“Did Adam have good clothes to wear on Sundays?” Laura asked Ma.
“No,” Ma said. “Poor Adam, all he had to wear was skins.”
Laura did not pity Adam. She wished she had nothing to wear but skins.
– Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House In The Big Woods
Ramona Quimby, who appears twenty years later, owes much to Laura Ingalls. Though Laura was a real person, her fictionalized biography puts forth a little girl who, despite living in a long-ago time, is very real to the young reader. She’s funny, and she struggles with normal childhood problems – sibling rivalry, naughtiness, and being menaced by bears. Her internal voice, like Sara Crewe’s, is definitely childlike, and Laura is not always nice, although she usually repents.
The concept of “feistiness” in a heroine is often problematic, both for adult and children’s literature. All too often, smart-aleckry and rudeness in a child are seen as examples of an irrepressible spirit. Laura is polite to her elders, and deferential to her parents, but that doesn’t make her any less aggressive. Again, and again, Laura chafes at the prescribed roles for little ladies on the Victorian prairie. She’s a daredevil, whether wading into leech-infested waters or riding behind Almanzo Wilder’s wild horses, more at home on the “wild” prairie than in the stifling little towns spreading west.
I love Laura’s mother, Caroline, who manages to combine an entirely Victorian sense of womanhood with the hard and crushing realities of frontier life. Initially, Laura and Caroline clash over Laura’s wild streak, and Laura seems to feel her perfect sister Mary is the favorite. Over time, however, as Mary goes blind and Laura proves herself a capable and compassionate sister — painting “word pictures” to describe prairie sunsets – the entire family comes to rely on Laura’s strength and fierce loyalty.
In short, what begins as “feistiness” matures into a steely core, that serves Laura well through famine, fire, and loss.
As a small child, I reread everything up to and including Little Town On The Prairie, at which point the adult love story annoyed me. (I finished the grown-up Laura books later. And, yes, I get it now.)
A brief aside: I was obsessed with Little House on the Prairie for a time (I’ve always loved series). Through a total accident, I finally came into a copy of the Little House Cookbook, and it’s a brief and absorbing read if you’re interested in American foodways or Little House on the Prairie or, like me, both. I modified the fried chicken recipe for wings, to great success (secret: LARD), and I still keep meaning to make cottage cheese balls.
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