Jerry who had puppies—is funny in its overblown-ness, also perhaps a bit sad, and above all makes me wonder: was it a normal thing in 1914 for people to be so dramatic over something so commonplace because it made the world a little less binary, or is this specifically a Susan thing?

Generally, as “Cats” is my favorite musical and above mentioned song is from it, I am a big fan of this cat and think he’d fit in well there. This is my first time, though, noticing that it is the weather that makes him Mr. Hyde. I wonder if he is like Winn-Dixie, another beloved pet of children’s literature, and has a pathological fear of thunderstorms?

I’d been thinking about Bruce Meredith recently, wondering that, if he looked so much like his uncle Norman, how no one ever started a rumor that Rosemary and Norman had an affair. But now I see—it’s Ellen he looks like. That’s much less sinister���especially given that Rosemary hates Norman. I wonder how she feels, nonetheless, when she hears him joking that Bruce should have been his son and not hers.

Anne is so funny as a responsible mother. But I guess I’d rather that the woman who once bemoaned her own looks worry over her daughter being vain than try to live vicariously through her. I guess. I don’t know. It always seems to me that people in this time came down much too hard on girls for thinking at all well of themselves. And given Anne’s own youthful insecurities, I would have thought she’d be glad for her daughter being spared that. I’m interested in the rest of the fandom’s thoughts.

[freyafrida]

rilla of ingleside, chapter three

this turned out to be a long one bc i can't shut up about these kids lmao

This is probably the chapter I've reread the most! After hearing about the Blythe-Meredith kids from the gossipy ladies in chapter one, and meeting Rilla, Walter, and Miss Oliver in chapter two, the war generation all finally shows up in this chapter, and we get a sense of them from the way they talk and interact on the way to the lighthouse dance. Since it's the only pre-war chapter featuring all the kids, I find myself rereading it a lot for fanfic personality/relationship references, haha.

“The latter had come over from Lowbridge the previous evening and had been prevailed upon to remain for the dance at the Four Winds lighthouse the next night.”

Sometimes I forget that Gertrude is meant to be living in Lowbridge for parts of the book because she's at Ingleside all the time anyway lmao.

“It’s my first really-truly grown-up party, Miss Oliver, and I’ve just lain awake at nights for a week thinking it over. ”

Something about this sentence reads so much like young Anne to me (maybe the phrasing of "really-truly"); despite Anne's concern over Rilla's lack of ambition, Rilla is her mother's daughter in that sense of dreaminess and earnest excitement over things she loves.

Inch restingly, it seems like Rilla turns fifteen between this chapter and the last (last chapter was June, she's turning fifteen next month, it's now August, per the events of the chapter and Walter's description of "How beautiful the old Glen was, in its August ripeness"). I have thoughts about this bc I was wrestling with her birthday in a fic and realized -- the book doesn't recognize her birthday at all, not in the four years it spans. You'd think Rilla would've had a fifteenth birthday party before the war, at least, but it doesn't appear so. I don't think Anne has a proper birthday party ever, either, although she's mentioned to attend one or two over the course of the series.

“Of course Carl and Jerry can’t dance because they’re the minister’s sons, or else I could depend on them to save me from utter disgrace.”

Carl swooping in to save Rilla from utter disgrace!!! LMM why can't you let me have these things 😭 (Also, I realize they must see each other often, given that they're from two close families in a small town, but I have to admit I find it hard to believe that Jerry even knows Rilla exists.)

Disappointingly for the Rilla/Carl agenda, the bit abut Jerry and Carl not being able to dance was not in the original draft, per Readying Rilla -- instead, it says "but they're just like my brothers and I'll feel they're only doing it out of charity." LMM sniping me from beyond the grave 😩 Also curious if LMM like...forgot that minister's children shouldn't dance, or if it was more of an expectation that not everyone followed, and she made the decision to use it as a reason. (The bit about it feeling like charity is applied to Gertrude feeling that way about Jem and Walter dancing with her instead -- also, it's initially written that Jem and Jerry will take her out, but Jerry is crossed out and replaced with Walter, presumably due to the above edit.)

“I tried to draw back—and I saw that the edge of my dress was wet with blood—and I woke—shivering. I don’t like the dream. There was some sinister significance in it. That kind of vivid dream always ‘comes true’ with me.”

