Rilla of Ingleside characters

Also known as Bertha Marilla Blythe

Appears from the start

The youngest of the Ingleside children, not quite fifteen when the book opens, pretty, vain of her looks, and the only Blythe with no ambition beyond a few years of parties and good times before she settles down. She is sensitive about the slight lisp that comes back when she is agitated, hates responsibility, and has never been asked to be useful in her life. Her elder brothers and sisters are grown and mostly away at college; she is still a schoolgirl at home with her mother and Susan.

Appears from the start

Mistress of Ingleside, with a grown family scattered between home and college. She is happy, settled, and, at the opening of the book, chiefly occupied with her children's futures and the ordinary business of the Glen.

Appears from the start

The doctor at Glen St. Mary, long established in his practice, and the steady centre of the Ingleside household.

Appears from the start

The Ingleside housekeeper of many years, elderly now, fiercely devoted to the family, and the household's most reliable source of opinion. She reads the newspaper aloud, argues with the world, and refuses on principle to be discouraged by anything.

Appears from the start

Once Miss Cornelia Bryant of Four Winds, now Mrs. Marshall Elliott of the Glen, still blunt and still practical, and a constant visitor at the Ingleside kitchen with the news of the district.

Appears from the start

The eldest Blythe son, just finished at Redmond and about to begin medicine, red-haired, energetic, and impatient for something worth doing. He is quietly attached to Faith Meredith and owns a small brown-and-white dog who will not leave his side.

First appears in chapter 2

The second Blythe son, home from Redmond after an illness, beautiful, dreamy, and a poet. He loves the valley, hates ugliness and cruelty more than most people can understand, and has always been closer to Rilla than any of the others. Years ago he told the children that he had seen the Pied Piper coming over the hills.

Appears from the start

The quiet Blythe son, brown and self-contained, still a schoolboy at the opening of the book and Susan's particular charge since his difficult infancy. He says little and thinks a good deal.

Appears from the start

A schoolteacher who boards at Ingleside, some fifteen years older than Rilla and her closest confidante. Dark, clever, and given to moods, she is engaged to a man working abroad and is troubled by vivid dreams she believes to be prophetic.

First appears in chapter 3

The son of Owen and Leslie Ford of the little house on Four Winds Harbour, a visitor to the Glen in the summers, older than Rilla and much admired by every girl in the district. Easy, teasing, and well travelled, he takes notice of Rilla at her first grown-up party.

First appears in chapter 3

The eldest of the manse children, now grown, a beautiful and warm-hearted young woman studying at Redmond, still as fearless and impulsive as she was as a child, and long understood to belong to Jem Blythe.

First appears in chapter 3

The quieter Meredith daughter, gentle, watchful, and reserved, who keeps house at the manse and keeps her own feelings entirely to herself.

First appears in chapter 3

Brought up by Mrs. Marshall Elliott since she was found as a runaway child, and now a young woman of the Glen, still plain-spoken to the point of rudeness, engaged to a local man and full of the district's news.

Appears from the start

Jem Blythe's small, ugly, devoted dog, who follows him everywhere and is uneasy whenever his master is out of sight.

Also known as Jims

First appears in chapter 7

A newborn baby whose mother has died and whose father has gone overseas, found by Rilla in a wretched house up the Glen and carried home in a soup tureen because there was nothing else to put him in. He is sickly, ugly, and entirely unwanted by anyone else.

First appears in chapter 5

A prosperous, disagreeable Glen farmer with long whiskers, known throughout the district by an unflattering nickname, who holds and loudly airs opinions that set him against most of his neighbours.

First appears in chapter 18

Mr. Pryor's daughter, a pale, timid, colourless girl of Rilla's acquaintance who has never in her life stood up to her father, and who is in love with a young man of the Glen.

First appears in chapter 20

The small son of the minister and his second wife, a solemn, intense child who takes everything he is told with complete literalness and feels things far beyond his years.