Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
It occurs to me to wonder at Matthew’s and Marilla’s motivations in adopting a boy. The putative reason, of course, was that the typical French hired hand wasn’t reliable, with implications of being both not hard working and also, presumably, willing to walk away. Whereas I have to assume that an adopted boy would be both cheaper (food and clothing only and you know that he’d have had to miss school during spring planting and harvest time), but also more “tied,” with the perhaps even explicit threat of being sent back if he didn’t shape up. The implications are worse than they appeared to me at first.
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They did mean to do right by the lad, he would have been treated as well as most farm boys were treated by his parents (right down to missing school during busy times and being housed in a spare corner). They had no one to leave their farm to so the prospective boy would have inherited that as well if everything worked out.
On the other hand a number of Montgomery's other works make it clear that she fully realized the misery such a placement could end up being.