@batrachised pointed out that Gertrude's (I'm going to start calling her Gertrude instead of Miss Oliver because otherwise I'm going to keep going back and forth weirdly) dreams were actually based on LMM's, which, fair enough! That very much tracks with how seriously (almost) everyone takes Gertrude's visions. Idk -- I'm struggling to articulate why it comes off as almost laughably melodramatic to me -- because the war and death do come to Ingleside and touch our characters, and the shattering of their idyllic world is devastating to them (as it was to LMM); it's not as though her dream is wrong, necessarily. Maybe it's just the benefit of hindsight -- like Gertrude's going on about waves of blood on their shores and I'm just in the future like, "maybe you should save some of the dramatics because it's going to get so much worse." (Buuut I am also melodramatic and superstitious so maybe I just do not like looking in this mirror 😔)

“I think the party promises to be pleasant for young fry. I expect to be bored. None of those boys will bother dancing with an old maid like me. Jem and Walter will take me out once out of charity. There will be nobody for me even to talk to. So you can’t expect me to look forward to it with your touching young rapture.”

lmao jesus christ Gertrude. It's especially funny that she says this while also saying that she wants Rilla to have the "splendid, happy" girlhood that she didn't. Let her live then!!! (Also funny that Cousin Sophia is being portrayed as doom and gloom when she says stuff like this, while Gertrude is ~alluringly moody~)

And of course, the war is starting to become a concern for everyone except Rilla -- Dr. Blythe, Jem, and Walter are mentioned to be poring over the paper (none of the girls, even with their interests in 'ologies and 'isms, seem to care -- which sadly tracks, see Anne basically refusing to have a political opinion in House of Dreams. Gertrude, in fairness, is following the war news and mentions it to Rilla). It's interesting that part of the honor in fighting, for Jem, is entwined with defending the British Empire, considering it a family that they're a part of. Iiii...haven't developed any deep thoughts on this, lmao, I've always sort of taken it at face value that Jem -- and Ken, later -- feel this way as Anglo Dudes From 1914, particularly as there is a streak of...insularity, perhaps, in the books re: Anglo Canada. (But it is equally interesting that later on, characters express that they're fighting for Canada instead, not Britain.)

Walter's reaction to the war is telling -- he not only hates the idea (also, lol/sigh that they're just too civilized in the modern age of the twentieth century to go to war) but is kind of in denial about it, refusing to think of it and trying to distract himself with beautiful things.

“Mary Vance is a habit of ours—we can’t do without her even when we are furious with her,” Di Blythe had once said.”

I suppose it says a lot about Mary's character and general self-confidence/lack of self-awareness that she hangs out with people who talk about her like this, because I would not, lol.

“Carl Meredith was walking with Miranda Pryor, more to torment Joe Milgrave than for any other reason.”

LMAO what did Joe Milgrave ever do to Carl? I can't quite make out what this says about Carl -- it doesn't really jive with any of his behavior in Rainbow Valley; he doesn't particularly enjoy getting a rise out of people (e.g. in the chapter where he's not whipped, he feels bad over throwing the eel in the buggy; in the rest of the book, he's almost like, blissfully unaware that his various critters freak other people out). I suppose you could read him as being a bit competitive, or simply that he still enjoys mildly teasing people (which makes his friendship with Rilla pretty funny, given that being teased harrows her soul). Of course, worth mentioning that there's also not much evidence that Rilla and Carl are still close at this point :(

“Shirley Blythe was with Una Meredith and both were rather silent because such was their nature. Shirley was a lad of sixteen, sedate, sensible, thoughtful, full of a quiet humour. He was Susan’s “little brown boy” yet, with his brown hair, brown eyes and clear brown skin. He liked to walk with Una Meredith because she never tried to make him talk or badgered him with chatter. ”

Shirley being the personification of that "best friend I ever had, we still never talk sometimes" Parks and Rec quote, lol. The summation of him is so good, though -- despite what a nonentity he is compared to the other Blythe kids, you get such a good measure of him just from "sedate, sensible, thoughtful, full of a quiet humour." ❤️ I always go back and forth on the possibility of shipping him with Una -- it's lovely that Shirley appreciates her for who she is, that he likes that she's quiet and unassuming. On the other hand, like...what, do they never talk? Lmao. (Una also strikes me as having a bit of...repressed emotion, see her bottling things up and telling them to her mother's old wedding dress as a child, idk that Shirley would be able to draw that out of her...? But he is thoughtful and wholesome, so, maybe!)

“Una was as sweet and shy as she had been in the Rainbow Valley days, and her large, dark-blue eyes were as dreamy and wistful. She had a secret, carefully-hidden fancy for Walter Blythe which nobody but Rilla ever suspected. ”

MY GIRL \O/ I've seen it said that it seems unlikely that no one but Rilla suspects Una's feelings for Walter, but I actually quite like it -- it hints at Rilla actually being empathetic and perceptive under her frivolity, which she'll grow into over the war.

“She liked Una better than Faith, whose beauty and aplomb rather overshadowed other girls—and Rilla did not enjoy being overshadowed.”

Lol, it is very on-brand for early Rilla to feel she's in competition with Faith -- and I'm sure Faith doesn't think about Rilla at all, being 4-5 years older than her. (That said, I sympathize with Rilla not being a Faith enjoyer -- even though she's set up as getting into Anne-like scrapes in RV, the books lean a little too hard on how charming and intelligent and beautiful she is; she loses the flawed, earnestly trying vibe that made Anne endearing imo.) (Also, I love Rilla and Una, but it cracks me up that Rilla basically just likes Una better because she doesn't see her as a threat.)

