Marilla Cuthbert—David Keith

Marilla Cuthbert—David Keith is a relationship formed through daily care, firm limits, and a growing willingness to make a child’s home permanent. As David becomes less mischievous and Marilla recognizes his improvement, her attachment to him deepens; the inheritance left for his maintenance then turns her wish to keep him into a sustainable arrangement at Green Gables.

A Home Still in Question

For a time, David’s place with Marilla remained uncertain. A letter reported that Richard Keith could not take the children in the spring: he had been ill through much of the winter, and his wedding had been postponed. He asked whether Marilla and Anne Shirley could keep the twins until fall, when he hoped to take them. Anne treated their continued stay as a given and asked Marilla to agree. Marilla answered grimly that there seemed to be no alternative, but admitted to herself that she felt relief. The children were no longer as much trouble—or, she conceded, the household might simply have grown used to them—and David had improved considerably.

That improvement did not mean he had stopped testing the rules. On one occasion, while Marilla was at a Ladies' Aid Society meeting, Anne came home to find Dora asleep on the kitchen sofa and David hidden in the sitting-room closet, eating Marilla’s yellow plum preserves. He had been forbidden to touch them; he called the preserves “company jam.” Anne caught him and whisked him out of the closet, and he looked guilty. The incident shows the mischief that still shaped the work of caring for him, but it also places that care within the ordinary life of a shared home: Marilla’s forbidden preserves, her household rules, and the children’s familiar presence.

Discipline and Improvement

Marilla’s care for David combines affection with persistent concern about indulgence. Six years of experience had softened her thinking, but she still believed that allowing a child too many wishes could be bad for him. When David wanted an Indian headdress like the other boys in his class, Anne defended the request rather than treating it as spoiling. She recalled how painfully she had longed for puffed sleeves when other girls wore them, and argued that David was improving every day compared with the child who had arrived a year earlier.

Marilla did not simply yield to Anne’s view; she supported it with an observation of her own. David got into less mischief after he began attending school, she acknowledged, perhaps because he could work off his troublesome impulses with the other boys. Her response marks a change in their relationship: she could identify evidence of his progress even while remaining cautious about giving him what he wanted. His conduct, rather than a claim that he had become an entirely different child, became the ground on which Marilla’s confidence in him grew.

The Fear of Losing Him

Even as David settled into the household, Marilla had no assurance that the arrangement would last. She noted that Richard Keith had sent no word since the previous May. Anne feared that a letter might arrive ordering the twins to leave; the possibility made the uncertainty personal, not merely practical. Their affection for David had already taken shape, but the household could not assume that he belonged there permanently.

A month later, news came, but not from Richard Keith. His friend wrote that he had died of consumption a fortnight earlier. The letter also disclosed the provision that changed David’s prospects: Richard had left two thousand dollars in trust to Marilla for David and Dora, to be held until they came of age or married, with the interest used for their maintenance. Anne felt sorrow for Richard and admitted that she was glad the money meant they could keep the twins. The mixed response makes the emotional consequence plain: relief at being able to keep David did not erase the death that had made it possible.

A Permanent Commitment

Marilla received the inheritance as a practical answer to a real financial limit. She had wanted to keep the children, she explained, but had not seen how she could afford to do so as they grew older. The rent from the farm brought in no more than enough to maintain the house. She had also been determined not to spend any of Anne’s money on them, although she thought Anne already did far too much for them. With the trust providing for the twins’ maintenance, Marilla could keep them without relying on Anne’s savings; in her view, the way was finally clear.

David and Dora were delighted to learn that they would live at Green Gables for good. Their happiness confirms the practical decision’s intimate consequence: Marilla’s home, once a temporary place to stay while their uncle recovered, had become their lasting home. Dora’s whispered question to Anne about whether Uncle Richard had been buried registers the children’s limited connection to him; the uncle they had never seen could not outweigh their joy at remaining with Marilla. For David, permanence is thus secured not by an abstract declaration of affection alone, but by the combination of Marilla’s established wish to keep him and the trust that makes her continued care possible.