January 22, 2007

The Little House series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Growing up, I wasn’t content just to read the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I wanted to be Laura. I pretended my bed was a covered wagon and rode west, wearing a sunbonnet my mother had somehow found. Life on the frontier became real to me through those books.

It’s a tribute to the nine-volume “Little House series that countless other children have felt the same way—the books have never been out of print since Laura began writing them in the 1930’s and 40’s. When I decided to reread the books, I found that my library’s copies stay checked out, proving that the books still hold an enormous appeal even for today’s technologically adept youngsters. How lucky for me that my mother had kept my battered copies. They now occupy a special place on my bookshelves until my daughter is old enough to read them.

Rereading the books as an adult, I still found them enjoyable. They are good stories, with fine dramatic pacing and excellent characterization. I believe that a good story is worth reading (or rereading) at any age. And so I found myself eager to read each book in the series, remembering the basic events—how could I forget the leeches on the banks of Plum Creek or the long winter that kept the Ingalls family housebound and close to starving?—but wanting to experience again the feeling of immersing myself in a long-ago world.

Rereading a children’s book as an adult, however, means that one has a different perspective on the book. It’s not possible to become a child again, even if nostalgia does draw us back to the books we loved as children. This time, I appreciated the way the narration stays consistent to Laura’s point of view, something that is much more difficult for an author to achieve than non-writers may realize. “Well, it was easy for her to write from her point of view—it happened to her,” someone might say. Yes, it all happened to her, but she didn’t write about it until 60 years later. An adult trying to write from a child’s point of view tends to include things a child wouldn’t notice or describe things as an adult would. The author didn’t fall into this trap: she gives us the child Laura, complete with her resentful feelings and spirited decisions that sometimes get her into trouble. No wonder Laura is one of the most beloved heroines in all of children’s literature--children identify with her. Like me, they want to be her.

I’ll tell you who I didn’t want to be as I read the books this time, and that’s Ma or Pa. As an adult, I became aware of the staggering amount of work adults had to complete to create a home in unsettled territory. I just didn’t notice that as a child, any more than I thought my mother actually worked around the house. The books are full of detailed descriptions of pioneer life which never bored me even as a kid because I was just as curious as Laura about what ingenious solutions her parents were devising.

Now, though, I tend to notice the amount of backbreaking labor the adults had to do. To build anything out of wood, a man had to cut down the trees, hew them into planks, plane them smooth by hand, cut them with a saw, nail everything by hand . . . I’m sure there’s more.

As for the women, besides washing dishes and clothes by hand, and the basic work of cleaning house, they had to make items we never think about, like making lard or candles or maple sugar. Almanzo Wilder's mother (Laura’s future mother-in-law) wove her own cloth, and all but the richest women sewed their family's clothes, sheets, quilts, and more—by hand. They planted and tended gardens, knew what to do with all the parts of a butchered hog so none would be wasted, canned fruit and vegetables, cooked all of the family's meals from scratch, hauled water into the house—I’m getting tired just typing it!  All of this while many of them were pregnant or nursing most of the time. Oof.  “All hail the Industrial Revolution,” I say.

© 2007, Alison Andrews

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