This sort of thing was not uncommon in those times. My grandmother in law, who came from a large family, was given to a childless aunt to raise (I don’t think she was formally adopted, though). She never really got over feeling rejected by her own family, and particularly resented her next in line sister, who was kept by her parents. But I’m sure her parents, who weren’t exactly rich, thought they were doing the right thing by everybody.
Even in this century- when my mother was widowed young (In the early 1950s) her sister asked if she could raise her younger daughter who was an infant at the time (Her own daughter had died a couple of years before at the age of 5). My mother refused- but again, even then such a thing wasn’t shocking.
As a very rebellious child, I was always irked, and still am, by the submissiveness demanded of the girls. Laura was out and out harrassed by one girl and called a liar by a teacher (Almanzo’s sister I believe) and when she tried to defend herself Pa was all “Be quiet. Good girls don’t speak out.”
I would have clubbed right there in front of the school board
This book was very interesting. So far it’s been the only comprehensive book I’ve found that dispels many of the myths surrounding the Little House books. Even though this book primarily focuses on Rose, it also talks a lot about Laura herself, her family, and how the Little House books came to be.
One thing that shocked me in reading this book was the malnutrition aspect, both Laura’s and Rose’s (the Wilders nearly starved to death the first winter they were in Missouri because they hadn’t had time to build any kind of homestead other than a cabin, IIRC. Laura experienced it many times, not just during the long winter). As an adult, Rose blamed her own mental instability on it. There’s also an interesting story behind why she (Rose) went to live with Almanzo’s sister (aka the teacher with whom Laura didn’t aloing).
In shot, yes, the Little House books were very whitewashed, and for good reason. To say it was a hard life is a vast understatement.
If I remember correctly there was also a boy that died when they were living in town, but none of that got into the Little House books. I suppose it was sadder than Laura wanted for a children’s series.
When my great-grandmother left her husband (1916 or 17), she left each of her two eldest daughters with their godparents, both of them childless couples, and went back to the village with the still-unweaned youngest. If she hadn’t decided to come back, my grandma and her older sister would have been raised by their respective godparents (Grandma would have had no problem with it, she’s glad her mother did come back but also understands why she left).
A different great-grandfather got taught to read, write and the “four rules” (±*/) by his mother, despite paternal protestations that “that’s for people who wear skirts!” It’s always struck me as real weird that at a time when most of the population was illiterate, there would be people who despised literacy as “something for women and priests”, but there you are.
The question of whether a woman should vow to “obey” her husband was something of a major topic of discussion in society at that time. You will find similar references in a lot of literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
That actually stuck with me – when Laura looks at his bed and realizes with everything that’s been going on, they’ve neglected Jack. She describes shaking out the dog bedclothes that were all full of hard creases and making a nice clean bed for him to rest and die in. It appeals to my neat side and I feel a relief when the bed is remade!
All righty, resident Little House fanatic chiming in with some debunking. (Edited to add: this is crazy long… sorry, I am way too invested in these books. I reread them every couple of years; they’re like comfort food to me.)
First, there is literally no scene where the girls are shamed/chided for “immodesty” by greeting Pa in their nightgowns. Pa does notice that the girls are shivering when they hug him–he did just get back from a snowstorm, after all–so he throws a blanket over them, but there’s hardly the skeevy “NO YOU SHAMELESS HUSSY SINNERS!” vibe y’all are remembering.
I agree I always felt sorry for Grace who starts to bawl as Mary leaves, but Laura is trying to keep from crying herself, and she sees Carrie’s also about to lose it. She basically gets the two younger kids in line–and remember she’s only 15 at this point in the stories herself–and instantly decides to distract them from their sadness by doing the housecleaning, which starts off a pretty amusing set of problems due to Laurie’s stubborn determination to do the whole thing herself, with only her weak 10-year-old sister Carrie (who never recovered fully from The Long Winter the previous year) and little Grace for help.
So, point is, Laura’s harshness is partly due to her desperately wanting to control both her own emotional state and keep her sisters from hysterics, which if you ask me is spot-on characterization.
As already mentioned, she’s only at the Brewsters’ homestead one week–one miserable week–when Almanzo drives up at the school on a Friday afternoon and offers her a ride home. She knows him as the dashing young man who saved the town from starvation (along with Cap Garland) back in The Long Winter, as well as from him “beau”-ing her home after some of the literary society events in Little Town on the Prairie.
