Little House series: book vs reality

[Hane]

I don't understand why fundies think the little house series is ideal. You don't even have to scratch the surface to see that the Ingalls were a family who valued formal education for girls. They were really quite modern for a poor family of that time.

I've run across several super-fundie blogs that excoriate the Little House, Little Women, and Anne of Green Gables books as "inappropriate" because they're "feministic."

[Confused_by_religion]

I don't understand why fundies think the little house series is ideal. You don't even have to scratch the surface to see that the Ingalls were a family who valued formal education for girls. They were really quite modern for a poor family of that time.

I don't understand it either. The might have developed a sort of Pavlov's reaction to anybody wearing long skirts and a bonnet. These are the same people that think Jane Austen's world was ideal and don't get that Austen is often quite caustic and is really down on stupidity, bigotry and so on.

[emesbe]

Bumping up this thread, because I grabbed my copy of These Happy Golden Years to read while doing laundry today. One thing that bugs me is when Laura goes back to school(as a student)after teaching at the Brewster School, she finds out that her class was assigned to do a paper on ambition. And oh, by the way, it's due after lunch. So she hurriedly writes her essay during lunch, taking most of it from the dictionary. Even though she's praised by her teacher, I think it's crazy that she was expected to do the paper that very same day when she hadn't been around for two months.(And IIRC, it was Ida or one of her other classmates who told her about the assignment, not her teacher.)Of course, it may have been fictionalized, but it still makes me go :wtf:

I wonder if she embellished the story a little to make herself look smart. "oooh, I wrote this amazing paper with no notice!"

[Confused_by_religion]

I wonder if she embellished the story a little to make herself look smart. "oooh, I wrote this amazing paper with no notice!"

"Yeah, and I was super modest about it, too..." :-)

[PennySycamore]

I think Jane was sent out to a wet nurse for the first year or so as was common among the English gentry at that time. I seem to recall that she had several brothers who died when they were sent out to nurse although these children are not listed in Jane's wikipedia entry. It was not uncommon for children sent out to nurse to get sick or die as women might take on more babies than they could handle. Wet nursing began to die out in England during the reign of Queen Victoria.

Wet nursing was never commonplace in America except in the South where slave women would nurse the slavemaster's children. No wonder that African American women nurse for a shorter duration that do their white and Latino sisters.

[Jana814]

I've run across several super-fundie blogs that excoriate the Little House, Little Women, and Anne of Green Gables books as "inappropriate" because they're "feministic."

I read that also.

[tabitha2]

If you look at the latter Anne books, she is the model of Vision forum women and mother hood....a genteel upper middle class wife. the March girls other than Jo are much the same, the next generation is much more liberated. Only wilder is really an early feminist.

[Sobeknofret]

If you look at the latter Anne books, she is the model of Vision forum women and mother hood....a genteel upper middle class wife. the March girls other than Jo are much the same, the next generation is much more liberated. Only wilder is really an early feminist.

And if they really want their hair raised, all they have to do is point to Rose Wilder Lane-- Libertarian and childless, divorced feminist extraordinaire!

ETA: I'm a Serial Courter now! Much better than Vigorous Leghumper! :cracking-up:

[2xx1xy1JD]

If you look at the latter Anne books, she is the model of Vision forum women and mother hood....a genteel upper middle class wife. the March girls other than Jo are much the same, the next generation is much more liberated. Only wilder is really an early feminist.

In the last Anne book, Rilla of Ingleside, her daughter Rilla talks about how unfair it is that she can't vote.

I don't see Anne as a "model of Vision Forum women and motherhood" for the simple reason that she is a character living in a specific time and place where a career for a woman in her position would have been nearly impossible. She wasn't a woman in the 21st century urging other women to take a step backward.

As a character, Anne already pushed the boundaries by winning over the hearts of her adoptive parents who had wanted a boy, and by going to university instead of merely getting her teaching certificate.

The author, L.M. Montgomery, used writing to have an outlet and a career. Her husband was a minister, and she needed a break from marriage and motherhood and her husband's moods. She published Anne of Green Gables before her marriage, and she would have been the primary breadwinner throughout the marriage.

[nerdymama1]

I read while the washer and dryer do the laundry. :D

Oh, I took it as while you were folding laundry. Oops! :embarrassed: :D

[Ms Jess]

I *loved* the Little House series when I was a kid. My mom read the whole series aloud to my siblings and me when we were very young and then I read them all again at least twice when I was older. My sister and I used to pretend to be Mary and Laura all the time. We had what we thought were calico dresses and we'd run around in them with straw hats because we didn't have bonnets. Oh, how I wanted a bonnet! I learned how to braid my hair, too, just so I could be a prairie girl. Good times.

I remember one of the things my mom remarked on was that children were expected to obey immediately and without any questioning of anything, ever. I think that's a big part of the appeal of the earlier books for fundies. My parents were fundy light and held similar ideas, though they weren't as strictly enforced. I remember my mom talking about how in Little House in the Big Woods, Ma and Laura went out to the barn to milk the cow and instead of the cow, they found a bear. Laura didn't know it was a bear but she went immediately back to the house as Ma ordered. My mom thought it was wonderful that Laura didn't balk or argue at all. Obviously, it was; who know what would have happened if Laura had argued and upset the bear? But that's the way kids had to behave all the time -- no opportunity for discussion or appeals or negotiating.

