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 been making my 8 yr old DS read the series and dipping into bits myself when reading a couple of pages with him before bedtime, I loved the books as a child (esp The Long Winter!) so I’ll check out Prairie Fires.

He was shocked at Mary going blind and I think it’s made him think a bit about how lucky he is to be able to have the toys he likes. I think his mind boggled a bit when the girls got so excited about beads and molasses at Christmas because there was so little ‘luxury’ in their life.

I’ve pointed out to him the times when it must have been dangerous and stressful for Ma, being in the house(s) alone* with her children while pa is battling his way back in bad weather. Sometimes it’s quite striking the decisions he makes for the family!

*except she doesn’t know if there is anyone out there who might try and do them harm.

Yes, it’s the conversation about not using”obey” in the marriage ceremony where Almanzo asks her if she’s for women’s rights like his sister, and she says no, she doesn’t want to vote. Interesting about Eliza Jane Wilder and her life.

There’s a book called Old Town in the Green Groves which is a filler-in written by a modern author explaining what the Ingalls were doing in the years which Laura’s books leave out. It covers them working in the hotel, the birth and death of the little brother and other bits. The style is good, very similar to the original writing. There’s also Caroline: Little House Revisited which is a retelling of the first two or three books from Ma’s point of view. I’ve only read a short Kindle sample but it includes Pa coming home with a shitload of canvas for the covered wagon and she just has to get on and sew the cover by hand in her (non existent) spare time

@Tooearlyforsquats

HAVE YOU READ PRAIRIE FIRES?????

you SHOULD!!!

One of the best history books I’ve ever read. Traces Laura’s life from her parents to her daughter, all about the writing and the publishing, also reflecting American history. I’ve read it three times, it won a national book award.

Just about to mention it! Utterly brilliant.

They married in the 1880s, a generation before women got the vote. Eliza Jane seems way ahead of the curve. I was actually surprised about the 'obey' conversation, never knew that was in issue then although there were religious reasons. The minister agrees with Laura. His view is that nobody should obey anyone but God.

I think believing in the education of girls

They are better educated than boys. In the later books, Laura mentions older boys not being able to come to school when there is work to do on farms. Ma has been a school teacher and always seems cleverer than Pa who can be a bit of dolt at times.

Ma has been a school teacher and always seems cleverer than Pa who can be a bit of dolt at times.

I’m sure I remember reading a theory that Pa suffered from manic depression/bipolar disorder and that was why their life and journeys West were so random and disorganised. Apparently they didn’t follow very logical routes or travel at the right times for safety etc and the theory was that they moved when Pa was in a manic phase and not thinking clearly.

Interestingly I just read a review of Prairie Fires in which the author suggested that Rose Wilder Lane might have had bipolar disorder, so it could be true about Pa.

@MrsWooster

Also the discussion about Indians is fascinating: I reread it with trepidation, expecting some wholly unacceptable racism throughout but it’s a lot more nuanced-it’s racist, all right, but there’s a real difference in perception of Indians from Ma and Pa and an implicit rejection of Ma’s resolute racism. I can’t wait to see if it’s addressed more in Prairie Fires.

Except it’s (presumably) at Pa’s instigation that they illegally settle on ‘Indian’ reservation land, as he blithely expects the tribes to be moved on west again, and then gets furious about the fact that it doesn’t happen and insists on storming off before they can be escrorted off by troops. Knowing this makes lots of Little House on the Prairie read quite differently — the Native Americans in the vicinity are hostile to the white settlers because they’re just helping themselves to their land and decimating the hunting, and are quarrelling with one another because the government moved a whole lot of entirely different clans from their ancestral lands and stuck them together on the same reservation.

In some ways it makes Ma’s straightforward fear and hatred more explicable — at least it registers the fact that the NA have a grievance and are hostile — than Pa’s admiration, which seems to sit unproblematically alongside the fact that he’s benefiting from mass removal and land confiscation that is essentially genocide.

Also, interesting that we never see Pa directly threatened by an ‘Indian’. He gets to look progressive by saluting Soldat du Chêne and being the one to take the long winter warning seriously, but what would he have done if he were at home when the two men in skunk skins come to the house, force Ma to cook cornbread for them, and steal the furs? Would he really have said ‘Help yourselves!’?