They may well double-take because not only is that scene not in LHITBW, it’s not creepy in the least. That’s from Little Town on the Prairie, and it’s actually a pretty cute moment because Laurie has just successfully won Ma’s approval to cut her hair into bangs, which was now the fashion. Though she does look pretty and stylish now, some days later Ma is still fretting over the bangs–which frankly is another spot-on characterization because at least in my ancient teendom, my mom would always kvetch at my sister for whatever goofy '80s hairstyle she had concocted. Anyhoo, this leads Ma to recollect a moment from her own youth:
Doesn’t seem traumatic to me! Not only is it a rare “girl talk” bonding moment between Ma, young lady Laurie, and preteen Carrie, but it’s also a reminder that as much of a bad rap as Ma gets for being “prim,” she comes from an even harsher time for women, and it explains her more buttoned-up behavior.
This was also partially explained earlier, but I’d like a try too. Laurie was very young at the time. This is from Little House on the Prairie, but the events it depicts are actually taking place a little earlier in their lives. (The timelines of LHitBW and LHotP are a bit messed up, since Carrie wasn’t actually born yet when the family first moves from the Big Woods, and Laura was only 3 at the time herself. Laura’s editors didn’t think the story made sense with such a young protagonist so Laura was aged upwards to 5, and thus Carrie sprang into being as well.) Many of the stories in these first two books are second-hand, told to her by her parents, and filled in with her own sketchy memories as well as research.
Anyway, Laura’s watching this beautiful, dignified group of Indians leaving their land and as a super-young girl, she gets attached to this papoose whose eyes are “so very black.” She’s certain the baby wants to stay with her. Throughout the book, Laura’s been desperate to see an Indian and in particular a papoose, and here she’s finally seeing one but he’s being forced away. I just think it’s one of those things little kids get obsessed with, and sure, there’s some “othering” of the Indians, but Laura wants the baby just like she’d want a puppy or a doll. And for a little girl (who, in real life, would’ve been only four or five at the time), this seems kinda normal to me. Kids are weird.
I’m also gonna stick up slightly for Pa having moved into the Osage territory. He was one of many who picked up on the raging rumors that land in Kansas was about to be opened up to white settlement. Remember that most news spread via rumor and hearsay in such rural, far-flung communities, so it likely wasn’t accurate. Still, like many men with young, growing families he knew he’d have to get in before the land rush in order to make sure he got a good claim. Unfortunately for them (but for once, a boon to the Native Americans), the government eventually kicked them out, told that they would be taken into a fort for resettling on their own if they disagreed. Smartly, Pa didn’t wait and they ended up leaving the house.
Pa really does get a bum rap in these threads. Yes, he moves a lot, but that was what people did in those days. He didn’t just yank the whole family around for the hell of it. In LHotP, he moves from the Big Woods to Kansas because land has just opened up and rather than living in the wild woods where farming isn’t really feasible, Pa wants the freedom of the plains, where he won’t need to fight the landscape in order to farm. Or so he thinks. They get malaria, the Indians are pissed off, the winters are horrible. Then the government boots them out.
(Now, in real life, after they’re booted out, they head back to Wisconsin and the Big Woods to regroup. The books omit this move, and this is the time when Carrie is actually born.)
Anyway, after this, he heads out to Minnesota, which is where Plum Creek and the very beginning of Silver Lake take place. The land is incredibly open and beautiful, and things are highly promising. And then there’s a drought followed swiftly by a grasshopper infestation (a real thing–even happened during the 1930s Dust Bowl… there are some amazing films of just how bad the grasshoppers were, although Laura does a wonderful but icky job describing how they, the land and the animals all suffered during this disaster). Crops are destroyed and there’s barely anything to eat, so Pa has to walk 300 miles for a job so he can send money back to his family.
Still, he sticks it out for a few years.
(Another interjection about real life: another move occurs here. As sad as Silver Lake already is, what with our learning that Mary’s gone blind and Jack is old/dying, Laura didn’t want to include the even worse circumstances. The land was worn out and so were the Ingallses, so they moved to Iowa where they lived/worked in a grungy boarding house and where Ma gave birth to the family’s only son, Charles Frederick, who died. Not surprisingly, this sad portion of their biography is omitted from the books. After all this, they moved back to Minnesota, where I believe Grace was born a couple of years later.)
So Silver Lake opens with them still in Plum Creek. But after all the illness and tired land that hasn’t reaped much for the family, Pa gets a good job offer from Ma’s brother-in-law, Hiram, to work on the railroad out in the Dakota Territory, where a new town would be built as well.
