Mary Keith’s fatal illness

Mary Keith’s fatal illness is the crisis that leaves her young twins’ future uncertain and ultimately brings them to Green Gables. The book gives no diagnosis or detailed account of her final days; instead, it measures the illness through its duration, its worsening, and the urgent question of who will care for Davy Keith and Dora Keith after their mother dies.

Identity and Family Circumstances

Mary is described as having been sick almost ever since Davy’s father died, when Davy was still a baby. The account offers no explanation of the illness, but establishes that it has persisted through much of her children’s early lives. Davy is said to have had little upbringing, while his mother describes Dora as a very good child and Davy as mischievous. An episode in which Davy pushes Dora headfirst into a mud pie, then climbs into it himself to show her there is nothing to cry about, gives a concrete glimpse of the twins’ unruly play and of the demands of caring for them.

Mary is not related to Marilla Cuthbert herself: the family connection runs through Mary’s late husband, who was Marilla’s third cousin. That distant tie does not settle the question of responsibility, but it becomes part of the circumstances in which the children’s care must be considered.

The Illness Becomes an Immediate Crisis

Later, Marilla returns home worried because Mary is worse and, in Marilla’s judgment, cannot live much longer. Her concern is not abstract: she does not know what will become of the twins. The account marks a change from a long-running illness to an imminent loss, making the children’s arrangements inseparable from Mary’s decline.

The twins’ uncle has written from a lumber camp. He says that he cannot take them until spring, when he expects to be married and to have a home for them. For the winter, he asks that neighbors keep them. Mary cannot bring herself to ask the people of East Grafton, where, according to Marilla, she had not got on well with the community. Marilla believes Mary wants her to take the children, though Mary does not say so directly; Marilla reads the appeal in her look. The illness thus forces a decision before the uncle’s promised future arrangement is available.

Death and the Twins’ Arrival at Green Gables

The narrative next places Marilla on her way home from Mary’s funeral in late autumn, with Davy and Dora in the buggy. The journey makes the practical consequences of the death visible: Marilla has taken the twins in, and the children are already under her care. Davy leans over the dashboard and grabs at the pony’s tail, so Marilla repeatedly pulls him back; Dora sits upright and orderly beside them. The contrast between the twins’ behavior echoes the earlier description of Davy’s mischief and Dora’s good conduct, while showing Marilla facing the demands of their care at once.

Their uncle’s inability to take them until spring had made the winter the immediate problem; Mary’s death makes that uncertainty concrete. The family’s eventual arrangement is not presented as a short stay pending his return. Marilla has adopted the twins, as Rachel Lynde observes when she sees them arrive. The account therefore connects Mary’s death to a permanent home for her children, rather than detailing the illness as a medical event in isolation.

Narrative Significance

Mary’s illness enters the story through other people’s knowledge and decisions: first through the report that she has long been sick, then through Marilla’s alarm at her worsening condition, and finally through the funeral and the twins’ arrival. The focus stays on what the illness means for the children and those who take responsibility for them. No account of Mary’s own thoughts, diagnosis, or last moments is supplied, so the narrative’s emphasis falls on the family consequences rather than on an imagined version of her final experience.

The late-autumn funeral also recalls an earlier arrival at Green Gables. Rachel remembers that years before, Matthew Cuthbert had brought home Anne Shirley, whom the neighbors regarded as an unexpected orphan to raise. Now Marilla brings home twins. The parallel turns bereavement into a repetition with a changed outcome: a household that once took in Anne now expands again to give Davy and Dora a permanent home. Mary’s death is therefore a private loss with lasting consequences for the children and for the family life formed at Green Gables.