Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Wiggin)
"Why, mother!" cried Rebecca, clasping her knees with her hands; "why, mother, it's enough joy just to be here in the world on a day like this; to have the chance of seeing, feeling, doing, becoming! When you were seventeen, mother, wasn't it good just to be alive?"
Rebecca's mother has recently been severely disabled, and they have just learned of Rebecca's aunt's death; Rebecca's nursing of both women has forced her to give up her teaching career. This, in a nutshell, is my trouble with these positive, precocious pixie-girl stories, like this one and "Anne of Green Gables". Rebecca's optimism can be just completely tone-deaf, and in real life would be very difficult to live with - just as difficult as the stereotypical (but somehow more believable) unrelenting grumpiness and judgmentalism of Aunt Miranda.
The parallels between "Rebecca" and "Anne" struck me as I was reading, but not so very much as to make me inclined to accuse L.M. Montgomery of any sort of theft (a bit of borrowing, maybe, or flattering imitation). What Rebecca has, and Anne does not, is a relationship with a much older man which, though not sexual, is clearly intended on his part to become so eventually, and solidified from his side by multiple interventions on her behalf using his greatly superior wealth. From the vantage point of 2019, it's uncomfortable to say the least, though the author makes a decided point of having Adam take himself away at the end, saying "not ready".
All that notwithstanding, and just because, due to my advanced age, I was able to completely dismiss Rebecca as the role model she was doubtless intended to be, I enjoyed this novel a fair bit. There's quite a lot of funny incident, and despite my complaint above, I found the depiction of the workings of a girl's/young woman's mind to have some fairly realistic moments. And it's also pleasant to read a story of someone whom everyone loves (yes, even grim Aunt Miranda) and for whom everyone tries to make the world better. It's a good counterpart to the dark background of bitter and grinding economic insecurity in which Rebecca moves. The unbridled devotion of best friends and wagon-drivers, gently told, is worth a hundred positive-thinking speeches of the sort I quoted above.
