[ SECRET POST #4063 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4063 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 50 secrets from Secret Submission Post #582.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

06. https://i.imgur.com/5DrTYvq.png

[(Anonymous)]

Most women who went to college back then came home to be wives anyway, though. Mary wasn't that different.

[(Anonymous)]

Craftwork like beading was an actual job skill once upon a time. It wouldn't make you rich, but it could pay your rent and feed you well enough.

[(Anonymous)]

But to be fair, in the books there's no mention of Mary actually doing that.

[(Anonymous)]

1. Mary Ingalls went to school on a full scholarship. This fact was redacted from the story, or so I'm told, largely through Rose Wilder Lane's influence; she was wildly libertarian and didn't want to show the family relying too much on the government. The money they saved for Mary was for her extras; things like her clothes and some spending money, possibly her books and slate.

2. Those CRAFTS were in fact monetarily useful. I don't know whether she ever sold her beading, which she might have, but it's on the record that aside from getting a full academic education she was also taught a trade: after returning home she made fly-nets for horses to be sold for her family's income. She did it for the rest of her life.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

Forgot to add; it's noticeable that for all their scrimping and saving, the other children generally weren't deprived. All the time Mary is at school the girls are all shown as nicely dressed, in shoes, and allowed small indulgences like calling cards and candy. They sent Mary what they could, but they still kept some back for the other kids.

[erinptah]

I grew up on the books and have the general idea that stuff was changed, but I didn't know either of these details, so thank you! (Also: good going Mary.)

[(Anonymous)]

I'll be honest... if I were Laura, I'd be a little resentful that I, at age 15-16, had to work in a job I didn't like in order to pay for my sister's clothes and spending money while she went to college.

[(Anonymous)]

Apparently Laura’s mom was the one who fixated on Laura being a teacher, because she wanted a teacher in the family, not just for the money.

[(Anonymous)]

Me too. Laura was a freaking SAINT for doing that.

[(Anonymous)]

I think Laura looked at it as more of something to be proud of; being able to provide for her family. She's shown having to be convinced to keep some of her wages to herself, not to mention her keeping back how awful her first teaching situation was from her parents, since they would never have let her go on with it if they had known.

I feel like it's pretty consistent throughout the series that Laura likes being useful. She may hate what she's doing (twisting hay into fuel, sewing buttonholes), but she's proud of the result.

Craftwork was and is a job skill.

[(Anonymous)]

There is a fair amount of hand beadwork still done today, but back then, I think most of it was hand work.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it was a completely foregone conclusion at the time they sent her to school that she was going to live with her parents and sisters the rest of her life. It was probably considered one of the more likely possibilities, but I don't think it would have been completely out of the question that she could have gotten married or maybe moved to a city and worked out some other kind of living arrangement (I don't know how easy it would have been for a blind person to live on their own then, but there were probably other possibilities). Putting her in a position where she had some life skills was prudent.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, OP, I read and reread the Little House books as a kid, but before judging, or for that matter lauding, any of the characters, remember that Rose Wilder edited the shit out of the books to promote her libertarian agenda and that Laura also lionized and overlooked a lot of the nastier aspects of her life in the books. None of them were ever sucessful farmers, for one, not even Alonzo.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't disagree, but as for the farming part, I don't think I can remember one time the crops actually came out well, so I can't say I see Wilder(s) lionizing of the characters on that particular fact.

That being said, yeah, the annotated original version of her manuscript is harrowing.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, that's right, blind people don't deserve nice things.

/s

[(Anonymous)]

/missing the point

[(Anonymous)]

Blind education at the time was all about teaching blind people to be self-sufficient - beadwork was a trade. Playing the organ could get you a job and housing at a church. The family was making sure that Mary had a future rather than being dependent on her parents and then her sisters her whole life. And it wasn't like they were starving to do this.

[tabaqui]

Uh...nobody was deprived. Laura didn't want to be a teacher, but she was happy to sew and help out a neighbor to earn money, and Mary learned a hell of a lot more than 'crafts'.

Me thinks you're projecting just a wee bit.

[(Anonymous)]

Well. Laura was deprived. She couldn't go to school AND teach at the same time, so she missed out on some of her education. She had less free time and less time to spend with her family because she had to study hard to pass the certification exam. There was also an episode where she spent several months living in a toxic household feeling depressed and isolated, because of a teaching job. It's great she did that for her sister, but it was a sacrifice.

[(Anonymous)]

Other people have made plenty of comments on Mary's education and livelihood and that, so I'd like to point out that at the time, it was completely normal for kids to live with their parents well into adulthood. Usually, kids didn't leave home until they got married and started their own family, and sometimes not even then.

So no, someone getting an education and then living with their parents in their 30s wasn't seen as a problem or lazy or infantile or even unusual at the time.

[(Anonymous)]

I think you're massively overestimating the ability of her parents to train her in a useful skill.

[(Anonymous)]

Ouch. That implies Mary had no useful skills before she went to college, and that's simply not true.

[tabaqui]

Mary could sew (fine, small stitches), knit, and do most of the household chores *before* she went to college, and you can bet her mother helped her in all those things.

[(Anonymous)]

OP

You are quite ignorant of how the Ingalls family lived, in that you are applying your modern feelings to a situation where they don't apply. You are also quite ignorant about the education system of the time, out on the prairie.

tl;dr quit projecting your feelings onto Laura, ffs.