I seem to remember there was a neighbouring woman who keeps talking about savages and the Minnesota Massacre. It must have been hard for women who very possibly had not made the decision to go onto that land, they must have been simply terrified.

Pa does seem to admire the Indians but wants their land. He has not thought it through.

I think settlers had to take a gamble when moving on to Indian land but it usually paid off. Pa keeps repeating that Indians are always moved on. I am guessing that he was probably right and that he is annoyed that the policy changed.

The book is interesting as it spells out the differing opinions of the time in simple terms.

Just catching up with this thread. It's interesting @ItsDinah that the view of women doing farm work was changed for the book. It never did really ring true that Pa could have run a farm with no help from the children at all.

Must order Prairie Fires.

I think Pa counts as a liberal towards the Indigenous Americans because he doesn't believe in killing them all. (Even though his actions are contributing to genocide.) Awful. At the time I read them as a child, I already knew about this (although not all the grim details) because I had the kind of parents who didn't spare that kind of detail. Now my DC know because their childminder is Cherokee (not that she told them the story of the Trail of Tears herself when they were tiny - that would have been odd).

If any of you are interested in reading a book from a Lakota Sioux perspective which is partially set at the same time, in North Dakota, I recommend The Grass Dancer by Susan Power.

Absolutely- it is a fundamentally racist premise; what fascinates me is the difference in the way it plays out-pa’s cognitive dissonance about good individuals v taking land from tribes so inherently seeing them as a group without rights of ownership /occupation. Ma’s visceral hatred is something very different. Then there’s the fact that LIW was born at the end of the civil war and there’s a mention of it somewhere-possibly in Little Town? which is also when they had the ‘minstrel’ show and yet Dr Tan had saved all their lives a couple of years before...
also the Independence Day scene in ?Little Town? helped me understand the American culture more than ever before-links into the almost pathological independence and ‘no king but god’ attitude that is so alien to my own perspective-I’m no royalist but I’m a product of 1009 years of being a subject, of living in a place where every inch of land is owned, and disputes over moving a fence line 6” can lead to a blood feud!

Didn’t LIW get some cancel culture grief over Native Americans? I can’t remember whether it was about their depiction in the books or whether she had expressed negative opinions in her other writings.

When I read the books as a child I thought how silly Ma was with her flutterings and “Mercy, Charles!” and “Whatever you think best, Charles”, but as an adult I realised how frustrating and lonely and frightening her life must have been at times

I have Prairie Fires, but inexplicably haven't actually read it.

I remember reading the books for the second or third time as a child, and my mother was also reading them for the first time. I remember her commenting how hard it must have been for Caroline/Ma - every time they were just getting settled, Charles/Pa decided they should move on, and she just had to go along with it, never getting properly settled. I remember thinking, but it was so exciting, all the adventures and everything they saw. But now I am an adult who us responsible for keeping a roof over my head and food on the table and so on, I can see how she must have longed for more stability and certainty.

I too think Laura felt restricted by gender expectations, needing to sew and so on - but though she was educated and had her own career as a writer, she wasn't really a feminist; she just grew up in a time/situation where everyone was expected to pull their weight.

I recently read Rose Wilder Lane's diary from being a nurse in France in WW1 - Laura raised a remarkable daughter, too.

One day, when I have money and travel is allowed, I'd like to go to the USA and see some of the places LAW lived in - quite a few have museums. I suspect otherwise, places like De Smet are not very interesting, but it would be a way of seeing a less-touristy view of the USA.

And if it hadn't been for LAW, I would probably not have read round the subject of 19th century US history as much as I have, nor have as good an understanding of where different US states are.

I think what Prairie Fire does is give context to everything. How bone rattlingly poor ma was as a child.

I read the books to my six year old boy and he LOVED them, we stopped at by the shores of silver lake as her as a teen was less interesting. He adored Farmer Boy, and we tied that in to looking at YouTube videos about ploughing then and now (HUGE computerised twenty row ploughs), talked a bit about the vale of tears and why people felt justified to move indigenous people on. We’ve also been watching Victorian farm (er homeschooling attempt) which pulls so much of it all together as all about the same time period.

