[ SECRET POST #5176 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5176 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 46 secrets from Secret Submission Post #741.
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

[(Anonymous)]

Weren’t those books autobiographical? Not that that makes the racism okay, but it’s what her dad actually said, right?

[(Anonymous)]

Fictionalized autobiography. Some details were changed, omitted, or embellished by Wilder and/or her daughter Rose Lane who acted as her editor. (In real life Laura was only about 3 during the events of LHotP, but in the book is about 6 or 7. The Little House books never mention Laura's brother who died in infancy, either.) The attitudes were real, though.

[(Anonymous)]

The daughter, Rose, was an early Ayn Rand follower and liberatarian so she edited the books to show how awesome and tough pioneers were and how they didn't need "society" etc. etc. When, even so, the actual content of the books shows white people working together for each other and making communities at the cost of the Native Americans who already lived there. And it turned things like Pa moving them all quickly because he was running out on debts into Pa being a heroic frontier explorer type who just couldn't settle down.

[(Anonymous)]

From the POV of his daughter, Pa's a heroic pioneer. But it's pretty clear even from the highly romanticized stories that Pa sucked at homesteading and at that providing for your family thing. Hence Laura having to become a teacher at age 15 because her family needed the money.

[(Anonymous)]

What's weirder is that they needed the money to send Mary to college and to buy her an organ. Like... wtf, didn't your family almost starve? Maybe you should save that money and not buy an expensive musical instrument?

[(Anonymous)]

Agree on the organ, but I thought Mary going to college for the blind was so she could learn to read Braille and live as a blind person and not for the purposes of getting a BA in English or something.

[(Anonymous)]

This is actually one of the facts that Rose Wilder Lane specifically omitted from the books: Mary went to a School for the Blind on a full scholarship. Her future niece didn't want anyone thinking the family relied on government funds for anything.

That being said, they did have to buy Mary's wardrobe and maybe even some of her school materials. But Laura was probably only contributing to what was essentially cost-of-living expense and maybe pocket money. I doubt she ever made enough to pay Mary's tuition if it hadn't been covered.

[(Anonymous)]

Whatever Laura was contributing to the family income, it was enough that she felt she couldn't quit a job she hated until she got married and moved out of that house.

[erinptah]

Loosely autobiographical -- lots of details got fudged or streamlined to make a better narrative, and it's not like she remembered word-for-word conversations decades later -- but yeah, I'd be very surprised if those weren't her dad's actual views.

I think they'd still work for kids as a "learning about history in a more engaging way than just reading facts out of a textbook" thing...if they come with some explanation. Like, spell out what's actually going on that the characters are rationalizing or glossing over.

[tabaqui]

It was her mother, actually, that said that, and her father who defended the Native people and said that there was good in them.

Laura was fascinated by them, and wished she could 'go away' with them into the west, because she hated settling and loved being on the move in the wagon.