“ bell was ringing in the little church over-harbour and the lingering dream-notes died around the dim, amethystine points. The gulf beyond was still silvery blue in the afterlight. Oh, it was all glorious—the clear air with its salt tang, the balsam of the firs, the laughter of her friends.”

I haven't been mentioning the nature descriptions because I don't really have anything to say about them other than they're lovely! Such a good sense of those moments when you're just happy, everything around you feels beautiful and you don't mind your problems in that moment -- and of course, the moment here is poised to be shattered very shortly.

“And how humanity responds to the ideal of self-sacrifice!”

Oooooh the foreshadowing! Also a very good summation of the theme of this book, in general -- there are other moments later that I think illustrate it more clearly so I won't go on too much about it now, but -- yeah, there's such a sense in this book of trying to understand and justify the pain of the war as a worthwhile sacrifice.

“We know the real charm of night here as town dwellers never do.”

Hey, leave us town dwellers out of it >:( (I do have a city girl story of visiting family out in the country when I was twelve, and being shocked by how dark it actually got at night, lmao.)

“Rilla flushed. It did not matter to her if Kenneth Ford walked home with Ethel Reese a dozen times—it did not! Nothing that he did mattered to her. He was ages older than she was. He chummed with Nan and Di and Faith, and looked upon her, Rilla, as a child whom he never noticed except to tease.”

First mention of Ken! The funniest bit about this is that his name was originally "Selwyn", and the first like 2/3rds of Readying Rilla have every single mention of him written as "Selwyn Ken". Anyway -- there's kiiiind of a set up for Rilla and Ken here; he teases her and she hates it while secretly liking/wanting more of his attention. There's a short story in TBAQ that adds on to this (honestly, it reads a bit like it's still trying to explain Rilla/Ken twenty years later lmao) -- it mentions that Ken and Rilla fought a lot as children, implying that he liked getting a rise out of her, sort of in a "pulling on her pigtails" kind of way. (Also, again, Nan and Di are set apart from Rilla here 👀)

some stuff from the glossary (minor frustration, the glossary isn't footnoted and is in alphabetical order, so you just kinda have to flip through it and try to remember what each entry is referencing):

More Readying Rilla bits:

After Rilla mentions that Jem and Faith will sit out on the rocks all evening, the next sentence starts with "They're", which is then crossed out and Rilla just starts talking about sailing to the lighthouse. While I'm sure it wasn't a big deal, it reads like someone being cut off right before saying something juicy lmao, tell meeee the Jem/Faith gossip

The line about Rilla being the only one unaware of the worry over the war originally said "only Rilla and Susan", lmao.

Miranda Pryor's name was originally Jennie.

Shirley's originally described as being "full of humor and quiet fun" (instead of "full of a quiet humor"), which does read as something a bit different to me -- the final version makes him sound like more like a quietly amused observer than someone that actually gets into hijinks.

Re: Rilla's silver slippers, the book says that Mrs. Ford (Leslie) sent them to her. The original draft says "Jean gave", which like...who tf is Jean?

[petaltexturedskies]

L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

[roses-red-and-pink]

“Is this rilla-my-rilla?” He asked in a low tone.

“Yeth” said rilla and immediately wished she could throw herself headlong down the lighthouse Rock or otherwise vanish from a jeering world.

🤣 I love 15 year olds

[lands-of-fantasy]

Anne of Green Gables Covers

Canadian edition published by Tundra Books Paper art and covers by Elly MacKay

[warrioreowynofrohan]

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.

[annes-blog-of-dreams]

I had the other Bantam version. Which no one told me was abridged! I love the cover, though, and find it so pretty--this was always my image of Rilla.

Which book cover of Rilla of Ingleside did you grow up with? Mine was this one:

(Apologies for the terrible image quality--it was hard to find this particular cover online and I eventually just screenshot it.)

I never felt like the illustration portrayed Rilla as I imagined her, but there was something romantic about the moonlit setting that I found thrilling. Not to mention the presence of a soldier's uniform in the background.

I'm pretty sure I first encountered the book when I was a tween hanging out at my mom's place of work. She sold children's and YA books, among other things, and I probably acquired Rilla through her like I did most other entertainment during the pre-social-media era of my childhood. (I could've encountered it at the library too but I don't think they had all of the Anne books there--sacrilege!)

What are your memories of encountering the book for the first time? Did you have the whole series at once or was it piecemeal, in different editions (my experience)? What, if any, is your favorite book cover?

[laurapetrie]

I want everything—everything a girl can have.

L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside (1921)

[wordsaficionado]

I think it’s time we should all admit that Anne of Green Gables is one of the most well written pieces of literature ever created, and frankly one of the best.

[anneomine]

“Mother is some expert at looking. Father says she looked him into love with her years ago in Avonlea school and I can well believe it…”

Rilla Blythe about her parents, Anne and Gilbert, from Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

[petaltexturedskies]

L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside