Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the "Little House" series late in life. Among other things, it's an expression of longing for all she had lost. It's also a civics lesson: Wilder felt that children needed a tale about stoicism, courage, and honesty. ("You think you have it bad here in the twentieth century? At times, in my childhood, I lived in a hut.") Wilder channeled her father's spirit to write the books; Papa Ingalls had been a natural storyteller. The stories skip over much that is painful and make Papa Ingalls into more of a paragon than he really was. Laura Ingalls Wilder, so scornful of the New Deal, so insistent on doing-it-yourself, did not dwell on the many occasions when her father gratefully accepted (and did not repay) assistance from neighbors, and when he skipped out on a debt. The novels are "Little House on the Big Woods" (the move happens when Laura is five, though in real life, she was three; oddly, LIW would say, "Everything in these books is true"), "Farmer Boy" (not as great, let's face it, but appealing for boy readers), "Little House on the Prairie" (the book that rocked the world, later favored by Ronald Reagan), "On the Banks of Plum Creek" (the awkward adolescent phase of LIW's literary career), "By the Shores of Silver Lake" (Part II of the awkward adolescent phase), "The Long Winter" (LIW's "masterpiece," meant to be entitled "The Hard Winter," but publishers worried the word "hard" would scare readers away), "Little Town on the Prairie" (much lighter, after a hard winter, and marred by Rose Wilder Lane's crazy libertarian preaching), and "These Happy Golden Years" (Laura gleefully marries, and there's nothing to indicate that the marriage will be challenging).
After World War II, in Japan, Douglas MacArthur had to restore order. There was a great deal of propaganda; you wouldn't want to go near a textbook if you wanted something resembling the truth. Surprisingly, as part of his mission to get Japan up and running, he circulated Japanese translations of "The Hard Winter." (A translation of "Little House on the Prairie" followed.) Japanese readers felt they *knew* Laura. Dislocation? Living in huts? Finding yourself at the mercy of the natural world? Poverty? Stoicism? All this struck a chord with the Japanese readers. LIW became revered. The English-to-Japanese translators called her on her birthday, to honor her. LIW libraries and reading rooms sprung up in the US. LIW, old and sick, would refuse to attend openings, but she would mail off original manuscripts of various "Little House" books, as gifts. Sometimes, when people asked her why she didn't continue writing, she'd say something crazy, i.e. "The government taxes my earnings and takes away all I make from the 'Little House' books, so why bother?" It's possible, though, that she was just very tired, or, like Harper Lee, she couldn't stumble on a second Great Idea.
Rose Wilder Lane is among the fabulous characters in American history--and she is real! The daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, she suffered from something that resembles bipolar disorder. She would lock herself in her room and threaten suicide. Then, she would conceive of ridiculously grandiose projects, such as a long essay to touch on each of the major governments in the world, with descriptions of varying bureaucratic procedures, or a novel cycle that would address each class in America, from impoverished farmers to billionaires. ("I will need material from each foreign embassy, quickly! Remember to use letterhead. Foreign countries like letterhead!") Rose enjoyed some kind of personal friendship with the hated Herbert Hoover--forever attached, in the popular imagination, to Hoovervilles and "No one is *really* starving..."--but even Rose voted for FDR the first time. Then she learned to despise FDR. She seemed to think he was worse than Hitler. Rose and her friend, Ayn Rand, wrote and wrote about the evils of big government. Wilder's biographer--Caroline Fraser--suggests that the only real contribution to letters Rose made was the editorial work for "Little House" and its sequels.
It seems that Rose allowed the misconception--lingering to this day--that she was the ghostwriter of the "Little House" books. (It's funny that a similar misconception exists w/r/t Capote, Lee, and "To Kill a Mockingbird.") Rose didn't write the "Little House" series--and her editorial role seems to have dried up a bit, toward the end--but she did help her mother. The two figures loved and loathed each other, and their fighting is like something from a soap opera. All the psychodrama! Rose bought for Wilder a house--a house Wilder seemed not to want--then Rose resented Wilder for living in the house. Rose spoke with open condescension about the "Little House" series, then pilfered Laura's material for her own (vastly inferior) work. Rose wrote a snarling, pedantic expose about a small Missouri town she had lived in with her mother, and for years thereafter the town seemed not to want anything to do with Rose. Through all their feuding, mother and daughter chipped away at the "Little House" stories; mother and daughter seemed to be able to put their enmity in a box, in the service of something beautiful. Laura would write in a plainspoken way, and Rose would add flourishes. A great aid Rose provided was to write about Mary's blindness in an emotional, direct way. (Laura really struggled with this.) Rose also added an archaic "be." "Be you feeling prepared to take this journey?" This attention to detail elevated the material--made it more interesting.
Laura Ingalls Wilder noticed, before she died, that a tide was turning against "Little House." A reader pointed out that the warm descriptions of blackface, and uncritical uses of the words "coon" and "darkie," were troubling. Blackface had been unmasked as a degrading practice long before LIW started writing. (LIW conceded that "coon" was offensive, but pretended not to know why someone could object to "darkie.") Famously, for twenty years, a passage in the "Little House" series stood uncontested: "There were no people on the prairie. There were only Indians." It took a child to point out the disturbing implications of these lines. A change was quickly made. LIW seemed to have mixed feelings about Native Americans; her books celebrate the "westward expansion" of white settlers, but at the same time, Laura seems to feel empathy for Native Americans and to recognize that what is happening to them is wrong. This unresolved tension is, Fraser suggests, part of the greatness of "Little House on the Prairie."
