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Book: Rilla of ingleside
Rilla of Ingleside is the eighth book in the series ‘Anne of Green Gables’ by Lucy Montgomery. This book is about Anne’s children but is mostly centred around fifteen-year-old Rilla, the youngest of the family at their home Ingleside at Prince Edward Island, Canada.
This is a heart-warming tale of young Rilla Blyhte, for whom life is all golden and blooming. But the dark side of life is revealed to her when her brother Jem is sent to fight in the Second World War. She resolves to be brave and patient even though it is harder for her than for anyone else to think of dark times because Rilla was a wee bit spoilt and quite a “material girl”.
It becomes very hard for her when her brother Walter decides to go. Of all her siblings, Rilla loved Walter the most. Walter Blyhte is a source of inspiration himself. He has a passionate love for beauty and an equally passionate hatred for ugly things such as war. But he realises something which every one of us realises sooner or later: i.e. life cannot take away the happiness that we earn for ourselves.
Rilla again makes the same resolution and it is amazing how her childhood takes a sudden turn… as if the page of girlhood was “swept clean by an unseen hand and the page of womanhood is there with its joys and sorrows, its pain and its sweetness”. She is no longer an irresponsible girl but a loving and caring young woman like a rose in bloom… for “the flower that grows in adversity is the rarest and beautifulest of all”.
The Ingleside home doesn’t echo with childish laughter any more but still there is sunshine in some corner. I can assure you that every chapter has a comical side for Lucy Montgomery is one of the few writers who could picture laughter at times of tragedy.
Butool Hisam
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