Laura Ingalls Wilder brilliantly introduces the story of her husband, Almanzo Wilder in Farmer Boy, the second of her Little House books. The plot revolves around one seemingly simple question: Should Almanzo grow up to be a farmer like his father? Yes, he concludes at the end of that story, for then he shall have a horse of his own.
Almanzo Wilder, c. 1880s
Horses prove a life-long obsession for Almanzo and one that Laura shares. When their paths finally cross in By the Shores of Silver Lake, she notices his horses—and then him. Here is what she says: “Suddenly into the sunny green and blue came two brown horses with flowing black manes and tails, sitting side by side in harness. Their brown flanks and shoulders gleamed in the sunshine, their slender legs stepped daintily, their necks were arched and their ears pricked up, and they tossed their heads proudly as they went by…a young man stood up in the wagon, driving…”
The young man, as we know, is Almanzo. Perhaps Laura sequences her attention this way because she is being coy, but given the recurrence of this type of picture—indeed, she always seems to notice Almanzo’s horses before noticing him—it seems she is pointing to something more literary. Almanzo’s horses are not simply a prize that Laura wants to win as his someday spouse; they are a motif for the adventurous spirit they share.
A Language Lesson
Let’s consider their adventurous spirit by classifying and diagramming the following sentences that tell of Laura helping Almanzo tame a horse named Barnum. Some of these are Laura’s words exactly from These Happy Golden Years; others have been adapted. If you are unfamiliar with this type of language exercise, take a look at this blog series here where I break it down in detail.
Final Thoughts
Although Laura takes the reins in the short scene pictured above, we know from reading the full series and following her life more broadly that she and Almanzo were a team. Sometimes he drove; sometimes she drove. Either way, Barnum and other such horses were likely to run away if Laura and Almanzo didn’t keep their cool and work together with steadfast resolve. Barnum is the first horse they tamed together, ultimately teaching him how to walk. But that doesn’t mean he stopped running altogether. He simply learned to pace himself appropriately.
Therein lies the final lesson from Laura for this blog series: Taming the passions of one’s heart is part of blazing the trail of life.
Laura and Almanzo Wilder, 1885
Laura, we well know, was much like Pa in always wanting to go West. But also like Pa, she tamed that passion to embrace the duties of running a household. After much suffering, including more that comes after the timeframe of the series, Laura and Almanzo settle down on Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri, far from either of their childhood families. They live out their lives, shifting from season to season, never forgetting their upbringing and ultimately bringing it back to life for the benefit of so many others through the Little House books.
For as much effort as some have made to include Rose in that process, it bears mentioning that Almanzo played a role, too. He encouraged Laura’s writing, supported her travels, and furnished her with ample knowledge of building and workmanship and other farm know-how. Even more importantly, he recognized who she was and what she was capable of.
Tamed by life but never broken in spirit, Laura and Almanzo are nothing less than trailblazers who have inspired untold numbers to take life by the reins.
The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder are filled with many family hardships. Though readers feel each of these differently, there is something particularly jarring about Mary’s blindness. Not only does it seem to come from nowhere, appearing at the beginning of By the Shores of Silver Lake after such a happy conclusion to On the Banks of Plum Creek, but it also proves to be about the only hardship the Ingalls family cannot fully remedy. As we learn, Mary does not get her eyesight back, and her life is thus fundamentally altered.
Mary Amelia Ingalls c. 1880s
Mary becomes more reserved, loses her chance of becoming a teacher, and becomes permanently dependent on her parents and then later on her sisters. Although over the course of the rest of the series, we see Mary go off to college, learn to read braille, and find peace with her lot, we the readers are still left feeling sad for Mary. She must have suffered greatly, and in a different way, so, too, must have Laura.
Their relationship changes forever after Mary becomes blind. They stop being childhood playmates and embrace very different paths. Nevertheless, they do not stop loving each other and sacrificing for each other. We see this in the way that Laura steps up to become a teacher in Mary’s place, saves money to put toward Mary’s education, and—most especially—in how Laura becomes Mary’s eyes.
A Language Lesson
Let’s join Laura in one of her first attempts at being Mary’s eyes by classifying and diagramming the following sentences. Some of these are Laura’s words exactly from By the Shores of Silver Lake; others have been adapted. If you are unfamiliar with this type of language exercise, take a look at this blog series here where I break it down in detail.
Final Thoughts
In this particular moment in Laura’s life, we see the blossoming of her worldview, one that is ever focused on seeing the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Hidden as they sometimes are, she nevertheless knows that they are always present, always waiting to be contemplated and enjoyed. She knows that blindness, true blindness, is more than an ailment of the eyes such as Mary suffers. It is an ailment of the soul, and she earnestly seeks to heal that more damaging blindness she fears for her sister.
