A review by annemariewellswriter
Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

3.0

This novel was better than #s 4-7 in that there was more meat than "Oh lo, here are our very mild and quaint, non-problems, aren't they so adorable?" But still - here we have a strong-willed female character, and she resigns herself to ONLY being someone's wife. It's as if the moral Lucy Maud wanted to convey was "Don't worry, she'll grow out of it and submit to her place in society like a good girl." It's seriously disheartening. Rilla even says outright that she doesn't have any ambition to go to school but only to be Kenneth Ford's wife! UGH! Heaven help us, and all the women and girls who read these stories of Anne having ambition and becoming a school teacher and going off to college and getting scholarships only to do NOTHING with her BA degree... and even when propositioned later to help her friend write his memoirs, she DECLINES and then suggests a MAN to do it for him. She doesn't even help! There was so much space for Anne to do something worthwhile with her degree, but she marries a doctor and her role becomes wife and mother and nothing else. She's known as "Misses Doctor." She has no identity other than someone else's wife or someone else's mother. There was so much room for there to be more, and it was squandered. Seriously loved the first three books, and then 4-7 got progressively worse. Then 8 got a little better by covering the war - there were actual problems and not just quaint, accidental or intentional matchmaking. But the ending the protagonist's lack of desire to be anything other than a man's wife just let me down. Women are more! Girls are more! And we can't be seen as that if they are surrounded by media depicting women and girls as not accomplishing anything for themselves except a domicile.