Anyone who knows this time period knows that the railroad is the single most promising, profitable thing that happened to this part of the country. Pa would’ve been an idiot not to take the job (as a treasurer/paymaster for the rail workers). Laura writes how she wanted to leave Plum Creek so badly she nearly sobbed with longing when Pa was trying to convince Ma of the move. The land (De Smet) would be settled and civilized, with stores and a school and everything. Pa promises Ma that this would be their last move, since Ma is determined that the girls get proper schooling.
And he sticks to that promise, even after the terrible seven months of snow/ice storms. He gets his claim, he has his own store/carpentry job in the town, and the family is settled for good. Ma, Pa and Mary lived there for the rest of their lives, as did (IIRC) Carrie, although she didn’t stay in her parents’ home.
So… really, what are we talking? Three moves in 12 years? Doesn’t seem all that ridiculous to me.
OMG, Laura, grasping?! Dude! This is really not at all what’s suggested or even hinted at in the books. Laura loves horses. She has always loved horses, this goes back to Pet and Patty and Bunny the long-eared mule, and then Sam and David, and then the marvelous scenes in Silver Lake where she finally gets to ride her cousin Lena’s black horses–Pa never lets her ride or even drive the family’s wagon, because she’s so small and he worries she’ll be hurt. She describes it in blissful terms, and then Lena lets her drive the laundry wagon back home and Laura again writes about how she made her throat hoarse with singing and screaming like a cowboy, while the horses/wagon run faster and faster against the open plains.
So when Laura first sees Almanzo, a guy whom she thinks is an adult older than 21, but is actually 19 to her 14 (although in real life he was ten years her senior), all she notices is the incredible pair of perfectly matched Morgan horses. It’s got nothing to do with how expensive they were, but their beauty, grace and speed. In one passage during, I believe, Little Town on the Prairie, Pa takes Laura and Carrie into town for the Fourth of July and they watch buggy races. All the other drivers have sleek, light, one-man buggies, but Almanzo shows up with his brother Royal’s clumsy peddler wagon–hardly a display of wealth.
When Laura says something about how it’s not fair that the beautiful Morgans have such a heavier wagon to lug–it’s clear they can’t possibly win–Mr. Boast explains, “He’s an independent young cuss; he’d rather lose with what he’s got than with with a borrowed wagon.” The text has a wonderful description of how despite their heavy load, the team prance along delicately “as if the ground isn’t quite good enough for them to step on.” She also notes that Almanzo never uses his whip against his horses–another thing in his favor.
Anyway, during the rest of LTotP, Laura admires the horses, not some nonexistent glam carriage, and dreams of riding behind them if her teacher, Almanzo’s sister Eliza Jane, likes her enough. (Ha! As if.) Eventually after the debacle that is Laura’s schooling under bitchy Miss Wilder, Laura is surprised that Almanzo offers her a ride to school when she’s late (due to her having picked up the name cards). He then picks her up from the literaries, and in the next book he gallantly escorts her to and from the Brewsters’ without any expectations. Laura never implies that she’s cultivating him because of his wealth or even likes him romantically.
Indeed, at one point, Laura sticks her foot in her mouth because she blurts out, “I’m only accepting these rides because I must get to school; I won’t go riding with you afterwards. So you can save yourself these boring rides if you wish.” Almanzo is taken aback and says slowly, “All right.” Laura regrets her harsh words immediately–she just didn’t want him to think he was her beau. And then he picks her up next week anyway. She asks him why he came, and Almanzo says, “Did you think I’m the sort of man who’d let you stay where you’re so miserable, just because there’s nothing in it for me?” Sigh! I personally think that’s where Laura finally gets a hint of what a catch he is, and it’s got nothing to do with his nonexistent money.
Only when she gets back home and realizes their rides are over does she begin to miss him. Then he shows up for sleigh rides and she’s happily by his side. Nellie Oleson shows up (not really–Nellie’s an amalgamation of three different girls in Laura’s history) and tries to suck up to Almanzo. She is grasping–and that’s because her family has come down in the world significantly since we last saw them. Laura gets jealous despite herself, and at last Almanzo starts courting her exclusively.
It’s not hearts-and-flowers, and Laura has her mother’s pragmatism and her father’s stubbornness. As an author, she’s never gushy or makes the Almanzo/Laura romance into a romance, if you know what I mean. But the feelings and sympatico are clearly there.
