Was Laura Ingalls Wilder a feminist?

[WeAreJackieWeaver]

Having read absolutely everything on my reading list this year, I’m re-reading the Little House on the Prairie books.
I loved these books as a child, now reading them as an adult I’m struck how fiercely Laura fought to be allowed outside her gender box. She’s fiesty, loves being physical, running and riding horses and hates the expectations placed on her by society just because she’s a girl. Girls should sit quietly and do womanly tasks like sewing.
Her sister Mary is the complete opposite and loves being feminine and embraces the expectations of her.
Both girls were highly intelligent and their education was encouraged by very progressive (for the time) parents.

During this never-ending winter lockdown the books have helped give me some perspective on the hardship of lives past but I’m loving reading about Laura’s gender non-conforming escapades.

Has anyone else read the books?

I've wanted to visit the LIW sites all my life. One day, I hope, I will.

I've planned a couple of very successful holidays around writers. Two that work well are Yorkshire (Haworth and Bronte country) and Dorset (Hardy country). A more niche one was Co Leitrim and the Shannon-Erne waterway (John McGahern).

@Wildswim we must have been separated at birth ! Love john mcgathern. Going to have a trip to Derry after lockdown to see the Heaney centre

@Carriemac can you smuggle me in your suitcase please? I long to see Prince Edward Island because of Anne and I'd also love to see LIW houses. One day..... Please find this post once you've eventually been and let me know how it was.

Brilliant @Carriemac! The Heaney centre is in Bellaghy. It is a little disappointing in terms of Heaney memorabilia, but it puts on or at least did before Covid great cultural events. Seamus Heaney's brother can often be seen at such events.

I highly recommend John McGahern country, a quaint and largely unspoiled part of Ireland.

@Historytoo It was to be DDs graduation present after a hard slog at uni , we were going to stay at
resortatcavendishcorner.com
The shining waters inn PEI
So maybe we’ll go to celebrate her masters graduation .
I’m Irish so Leitrim has no attraction for me

Love this thread! I first read the books as a child (bought the later ones with my winnings in a local library competition!) And a friend I played at being Laura and Mary - no chores involved.
I don't think they are particularly childish - lots of information in them, and lots under the surface that you don't see until adult life as pps have said. I'm interested in the idea that Pa might have been bipolar - he certainly expected a great deal from Ma. How exhausted she must have been, most of the time.
Off to buy some more books...

Thanks to this thread, I’ve just reread all the books online. It certainly is very different when I’m reading it from Ma’s perspective now rather than Laura’s (as I did when I was younger).

Has anyone watched "the news of the world" on Netflix. It's set in the same era and some aspects reminded me of LHOTP books and tv series.

Thanks so much for this thread, so interesting. So pleased to find the recommendations for other books, especially The Birchbark House, as I was interested in finding something that portrays the native peoples' experience of that time.

Laura seems to me more likely to have been an individualist than a feminist. All that hard self-sufficiency promoting a strong sense of personal responsibility, supporting others in the immediate community but not extending beyond that necessarily. While she focuses on the female pioneer experience, I imagine she'd have felt she had more in common with 'all pioneers' than 'all women'. I'm not sure though, there is more to read!

What would have happened to the family if they'd stayed in Wisconsin? It seemed they had a comfortable life there, with family close by and could have become more established as part of that community.

They travelled because Pa wanted to find a new Eden, a land where animals were not scared of people (so he could hunt them easily). They ended up settling in a town. The grass really isn't always greener.

They were sold the idea of a better life, if they went west. You could claim a plot of land more easily than you could buy back east.

Right, yes. They would be able to claim land and establish their own farm (and did, it just didn't turn out that well). It is easy to see the attraction.

I find Pa's 'unwary animals' motivation (from LHITBW) really poignant, because what he craves is something very similar to the low-impact, nomadic existence of the native peoples. But he was entertaining the cognitive dissonance of having a cosy family home and farm (and some supporting infrastructure? They certainly got some), plus this bountiful wilderness. Works if you're the only settler family, or one of only a tiny handful. Perhaps that's how they imagined it?

Thanks for the recommendation for Prairie Fires, I've just started and it's really interesting! Sounds as if Wisconsin was experiencing a lot of local economic problems so leaving the Big Woods may have been more necessary than it seems when you read the book (I always thought it sounded pretty comfortable there too).

Yes, my understanding was that they didn't have enough land in Wisconsin and needed to move for economic reasons. Their life in Wisconsin wasn't sustainable.

There was little security even in (especially in) farming. Life was more transitory and itinerant than we realise. Many if not most people had to move at least once for either economic necessity or opportunity.

I think people are too harsh on Pa, who continually strove for a better life for his family and was an incredibly hard worker. He worked himself into a early grave. Both he and ma started with nothing - ma came from abject poverty.

Even the Wilders left their farm in New York state for a better life.

So many wonderful book recommendations in this thread; I've ordered loads!
I grew up "out West" in the States and LIW always fascinated me. Such a life of hardship and sacrifice in the hopes of something better.

This might be my favourite thread ever on mumsnet!

Did a reread over this last lockdown.

I hadn’t read the books since reading Pioneer girl a few years ago. After reading that I definitely changed my mind about Pa being the free spirited adventurer and Ma being the killjoy.

There are some really strong pointers to him having a MH condition which PPs already mentioned.

Many of his decisions were impulsive and reckless and Ma was left picking up the slack. Her life seemed very lonely and hard based on his whims.

For all his faults though, he was a hard worker and did keep his promise to Ma that the girls would have an education.

I wonder if Laura’s characterisation of Ma as a living saint who just smiled and obeyed Pa’s every decision no matter how hairbrained, was done out of guilt.
Looking back as an adult, and one who refused to use the word obey in her wedding vows, she must have realised how hard Ma’s life was made by Pa’s decisions and how little say he appeared to give her.

