Books
A younger, more p.c. view of Little House on the Prairie...
I read Wilder (and of course Rose Wilder Lane) as writing in the Realist tradition. The stories don't present Ma, Pa, Laura, Mary, or Carrie as perfect people. They don't really judge. Readers who can relate to Laura's point of view feel Laura's love of her family while seeing their flaws--with love. Pa Ingalls is a miserable excuse for a provider, Ma is narrow-minded and impractical, Mary has goody-goody tendencies, Carrie is a bit of a burden to the others, and though Laura's selfish/rebellious/angry moments are relatable...So in short they're ordinary imperfect human beings who can be loved. Their attitude toward indigenous people, and other "pioneers" from different backgrounds for that matter, is not exemplary but it is period-perfect. Wilder/Lane obviously left out a LOT of the kind of details that later Realists would force upon readers, but they give an excellent picture of human beings as they saw themselves. In By the Shores of Silver Lake we learn that Mary was an unimaginative person who didn't like metaphors--and while most book-loving children might understand that at first as saying that Mary was a nasty person who cramped Laura's style, adult readers have to appreciate it as having shaped Wilder/Lane's mastery of Realism. Neither Stephen Crane nor Willa Cather had much to teach this writing team.
I don't think the people who fret about the Ingalls family's never seeing the Plains point of view--which is easy enough for the reader to see!--are even all that concerned about a realistic portrayal of how "pioneers" who weren't hateful people could be as ignorant as, in fact, they were. I think what really bothers them is how independent the Ingalls family are of the government that claimed to grant them land, then withdrew the claim. They come close to starvation but they don't need or expect any handouts from the government--though they take some from a church group. The federal government does them wrong but they take responsibility for feeding and educating themselves. That's not the way some people want to believe poor people CAN be--or should be. It spoils their plans and agendas.
Little House in the Prairie is not as much fun to read as the happier memories in Little House in the Big Woods and On the Banks of Plum Creek. The plot is not "ultimately pointless." It has a sharp, sticking, painful point. The Ingalls family trusted government agents and wasted a lot of effort on what they, in their ignorant way, saw as a good thing. They don't have a lot of fun in this book. A writer less gifted than the team Wilder/Lane would have exaggerated the difficulties and made this story a bitter pill that child readers couldn't swallow. Wilder/Lane tell it in the grand Realist manner, through the eyes of the little girl Laura, who never quite understands how horrible her situation is but tries to remember as much of the tiny scraps of niceness, prettiness, and fun as this set of her memories contain, and make it far more effective than most writers could make it. There's not much danger that modern readers are going to buy into the "manifest destiny to tame the wilderness" mentality that the Ingalls family bought into. Wilder/Lane don't argue with that mentality--they just show, in devastating detail, exactly how it worked for the "pioneers."
Their goal was to teach children how people used to do things before they had access to all the new ways of doing things that were available in 1935. By sticking to that goal they give child readers an insight into how the "pioneers" survived. One day they were fighting or fleeing the enemies. The next day little Laura was learning a song or a recipe, listing the flowers she saw or learning how to clean feather beds. I don't think any grandiose psychological phrases like "living in the moment" or "grounding your moods by focussing on the immediate details of present reality" are in the books, but they certainly show readers how those things are done...along with the recipes and the method for cleaning feather beds.
Poetry
Comic epic series begins:
No comments:
Post a Comment