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?

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:

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.

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.

Images courtesy of Wiki Commons