Interesting though that for all her adoration of Ma and how she portrayed her, she left the anti Native American racism in the children’s books.

Mr Edwards was always my favourite character in the book and TV series. I don’t care if he wasn’t a real person, I’m still believing he was!

Many of his decisions were impulsive and reckless and Ma was left picking up the slack. Her life seemed very lonely and hard based on his whims.

See, I don't see it like that at all. I see them as typical pioneers whose lives were at the mercy of things beyond their control. Like many living in America at the time, especially in the Midwest, they had to contend with the vagaries of a fast-moving, unsettled society and an extremely harsh climate, both literally and economically.

Read more pioneer literature, such as Willa Cather's My Antonia, or the Nellie McClung book I referred to upthread, and you will find that the Ingalls' life was pretty tame. Pioneers were needed to settle and farm the land but it was an extremely unstable and risky lifestyle. Seeing it in this context, Pa had no choice but to take risks.

Many pioneers were far less responsible than Pa and were brutal, abusive alcoholics, while many (especially women) languished in loneliness and isolation and succumbed to depression. I think Ma would have been thankful that Pa was sober, responsible, principled and hard working.

@JellySlice

While I'm not as widely read around the autobiographical fiction series, I have read something by Rose about her family, and possibly something by a biographer, though I can't remember which books. It was some years ago.

I got the impression that Rose was a lesbian. Not necessarily strictly in the closet, either, but certainly not open in her parents home town, nor in her writings.

I've read everything available in the UK in print about LIW and her family. INlcuding Rose. Americans seems to have a theory that Rose was a lesbian, because she had close female friends (that's enough, apparently, for Americans. Especially christian Americans).

Rose married, had a premature baby son who died, and ended up single and not wanting to marry again. She was incredibly intelligent, and achieved a lot for a woman in her time. Again, that's a lot for some Americans to cope with, so they insist on the lesbian theory, because a woman who strove for indepependence cannot just "be".

Nowt amiss with being a lesbian, either, but Americans seems to think so. She couldn't just have found happiness beign a single woman with freinds. Nope. Not possble.

I think Pa got away with a lot because he could be quite romantic — playing the violin and saying their bread didn't need any sweetening if Ma put her handprints on it.

Some of his decisions were a bit shaky — why not let the dog in the wagon when fording a river?

I didn't know that about the American view. I don't think anything I read stated it explicitly, and I certainly didn't make any assumptions about her remaining single. I think I got that impression from Rose's writing.

Anyway, just speculation.

I am really enjoying this thread. I loved the books and - dare I admit it - the TV series (though I don't think I would enjoy it so much if I rewatch it as an adult.

For some reason reading comments here, especially about the parents and the impact their choices have on their children, has reminded me of Cider With Rosie.

In that book you also have a family living in poverty. A feckless father - far worse than pa as he just flits in and out, leaving his wife with not only their own small children, but also her stepdaughters. Laurie's mother fascinates me - she seems quite 'other wordly'. Like Ma she has a love for china - buys and reluctantly sells when times are hard. She did a damn good job with her boys though Laurie Lee and a couple of his brothers had very successful careers despite the poverty they came from.

I realise I love books with interesting mothers - LIW, Little Women, Cider With Rosie. I have also read the Marmee and Me book and realised what a burden Louise M Alcotts father was on that family. She really did him a favour in the books, where he is an abent hero. In real life he was feckless with an inflated sense of his own importance.

@Wildswim

I've wanted to visit the LIW sites all my life. One day, I hope, I will.

I've planned a couple of very successful holidays around writers. Two that work well are Yorkshire (Haworth and Bronte country) and Dorset (Hardy country). A more niche one was Co Leitrim and the Shannon-Erne waterway (John McGahern).

Me too. We had a couple of wonderful visits to the Bronte parsonage, and an amazingly atmospheric walk up the hill behind the house in lashing rain. It is such a beautiful walk and still very wild. I can recommend a great place to stay if anyone is interested. I lived in Dorset for a few years, so visited the Hardy cottage many times, as well Clouds Hill (TE Lawrence).

@ItsDinah

I recommend "Pioneer Girl". It is Wilder's own memoir of her childhood and early adult life with copious notes from researchers. Wilder wrote her memoir in her 60s following the death within the space of four years of her mother and Mary. She wanted to publish her memoir so that people would know what the the pioneer life was really like particularly for the WOMEN. It was grim.To that extent she might be called a feminist. The books are fictionalised children's stories based on her memoir.They omit the really bad things that happened including the birth and death of her younger brother,and the fact that her mother never stopped lamenting how different things would have been if only the son had survived.

There seem to be at least three different versions of Pioneer Girl on Amazon. Which is the right one?

I'd go for the edition with annotated notes, ed William Anderson.

There seem to be at least three different versions of Pioneer Girl on Amazon. Which is the right one?

I have the beautiful edition edited by Pamela Smith Hall. It has loads of photographs and is heavily annotated.

Karen Grassle, who played Ma in the TV series, is on record as saying that the role was restrictive, but I thought she came across well. Apart from issues about wanting to present Pa with a son (which leads to Laura wishing the newborn dead) her most powerful moments include an episode where Ma is, unusually, alone for the day, and has to deal with what may be the onset of sepsis. I remember that in another story she's certain that she's pregnant, but it turns out to be the onset of the menopause.
There was talk upthread about her involvement in farming. When the crops are ruined by a storm, and Pa has to seek work in another state, Ma rallies local women to gather and thresh (?) what's left of the crop.

When Ma and Pa's farm failed, in the first episode of series 9, and they sell up and move on (leaving Laura as the undisputed star of the show) I was actually quie surprised!