The other thing the book did for me was delve into the creation of the ‘merican boot-strapping pioneer myth. Rose wilder lane I think had a huge impact on how the impression of good homely folk just making it on their own. PF presents pa and ma as very good, honest people but obviously without the benefit of hindsight. And yes, had they never ever moved they would have been richer by far. Also though, ma quite understandably dug her heels in South Dakota, it was one of the worst places they could have done so, destined to poverty due to aridity. If they’d just kept going one more time and ended in Oregon or Washington state, the farming wouldn’t be so thankless and unproductive. It goes into how the claim farmers were so much more successful if they had many sons instead of farmers, how the government support for ploughing up ancient prairie created the conditions for the dustbowl. But Laura fights and fights and fights for a better life. She definitely was very tough, social and energetic. They went to Florida and then back to SD - then the section of P Fires where she goes off on the wagon to the ozarks - incredible.

Plus the author of PF manages to thread three things together - deconstruction of a childhood legendary tale, history of a family, plus a century of absolutely transformative American history. And, it’s all centred around women!!

I’m so jealous you have it all to read fresh - perfect lockdown read to get immersed in.

Come back and start discussing it when you’re reading it! I might read it for a fifth time?

Sorry I’m typing on my phone so laden with grammar spelling errors!

@EBearhug

God yes, there’s a bit in I think the house at plum creek in a snowstorm where ma clearly thinks pa has died and she’s just going to be stuck on a prairie with two little girls in an uninsulated house and a barrage of storms, no way of getting food etc. As a parent, it’s petrifying! As a child I thought ma was a real prissy killjoy, as an adult I realise how amazing and intrepid she was.

I feel her discomfort when being forced into the strict gender boxes of the times

Ma often has to do 'mens work' when Pa is away, once ploughing all the land. Their only son died as a baby leaving four daughters, the eldest is blind, there seems to be a theme throughout that Pa often treats Laura like a son and teaches her things like fishing that are usually the domain of boys. I think Laura slowly realises that life is not always like that, even though she proves many times she is as capable as boy, her life will be different.

In one of the later books she meets a cousin and they ride horses across the prairie and talk about how they feel free at that moment but see many restrictions on their life. I think it is then that another cousin who married at 13 is mentioned.

What age group would you say the books are suitable for? (I've never read them)

@Tooearlyforsquats And the bit when Pa is building the log cabin (which is actually beautifully described) and drops a bloody great log on Ma’s foot . And she just has to get on with shit while hobbling around and holding everything together, and only after nearly killing her does Pa finally acknowledge that it might be more sensible to ask their neighbour for help.

Off topic, but did anyone else have a bit of a crush on Mr Edwards who swam the creek to bring the girls presents from Santa Claus

@SydneyCarton

Yes, it’s the conversation about not using”obey” in the marriage ceremony where Almanzo asks her if she’s for women’s rights like his sister, and she says no, she doesn’t want to vote. Interesting about Eliza Jane Wilder and her life.

There’s a book called Old Town in the Green Groves which is a filler-in written by a modern author explaining what the Ingalls were doing in the years which Laura’s books leave out. It covers them working in the hotel, the birth and death of the little brother and other bits. The style is good, very similar to the original writing. There’s also Caroline: Little House Revisited which is a retelling of the first two or three books from Ma’s point of view. I’ve only read a short Kindle sample but it includes Pa coming home with a shitload of canvas for the covered wagon and she just has to get on and sew the cover by hand in her (non existent) spare time

Shit! It’s to it just occurred to me that Ma had to sew the damn thing. Gosh, women weren’t tied to the kitchen sink, they were tied to the endless sewing pile.

Austriana I first read them in primary school.

If you’re reading these to kids, read them Birchbark House too. Don’t have the only ‘settler’ narrative you give them be that of the white settlers, give them a Native American’s narrative too.

Austriana I think the recommended age is 8-12, although I’ve read Big Woods to my 4 and 6 year old. Farmer Boy had some passages about kids beating each other up which I had to censor

WeAreJackieWeaver I know! It had never occurred to me that they couldn’t just pick one up ready made at the general store. I think later on they get a sewing machine and although it’s on credit Ma is delighted because it all takes so much less time.

When Almanzo asked Laura if she was for womens rights like his sister, she was 18 and had always lived on a frontier town. Almanzo was ten years older and Eliza Jane his elder sister and they had both lived back east.

I read an article somewhere (years ago, so no link) about how the Singer sewing machine changed the lives of pioneer women. Not that it saved them much labour, as it just meant they had more time for different types of labour, or more time for sewing for other people, though that might mean a little more income.