Left to Right: Carrie, Mary, and Laura Ingalls, c 1879/1880
Therein lies another of Laura’s many lessons: Imagination opens the window of the soul and lets the True, the Good, and the Beautiful stream through. Happily, Mary welcomes that lesson in time, for in These Happy Golden Years, during a visit home from college, she tells Laura, “I never see things so well with anyone else.” Indeed, many of us feel the same way about Laura.
Charlotte the Rag Doll is one of the few treasures Laura Ingalls Wilder owned as a little girl. It was given to her one magical Christmas morning when she still lived in her little house in the big woods. Stockings for her sisters and cousins and herself hung from the chimney, each with a bright red pair of mittens and a red-and-white-striped peppermint stick. But, for whatever wonderful reason, Laura’s stocking had something more; it had a rag doll.
Just as the name implies, rag dolls were made from rags or—at best—scraps of leftover materials. The “rags” were worth little or nothing in real dollars, but they were carefully saved for all manner of other purposes from the most practical, such as patching a dress, to the comparatively extravagant, such as making a rag doll like Charlotte. Though lacking the monetary value of one of Nellie Oleson’s China dolls, Charlotte was every bit as valuable in Laura’s eyes, if not more so.
A Language Lesson
Let’s join Laura as she gazes upon Charlotte for the first time by classifying and diagramming the following sentences. Some of these are Laura’s words exactly from Little House in the Big Woods; others have been adapted. If you are unfamiliar with this type of language exercise, take a look at this blog series here where I break it down in detail.
Final Thoughts
As a motif, Charlotte the Rag Doll symbolizes Laura’s childhood innocence. We see this come full circle when many winters later, in On the Banks of Plum Creek, an older Laura is forced by Ma to give Charlotte to a little neighbor girl. The girl, as we know, proves a horrible caretaker and abandons Charlotte, plucked bald and ill-abused, in an icy mud puddle.
Although this is nothing in comparison to the real tragedies that befell her family time and again, we know this episode in Laura’s life is still utterly scandalous. All at once she is forced to “grow up” and see that the world can be mean and cruel.
But the incredible thing is how Laura moves forward. Rather than discard Charlotte as a childish thing of the past, she insists Ma restore her. Grown up or not, Laura wants to keep her rag doll. No, she doesn’t plan to play with her anymore or snuggle with her at bedtime, but she wants her all the same. She wants to remember what it’s like to be a little girl; she wants to stay a little girl at heart.
Therein lies another of Laura’s lessons: A well-preserved childhood can help us through the trials that come later.
First Image Credit: Rag Doll “Susie” by Bertha Semple, c. 1937 courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Second Image Credit: Rag Doll by Archie Thompson, c. 1940 courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
No book in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder would be complete without the accompaniment of Pa’s fiddle. From house to house, it always strikes just the right note for every occasion.
Pa’s fiddle was said to be a coveted Amati
When Pa wants to entertain Laura, Mary, Carrie, and eventually Grace, he plays “Old Grimes” or “Old Dan Tucker” or “Captain Jinks.” When he wants them to drift off to sleep, he plays “The Blue Juniata” or “The Beacon Light of Home.” When he wants to lift their spirits, he plays “Home Sweet Home.”
Always, Pa’s fiddle sanctifies the moments of Laura’s life, and in the process, it draws us, the readers, deeper and deeper into the beauty of her family.
A Language Lesson
Let’s allow Pa’s fiddle to stir our imagination as we classify and diagram the following sentences. Some of these are Laura’s words exactly from Little House in the Big Woods; others have been adapted. If you are unfamiliar with this type of language exercise, take a look at this blog series here where I break it down in detail.
“Lay” serves as a linking verb because you could substitute the being verb “was” and retain the meaning. That makes “awake” a participle predicate adjective modifying “Laura.”Don’t get tricked on this one. “Began” is not a transitive verb. We know that because the sentence cannot be rephrased in the passive voice. That makes “to quiver…music” a complimentary infinitive phrase and not an infinitive direct object phrase.
Final Thoughts
Time and again in the Little House books, Pa’s fiddle does more than match the mood of his family. It elevates it, calling them to be joyful in even the hardest of times. Laura heeds this with all the trust of an adoring child. She listens to Pa’s songs, completely absorbed, until she has learned them by heart—until they have become her own songs.