It was indeed frozen solid the whole time. The Christmas barrel is stuck in the train that slammed into a massive snowbank, melting the snow around it into a block of ice from December through May. And this is in territory where Laura once describes a day as mild when it’s “only” -20 degrees! (And this was not sarcasm.) So I’d say the turkey and cranberries are all pretty safe.
Nah, this isn’t quite accurate either. She does start getting irritated at farm life, and she makes Almanzo promise that they’ll give it first three years, and then she gives him an extra year just for the heck of it. But Almanzo certainly never buys fancy buggy horses during this time. Maybe you’re thinking of These Happy Golden Years, where Almanzo–who’s continually described as an expert horse trainer–takes on the job of training a pair of supposedly untameable horses named Skip and Barnum, as well as another team, so he can sell them at a profit–which he does.
During The First Four Years, they have both a tree claim where they live, as well as a homestead that Almanzo tries to farm and eventually build their “real” house on. Laura’s own cousin Peter convinces him to buy some expensive farm equipment, IIRC, which she is nervous about, but they both express the hope that the equipment will more than pay for itself thanks to making the land a profitable farm. Unfortunately, weather problems arise, and there is no crop, and Almanzo has to mortgage the farm, which means they have to move from the tree claim and live on the farm to make it work. Almanzo gets diptheria and permanently has problems with his legs as a result; they lose their baby after only a couple of weeks; Laura buys some sheep, but they end up dying; and finally there’s a house fire. Aside from the birth of their first child, Rose, it’s basically a miserable beginning to what would be a happy life together.
Incidentally, reading this book helps us see how good a writer Laura was, as well as how good an editor/rewriter Rose was. The book has some beautiful but stark passages, and there are editing/continuity issues that Rose would certainly have caught.
(For example, we’re introduced to “Mrs. Powers” as if we never met her before–however, “Mary Power” was Laura’s best friend starting in LTotP. Oh, another trivia note: anyone remember the scene in LTotP where Laura’s working in town temporarily and she sees a pair of drunk men roaming through the town, with the shorter of the two announcing that “My name is T.P. Pryor and I am DRUNK!” – a scene that makes her laugh, although teetotaler Ma is scandalized? Well, in real life, the short man was actually Mary Power’s father, with his name changed to avoid having Mary Power seem like the daughter of a buffoon.)
Um, anyway, so the writing is well done and picturesque and shows that Laura is a perfectly capable and skilled author herself. But it was never edited except for some spelling or grammar, and Rose didn’t add her deft characterization/plot touches, or fix the narrative or dialogue. As a result, the book is certainly less smooth and polished than the earlier ones in the series. But for anyone who thinks Laura just shoved some half-finished, barely readable diary pages in front of Rose Wilder Lane who turned the dross into gold, it’s clearly not the case.
One of my favorite aspects of the books is that they change in age-appropriateness along with Laura. So as she ages, the narrative, characters and themes become more mature. That’s one of the things I think Rose added to the editorial process. Not that The First Four Years sounds anything like Little House in the Big Woods, but I do think Rose understood the need to have the series “age” along with the lead character and the readers themselves.
This one of the things I really identified with in the books - during part of my youth my family moved five times in four years, until mom put her foot down and told dad no more moves (what she actually said was “you can move if you want to, me and the girls are staying here”). I would have been happy to move as infrequently as the Wilders.
In real life there are families that move around this much, both back then and in the present.
choie, thank you! These books are hugely important to me; I devoured them as a little girl and revisited them several times after my own kids were born. One thing that irks me about sniffy comments about Pa in particular and how he didn’t do such a hot job of providing for his family is that it shows such a misunderstanding of how dreadfully hard life was in that place and in that time.
I’ve often wondered what happened to that lovingly built home with real glass windows that they left behind in Little House on the Prairie before the government could kick them out of that territory.
I spent five years working in the Minnesota Historical Society’s living history program, and I can tell you this is spot on. In the first half of the 19th century, most US Army forts were built not to fight Indians but to keep white settlers out of Indian territory. Any whites found squatting on Indian territory would have been removed immediately, by force if necessary, and their houses burned down.
That’s one of the other details that stuck with me – the drawers Almanzo built in the kitchen that were so smooth and clean that she could fill them directly with flour and sugar. Thinking of them during the house fire part was the worst!