A confession: I never really loved the "Little House" books. I found that they were the opposite of what a little gay male reader might enjoy; in other words, there is very little irony. There's so much sincerity in "Little House," I found the plainspoken earnestness grating. (My husband does not recall sharing this reaction. He says, "I enjoyed reading about the wolves and the bunnies.") Still, LIW fascinates me, because she is like Harper Lee or like Taylor Swift; she is a woman getting things done and quietly subverting various tired ways of thinking about gender. And you? Your thoughts on LIW? The race controversy? The ranking of the novels? (Fraser suggests that the quality remained quiet steady all the way to the end. The later novels were Newbury Honor Books; they never won the actual award, because there was a bias against giving the award to parts of a series. This was corrected. The award-givers established a Laura Ingalls Wilder Award--then handed it to Laura Ingalls Wilder.)
After World War II, in Japan, Douglas MacArthur had to restore order. There was a great deal of propaganda; you wouldn't want to go near a textbook if you wanted something resembling the truth. Surprisingly, as part of his mission to get Japan up and running, he circulated Japanese translations of "The Hard Winter." (A translation of "Little House on the Prairie" followed.) Japanese readers felt they *knew* Laura. Dislocation? Living in huts? Finding yourself at the mercy of the natural world? Poverty? Stoicism? All this struck a chord with the Japanese readers. LIW became revered. The English-to-Japanese translators called her on her birthday, to honor her. LIW libraries and reading rooms sprung up in the US. LIW, old and sick, would refuse to attend openings, but she would mail off original manuscripts of various "Little House" books, as gifts. Sometimes, when people asked her why she didn't continue writing, she'd say something crazy, i.e. "The government taxes my earnings and takes away all I make from the 'Little House' books, so why bother?" It's possible, though, that she was just very tired, or, like Harper Lee, she couldn't stumble on a second Great Idea.
Rose Wilder Lane is among the fabulous characters in American history--and she is real! The daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, she suffered from something that resembles bipolar disorder. She would lock herself in her room and threaten suicide. Then, she would conceive of ridiculously grandiose projects, such as a long essay to touch on each of the major governments in the world, with descriptions of varying bureaucratic procedures, or a novel cycle that would address each class in America, from impoverished farmers to billionaires. ("I will need material from each foreign embassy, quickly! Remember to use letterhead. Foreign countries like letterhead!") Rose enjoyed some kind of personal friendship with the hated Herbert Hoover--forever attached, in the popular imagination, to Hoovervilles and "No one is *really* starving..."--but even Rose voted for FDR the first time. Then she learned to despise FDR. She seemed to think he was worse than Hitler. Rose and her friend, Ayn Rand, wrote and wrote about the evils of big government. Wilder's biographer--Caroline Fraser--suggests that the only real contribution to letters Rose made was the editorial work for "Little House" and its sequels.
It seems that Rose allowed the misconception--lingering to this day--that she was the ghostwriter of the "Little House" books. (It's funny that a similar misconception exists w/r/t Capote, Lee, and "To Kill a Mockingbird.") Rose didn't write the "Little House" series--and her editorial role seems to have dried up a bit, toward the end--but she did help her mother. The two figures loved and loathed each other, and their fighting is like something from a soap opera. All the psychodrama! Rose bought for Wilder a house--a house Wilder seemed not to want--then Rose resented Wilder for living in the house. Rose spoke with open condescension about the "Little House" series, then pilfered Laura's material for her own (vastly inferior) work. Rose wrote a snarling, pedantic expose about a small Missouri town she had lived in with her mother, and for years thereafter the town seemed not to want anything to do with Rose. Through all their feuding, mother and daughter chipped away at the "Little House" stories; mother and daughter seemed to be able to put their enmity in a box, in the service of something beautiful. Laura would write in a plainspoken way, and Rose would add flourishes. A great aid Rose provided was to write about Mary's blindness in an emotional, direct way. (Laura really struggled with this.) Rose also added an archaic "be." "Be you feeling prepared to take this journey?" This attention to detail elevated the material--made it more interesting.
Laura Ingalls Wilder noticed, before she died, that a tide was turning against "Little House." A reader pointed out that the warm descriptions of blackface, and uncritical uses of the words "coon" and "darkie," were troubling. Blackface had been unmasked as a degrading practice long before LIW started writing. (LIW conceded that "coon" was offensive, but pretended not to know why someone could object to "darkie.") Famously, for twenty years, a passage in the "Little House" series stood uncontested: "There were no people on the prairie. There were only Indians." It took a child to point out the disturbing implications of these lines. A change was quickly made. LIW seemed to have mixed feelings about Native Americans; her books celebrate the "westward expansion" of white settlers, but at the same time, Laura seems to feel empathy for Native Americans and to recognize that what is happening to them is wrong. This unresolved tension is, Fraser suggests, part of the greatness of "Little House on the Prairie."
A confession: I never really loved the "Little House" books. I found that they were the opposite of what a little gay male reader might enjoy; in other words, there is very little irony. There's so much sincerity in "Little House," I found the plainspoken earnestness grating. (My husband does not recall sharing this reaction. He says, "I enjoyed reading about the wolves and the bunnies.") Still, LIW fascinates me, because she is like Harper Lee or like Taylor Swift; she is a woman getting things done and quietly subverting various tired ways of thinking about gender. And you? Your thoughts on LIW? The race controversy? The ranking of the novels? (Fraser suggests that the quality remained quiet steady all the way to the end. The later novels were Newbury Honor Books; they never won the actual award, because there was a bias against giving the award to parts of a series. This was corrected. The award-givers established a Laura Ingalls Wilder Award--then handed it to Laura Ingalls Wilder.)
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