By the time we meet her as a grown woman narrating the story of her life, it is clear that she has come to embody the very spirit of Pa’s fiddle. She knows that merriment is the much-needed companion of hard work; one without the other is neither happiness nor contentment.
Therein lies another of Laura’s many lessons: Music and song bring out the joy of hard work.
The most prominent motif in the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder is the little house itself. From the Big Woods of Wisconsin to the Shores of Silver Lake, Laura Ingalls Wilder lived in one little house after another as a girl. Sometimes the houses had glass windows. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes the snow came in. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes the chimneys blazed. Sometimes they didn’t.
But what the little houses lacked in size and stuff they made up for in virtues. “Courage, self reliance, independence, integrity and helpfulness,” as Laura so oft-stated later in life, were the things that fortified her little houses and made them beautiful.
A Language Lesson
It all started with Pa and Ma and the example they set every day through thick and thin. Let’s think deeply about that as we classify and diagram the following sentences. Some of these are Laura’s words exactly from Little House on the Prairie; others have been adapted. If you are unfamiliar with this type of language exercise, take a look at this blog series here where I break it down in detail.
Final Thoughts
Caroline and Charles Ingalls
What a tremendous effort that must have been for Pa and Ma, and what a relief, also, it must have been to put their children to bed inside four walls, safe from the wolves and the uncertainties of the pioneer road.
Whether Laura realized the extent of her parents’ labors at the time or only later in life, it clearly made an impression on her. One gets the sense that it was her little houses, through the sacrificial love of her parents, that built Laura.
Therein lies her most important lesson: Families that sacrifice for each other will be strong and good and loving.
After I read the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder with my family recently, I became increasingly interested in learning the story behind her story. What was the real Laura like? How did she become an author? And why were her books classified as children’s historical fiction and not autobiographical?
Laura Ingalls Wilder, c. 1885
Those questions are not so easily answered; nonetheless, I found Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder a great place to start. It not only “corrects the record” on different events in her life, such as how old she was when she lived in Wisconsin (not once but twice, it turns out!), but it also provides extensive coverage of Laura’s life after marriage and how she came to be an author. For those reasons alone, the biography is well worth reading.
Nevertheless, Fraser’s voice is so pointed, so superior, it felt like reading a biography written by Nellie Oleson.
That got me thinking about the problematic nature of memoirs, which is something I also addressed in my blog series on Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. As I said there, memoirs are a sticky business. No matter how fact-based, there is always some construction going on, some angle being conveyed, some truth being obscured, some falsehood being promoted. Since there is no way around it, many biographers acknowledge that up front.
That’s what Patrick Chalmers did when he wrote his biography of Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows. Chalmers introduced his work by saying, “The man who writes the life of another is much in the position of the man who paints another’s portrait. And in all portraits you will find, I think, more background than picture.” That is certainly the case with Fraser’s biography, particularly given its focus on the pioneer movement writ large. For her, Laura’s life is more a lens through which to view that period of American history.
Walt Whitman was also concerned with the problematic nature of memoirs and addressed it in his poem, “When I Read the Book.” It goes like this:
When I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
These sentiments rang true when I read Prairie Fires. What a contrast from the Little House books, not because the details of Laura’s childhood are so very different, but because it feels so impersonal, even lifeless at times.
For a final comparison, C.S. Lewis tells his readers in his introduction to Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, “The story is, I fear, so suffocatingly subjective; the kind of thing I have never written before and shall probably never write again…” Lewis seems almost embarrassed to have written a book about himself, knowing as he does, that it is inescapably subjective and wholly constructed to fit his “joy” narrative. His is a humble, honest sentiment, one that I think Laura could have related to. But I’m not so sure about Fraser. If she offered any similar caveat, then I missed it. What I didn’t miss was her attempt to discredit Laura’s truthfulness (or at least sully it).
Her argument boils down to something like this: Laura’s story is such a powerful, wide-spread myth that it has erroneously shaped the American historical conscience of pioneer life. Contrary to what the Little House books depict, pioneer life was one big figurative prairie fire. Laura’s own experience was no different.
But is that fair? Was Laura’s life like a prairie fire? For that matter, was she lying to her readers in any way, overtly or otherwise? In order to answer those questions, it’s helpful to consider how Laura came to publish her series in the first place.
From Autobiography to Children’s Historical Fiction
Laura seems to have set out to tell a true story about her life, at least how she remembered it. On May 7, 1930, she shared six handwritten tablets containing her memoir, then titled Pioneer Girl, with her daughter Rose Lane. Rose, who was already an established author, began typing and revising the memoir the very next day, and the day after that, she sent a sample to her own agent, Carl Brandt. His initial feedback was positive, but by the following month, he sent word that he was unable to sell it.