Thanks for slogging through that ridiculously long apologia, guys! I don’t know what I was thinking, writing all that crap at 3AM.
Perhaps due to the lateness of the hour, I did make a big mistake. I forgot that Almanzo does get a new buggy, which Laura (and mostly the other girls) notice is pretty sleek-looking. Laura comments that he didn’t have it during the horse race last July, and her friends mention that he just bought it. So she does think it would be fun to ride behind those fabulous Morgan horses as well as the pretty buggy with red wheels. But I think it’s clear that Laura’s mostly all about Prince & Lady (the horse team) rather than feeling acquisitive
because Almanzo’s ride is all pimped.
gigi, I too always felt sorry about that brand new house and its hard-won glass windows, left alone. Oh, that reminds me of one of my favorite literary touches in the books: the anthropomorphism that Laura gives to both inanimate objects and animals. When they leave the house in the Big Woods, the narrative writes that as the wagon leaves, the kids look back at the house. “It did not seem to know they were leaving.” The same sad goodbye scene occurs when Pet, Patty and Bunny are led away after being purchased by the guy who sold Pa his dugout in Plum Creek. Aww! Considering I name my computers and even my mouse (George), I always empathized with that.
I just remembered one fun difference between Little Women and Little House (or I should say, between Louisa May Alcott and Laura/Rose as authors). Now, I loooveLittle Women and it’s usually considered the more “important” literary achievement, although Laura’s books also get a nod for telling us so much about pioneer life. Just imagine how different the supposedly poor March girls’ standards of living are when compared to the Ingalls family. Their house is a bigger mansion, windows are plentiful as is fire (or coal) heating, and there’s never any doubt that they’ll have food on their table.
Anyway, at one point both authors use the same cliched homily–“birds in their little nests agree!” – but the reactions to it are very different.
In LW, Jo and Amy are arguing (as they often do) about Jo’s use of “boy’s language” and Amy’s stuck-up ways, and Beth interrupts them by saying, “Birds in their little nests agree!” At once Jo and Amy shut up and Jo shamefully considers Beth’s comment a sweet and subtle reminder that they must always get along.
In LTotP, however, Laura is at school, now being taught by Eliza Jane Wilder, and Miss Wilder is utterly inept at keeping the little boys from causing a ruckus. Instead of punishing the wrongdoers, she keeps smiling insipidly and telling all the kids that they must be friends and they mustn’t ruin the class for everyone; she finishes with “Birds in their little nests agree!”
When Laura hears this, the narrator comments that she (and everyone else in the class) cringed at this cliche–and the narrator has Laura think sarcastically, “Besides, it shows that she knows nothing about birds.” Way less treacle here than in LW.
In fairness, Alcott wrote her passage at least 70 years before LIW did, and they had different objectives in their work. Little Women was a book about how the girls improved themselves over the years, maturing from all their annoying flaws as we saw them at the start of the book. The Little House books are way less religious/instructional/idealistic. Can you imagine Jo March going to church and Alcott writing that she listened to a preacher “giving one of his stupid sermons” the way Laura does regarding Reverand Brown?
You are correct, Carrie is buried in the De Smet cemetery along with Charles and Caroline and Mary and Baby boy Wilder (Laura’s son). Grace must also have lived in De Smet all her life or she moved and came back as she is also buried there.
That’s funny. I’m a photo contributor to Find a Grave and had a request to take a picture of T. P. Power’s grave. It took forever to find it. The De Smet cemetery is set up really oddly. You can see my picture on the site. For some odd reason someone created two memorials to him on the site.
The illustration of Almanzo and Laura being married is kind of neat, because you see Reverend Brown. Whoever did the drawings obviously remembered he was supposed to be related to John Brown, because in the picture he’s drawn to resemble him closely.
A slight hijack, but I always found it breathtaking thanking that the same little girl to traveled to Indian Territory in a covered wagon flew by plane to see her daughter Rose in CT. What a time period to have lived through!
I reread them every couple of years; they’re like comfort food to me.)
That’s from Little Town on the Prairie, and it’s actually a pretty cute moment because Laurie has just successfully won Ma’s approval to cut her hair into bangs, which was now the fashion. Though she does look pretty and stylish now, some days later Ma is still fretting over the bangs–which frankly is another spot-on characterization because at least in my ancient teendom, my mom would always kvetch at my sister for whatever goofy '80s hairstyle she had concocted. Anyhoo, this leads Ma to recollect a moment from her own youth: