Rilla Blythe and Rilla of Ingleside

Rilla of Ingleside was published in 1920. Although L. M. Montgomery later wrote more books about Anne that were set during earlier dates in Anne's life than this book, this is the final novel chronologically in the Anne of Green Gables series.

Bertha Marilla "Rilla" Blythe is the youngest of Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe's children, named for Anne's mother and adoptive mother. She was born in 1899 when Anne was 33 years old at the beginning of Anne of Ingleside (1939). In Anne of Ingleside we learn of her being teased and called "Roly-poly," her humiliation to carry a cake anywhere, her decided lisp and of her liking of Kenneth Ford. In Rainbow Valley (1919), Rilla is lambasted with a dried codfish, we learn Anne thinks this did her some good and that Anne viewed her as a bit vain. Though we have some insight into her insecurities as a child in these earlier book, Rilla's character fully becomes known to reader in Rilla of Ingleside.

This brings us to Rilla in Rilla of Ingleside, still a slightly vain girl, careless of what goes on around her, interested in having fun. The story begins in 1914, and immediately, Rilla is confronted with the loss of her environment. As a world war begins, her siblings leave, her old concerns change in dramatic ways.

We watch her grow into a serious person who holds her own as a woman of the home front, a woman who stands her own as a daughter of Anne, though in most ways completely different from her mother. She takes in an orphan baby, is the close confident of her brother Walter, and she falls in love and waits for the return of her love through the war in subtle silence and strength. She learns what is important and what it is to be a woman.

The legacy this book leaves is tremendous. It is a novel of Canadian life and the life of women during war, an infrequent topic, but a necessary and important one. If you want to know what happens to those who wait and keep the home fires burning during a world war, you should definitely read this book.

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The original handwritten manuscript of Rilla of Ingleside was discovered in 2000 and donated to the University of Guelph. Read about it here and here.

Last Updated 03.28.04
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