Rose Wilder Lane, pre-1921
From there, a fascinating mother-daughter collaboration began that ultimately produced both an adult version and a juvenile version of Pioneer Girl, the latter based on the Wisconsin chapter of the book alone. Rose kept the juvenile version a secret from her mother for reasons we can only speculate. When she approached Brandt again in October with the revised adult version, he advised her “not to try to sell [her] mother’s story.”
She didn’t take his advice. Instead, and perhaps for many other reasons, she acquired a new agent, George T. Bye, and passed both versions of the memoir onto him. On April 6, 1931, he wrote to Rose that the adult version “didn’t seem to have enough high points or crescendo. A fine old lady was sitting in a rocking chair and telling a story chronologically but with no benefit of perspective or theatre.” The juvenile version, however, which was roughly enough text for a picture book, was more promising. It made its way to Marion Fiery of Alfred A. Knopf Publishing House, and she liked it enough to ask for it to be rewritten as a chapter book.
At that point, Rose let her mother know about the juvenile version. Laura, as it turned out, had been wanting to write for children since as early as 1918. Her chance had finally come, and she thus began writing what would ultimately be the first book in her series, Little House in the Big Woods.
The children’s department at Knopf closed, however, before the book could be published, so it had to be circulated once more—but only briefly. It made its way to Virginia Kirkus of Harper & Brothers. She began reading Laura’s manuscript on a train and became so engrossed in it that she missed her stop. “One felt that one was listening, not reading,” she wrote later, “And picture after picture…flashed before my inward eye. I knew Laura—and the older Laura who was telling her story.”
Kirkus accepted the book, and in the process asked Laura to clarify the genre.
At some point, Laura’s memoir had strayed too far from the hard facts of real life to be considered an autobiography. She had finessed a plot, reimagined dialogue, woven in themes. The prose stopped resembling the tiresome droll of an old lady looking back on her life and began to sing like pure, youthful poetry. The book even opened with the fairy tale line: “Once upon a time…”
It was published as children’s historical fiction. That was a prudent decision, particularly given the intense scrutiny the work would face in years to come. And yet, no matter the precise classification of the Little House books, they remain Laura’s memoir precisely because she considered it the story of her life.
Lessons from Laura
What’s more, the fairy tale qualities of the Little House books are hardly an attempt to deceive. Rather, they reflect how deeply attuned Laura was to the innocence of children and the promise of their future.
Take, for example, the sad subject of her baby brother’s death. In Pioneer Girl, she says, “Little brother Freddie was not well, and the doctor came. I thought that would cure him, as it had cured Ma. But our little brother got worse instead of better, and one terrible day he straightened out his little body and was dead.” Worried the subject was too difficult for little children, she chose to exclude him entirely from the Little House books. Perhaps that makes the books less “true” in a way, but considering Laura’s target audience, there seems to be a higher principle at play there than strict honesty.
(Incidentally, the final book in the series, The First Four Years, does include the death of her son, but it was published posthumously, which means we have no idea where Laura was in the writing process of it and whether she even would have wanted it published as it was. More to our present point, William Anderson, an expert on Laura’s life and works, asserts that the manuscript was meant for an adult audience.)
In any case, Laura was not trying to paint her life—or prairie life in general—in purely rosy colors. Pa’s struggles to get by, the unfair displacement of the Native Americans, the devasting locusts, Mary’s blindness, the long winter, and so much more hardship remained. Those were realities and lessons she thought children should hear about. Those were the kinds of things that taught children “courage, self reliance, independence, integrity and helpfulness,” as she so oft stated. Laura’s narrative voice on those subjects is at once stoic and reflective, revealing that happiness can be found in the toughest of times, grief can indeed be turned to joy.
Perhaps that is what makes it more of a fairy tale for some. Or maybe, just maybe, Laura did find happiness in the midst of such hardships. Either way, Laura’s life story is first and foremost her own to tell. The Little House books may not be perfectly factual, but they are certainly True, and the trouble with Truth is that it does not depend on facts; it depends on Itself.
To those looking to learn more about Laura’s life story from a factual perspective, Prairie Fires is a fascinating synthesis of a seemingly unending collection of available resources. Just remember, its narrative is also constructed.
To those who simply want to savor the lessons Laura left in her books, I hope you’ll read on as I consider some of them through the following motifs: a little house, Pa’s fiddle, Laura’s rag doll, Mary’s eyes, and Almanzo’s horses. Along the way, I will also be sharing sentence classifications and diagrams that integrate my love of language with Laura’s story.
