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.