Rilla Of Ingleside

Originally published at Once Upon A Bookshelf. You can comment here or there.

Last night at midnight, I decided that I needed to re-read Rilla immediately. (And as it is impossible for me to sleep in no matter how hard I try, I haven’t gotten enough sleep. Boo to me.) This is, and always has been, my favourite of Montgomery’s books BY FAR. (That really shouldn’t surprise those who have known me for a while.) I don’t go a year without rereading this book - I will need a new copy soon, I fear, as mine is getting rather worn down. This book never fails to make me smile, make me laugh, and then make me weep - all in a matter of minutes.

For those who don’t know, Rilla is that last in the Anne of Green Gables series. And while it is the last book in the series, you don’t need to read the previous books to follow what is going on (thus, I highly recommend that everyone reads it). Anne and Gil have been married for years, and Rilla is their youngest daughter. The book takes place over the years of WWI, beginning just before war is declared and finishing after the majority of the troops have returned home afterwards. It shows how WWI had affected people, families and communities, and deals with subjects that a lot of childrens books don’t.

One of the things I love most about this book is the development of Rilla in the book. She’s a school girl at the beginning of the novel, and by the end she’s grown into a mature young woman. Mind you, she does grow up too fast due to the world she is living in, but it’s so wonderful to see the growth she goes through. At the beginning of the book, she adopts a war baby - the mother’s died, the father’s fighting and no one has heard from him; Rilla’s brothers and childhood playmates go to fight in the war. It’s daunting, but she matures so much because of it all.

And of course there’s the romance aspect. Kenneth Ford is my Gilbert Blythe. Seriously.

Anyway, the best thing about rereading books is that something new always jumps out at you. This time around there were two things that really hit me.

Firstly - it is mentioned that Anne and Gil have been married 24 years at one point in the book. Twenty-four years. And that made me realize exactly how young Jem, Walter and Shirley are when they go to war. I mean, I always realized that they could enlist if they were 18 or older, but I never really gave much thought to HOW young they were. When I first read this book I was a young child, so all of the characters were that much older than me, but now that they’re younger than I currently am, it gives it a completely new perspective.

Secondly, I never really noticed how much Montgomery’s fiction uses … I guess the term would be supernatural … elements in it. In this book alone, Miss Oliver has a dream predicting the declaration of war, as well as a couple during the course of the war that predict certain events. And then Walter’s premonitions and visions of the Piper. (Oh! The Piper!) Then I started thinking about the Emily books and the events in that seris (which I still really want to reread)… and I’m wondering how many other books of hers have stuff like this that I’ve just never noticed. I’ll have to keep my eyes open during future rereads.

And in closing, I’m leaving you with one of my favourite passages from this book. Rilla has received a letter from the front, and this passage always brings tears to my eyes and fills me with pride towards those who did fight in the wars:

And you will tell your children of the Idea we fought and died for – teach them it must be lived for as well as died for, else the price paid of it will have been given for nought. This will be part of your work, Rilla. And if you – all you girls back in the homeland – do it, then we who don’t come back will know that you have not ‘broken faith’ with us.

We found a great deal at Childrens Book Club and got 5 childrens books for only $2.