[FreeJosie]

Bumping up this thread, because I grabbed my copy of These Happy Golden Years to read while doing laundry today. One thing that bugs me is when Laura goes back to school(as a student)after teaching at the Brewster School, she finds out that her class was assigned to do a paper on ambition. And oh, by the way, it's due after lunch. So she hurriedly writes her essay during lunch, taking most of it from the dictionary. Even though she's praised by her teacher, I think it's crazy that she was expected to do the paper that very same day when she hadn't been around for two months.(And IIRC, it was Ida or one of her other classmates who told her about the assignment, not her teacher.)Of course, it may have been fictionalized, but it still makes me go :wtf:

I need to read that one again. I love how Almanzo came to pick Laura up from the Brewsters' every Friday, even when the weather was awful.

[Janes Heir]

Laura, of course, refused to have "obey" in her wedding vows. Yet she claimed (in THGY at least) not to be a suffragette. I was browsing tbrough a book about a woman doctor -- trained in part by Elizabeth Blwckwell -- who regarded the suffragettes as unlady-like. Interesting dynamic.

Also, I get the adopting kids out from big farming families was pretty common. (There are stories in the Ukranian Canadian side of my family about it.) But Laura and Manly had only one child when the Boasts made that horrible suggestion! I think it scared me for life! Jk ;)

[Closed Womb]

Bumping up this thread, because I grabbed my copy of These Happy Golden Years to read while doing laundry today. One thing that bugs me is when Laura goes back to school(as a student)after teaching at the Brewster School, she finds out that her class was assigned to do a paper on ambition. And oh, by the way, it's due after lunch. So she hurriedly writes her essay during lunch, taking most of it from the dictionary. Even though she's praised by her teacher, I think it's crazy that she was expected to do the paper that very same day when she hadn't been around for two months.(And IIRC, it was Ida or one of her other classmates who told her about the assignment, not her teacher.)Of course, it may have been fictionalized, but it still makes me go :wtf:

It could certainly be embellished, but it could also be that people were expected to take more initiative, ask about assignments rather than wait to be told, etc.

I love these books (something I've mentioned a time or two before) and always enjoy hearing about another adult reading them!

I don't understand why fundies think the little house series is ideal. You don't even have to scratch the surface to see that the Ingalls were a family who valued formal education for girls. They were really quite modern for a poor family of that time.

Hardcore fundie families only approve of Little House in the Big Woods. The others are not on their approved reading lists, for many of the reasons already mentioned.

[singsingsing]

I'm surprised they even approve of Little House in the Big Woods - there's a lot of dancing in that book. Also Laura being happy that things aren't as strict on Sundays as they were when her parents were kids.

[Wenny]

My great-great grandma came across America in a covered wagon. We have crib that my great great grandpa made. I was lucky to listen my great-grandma tell stories about her mom.

It always ended the same. How grateful it was to live in this time. We had heat and A/C, running water, I had pets and I never had to do chores in a heavy long dress and bonnet. My great great grandma had to wear long sleeves because she was so pale in Texas heat. They talk about heat stoke and horrible horrilbe sun burns.

[Closed Womb]

I'm surprised they even approve of Little House in the Big Woods - there's a lot of dancing in that book. Also Laura being happy that things aren't as strict on Sundays as they were when her parents were kids.

Oooh, the Sugaring Off Dance! I always wanted to know what kind of candy they were making out of maple syrup on compacted snow. I like the other food descriptions in that chapter, too. Although, Farmer Boy is downright Food Porn, as far as I'm concerned.

[realist51]

Oooh, the Sugaring Off Dance! I always wanted to know what kind of candy they were making out of maple syrup on compacted snow. I like the other food descriptions in that chapter, too. Although, Farmer Boy is downright Food Porn, as far as I'm concerned.

We read these books over and over, my kids spent their childhoods playing Laura and Mary, and stacked pancakes, an idea we got from Farmer Boy, was a favorite special breakfast.

[lizzielouwho]

And if they really want their hair raised, all they have to do is point to Rose Wilder Lane-- Libertarian and childless, divorced feminist extraordinaire!

ETA: I'm a Serial Courter now! Much better than Vigorous Leghumper! :cracking-up:

Also Rose was divorced and may have had a female lover and her parents seemed to be okay with this.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Oooh, the Sugaring Off Dance! I always wanted to know what kind of candy they were making out of maple syrup on compacted snow. I like the other food descriptions in that chapter, too. Although, Farmer Boy is downright Food Porn, as far as I'm concerned.

If you pour hot maple syrup onto snow, and then roll it onto a stick, you get a great maple candy treat. You can still find places that do this, in parts of Ontario, Quebec and Vermont. Yum!

[hoipolloi]

Fundies like these books (Little House, the Anne books, Jane Austen) because they generally have very poor reading comprehension and an even poorer understanding of history.

[Denalie]

Laura Wilder wrote an interesting article for one of the papers she was a columnist for (can't remember which one). In it - she explained why she did not consider herself a feminist but a farm wife. The gist of the article was that she had so much work to do to help run a farm that she didn't have time to worry about whether she was equal to a man or not. She considered feminism something that city girls worried about.

[AnywhereButHere]

Oooh, the Sugaring Off Dance! I always wanted to know what kind of candy they were making out of maple syrup on compacted snow. I like the other food descriptions in that chapter, too. Although, Farmer Boy is downright Food Porn, as far as I'm concerned.

After reading that book, I tried that once when I was a kid. I wound up with sticky snow. Very disappointing. :D

[Sobeknofret]

If you pour hot maple syrup onto snow, and then roll it onto a stick, you get a great maple candy treat. You can still find places that do this, in parts of Ontario, Quebec and Vermont. Yum!

We're reading LHITBW for my son's language arts class, and he's already extracted a promise from me that we're going to try this the first snow we get :lol:

[Trynn]

After reading that book, I tried that once when I was a kid. I wound up with sticky snow. Very disappointing. :D

Pretty sure you're not the only one who did that... Whistles innocently