Little Libertarians on the prairie

[lovedforaday]

Was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved children’s series written as an anti-New Deal fable? The Wilder family papers suggest yes.

A few months after the stock market crash, in the winter of 1930, Laura Ingalls Wilder sat at a small desk in Mansfield, Mo., and began writing down her life story in pencil. She had rattled in wagons from cabin to sod

Comments

[yeats]

ha, now i feel so much more justified for hating those books as a kid -- i grew up in a city and found them boring and unrelatable.

[romp]

my wife grew up in northern BC and thought they were contemporaries :)

I couldn't get into them either

[klutzy_girl]

According to one of Laura's biographies, Rose fucking plagiarized Pioneer Girl for her own books. And Rose edited the books to the point where editors didn't have to go over them. This honestly wouldn't surprise me if she put her own spin on things.

And whatever, I still love the Little House series and they're some of my favorites.

[mutive]

That was what I was thinking. Lane had a long history of trying to claim total credit for her Mom's work (despite that, in general, it appears as though they were pretty much entirely Laura's - possibly Rose helped edit a bit, but they're not *hers*) and claiming they supported her own ideology. From what I can recall, Laura's and Rose's politics varied pretty greatly...but the books are Laura's not Rose's.

[cindyanne1]

I loved the Little House books, and just recently (as in, the last six years or so) became re-interested in them and found several companion books available as well, like Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography, and Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life, and Laura's Album, A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

From reading and re-reading all the books, I began to get a different feeling about the series than what I'd remembered as a child. I began to find myself wondering things like why Ma put up with all of Pa's shenanigans. I mean, it was a pretty common thread through the books that Ma wanted to settle down in a populated area. She liked having people around; she liked being active in her church and village... and reading the books as an adult, I felt rather sorry for her. I know I wouldn't have liked to have done it. After all, they didn't leave The Big Woods because they needed to. They left (and left all their extended family behind) because Pa thought the area was becoming too populated.

And also, in These Happy

[squeeful]

Context helps. This would have taken place during the years 1873-1879 a time of economic mess in the United States (and the world) that until the stock crash of 1929 was known as the Great Depression. Unemployment was rampant and wages shrank by a quarter for those who had jobs.

[fenris_lorsrai]

I have a bookstore next to Dambury, CT so had to post this on the store Facebook page. I look forward to all the cray-cray comments it will attract!

[wrestlingdog]

Oooh, be sure to post the best of the drama.

[oldruggedspork]

This is really pretty shocking to me. But that idea of the self-sufficiency and just wanting to do it all yourself is not too realistic for a lot of people.

[gambitia]

This. Homesteading is great and all, but there's literally no way we can all do it. There are many who are physically and/or mentally incapable of the hardship of homesteading; nearly everyone has no idea at all how to do it and it has a very steep learning curve; there is not even close to enough space for us all to go play Little House; and it would mean the essential destruction of our current society (no computers, no roads, no luxury goods save what you yourself can make, no police, no cars, no places, no nothing).

[mutive]

Homesteading also required one of the largest government hand outs ever...

[gambitia]

Lol that is also true!