Little House series: book vs reality

[Wolfie]

[

There's an entire Pinterest devoted to the subject:

http://pinterest.com/corsetra/maternity ... h-history/

Alas, most of the examples are distinctly later-period, 1880 forward, many in the S-line of the early 20th century. I'm looking for evidence from earlier, around the time Caroline would have been pregnant with her older girls. It's entirely plausible that she'd have simply gone without; would the family have had the means during Caroline's childbearing years? And Laura might not have bothered for comfort purposes. In terms of Ingalls women indulging in maternity corsetry, we may be SOL, but the garment did exist and was used regularly enough to merit a number of ads.

Hope this helps.

Well, there wasn't a lot of ads, but I've seen images of earlier ones, and here is a pattern taken from earlier ones with one option being a gestation stay. http://www.pastpatterns.com/705.html

[She Who Laughs]

I will throw in Prairie Women too, At least I think that is the title, my mom stole my copy. It's about women living on the Kansas frontier, and it's based on actual writings. There is a play based on the book too.

I was looking for this on Amazon but couldn't find it with this name. Perhaps it is "Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier" ?

[Wolfie]

Gah! Those things look like torture devices. I guess that is why late 19th century women look so grim in photographs.

We could get into it again- but no, not torture devices, but back braces (keep in mind that only the most wealthy women didn't have to do hard work, even many upper class women had to help their servants in order for a house to function) as well as for breast support. Unless you're really small, it's nice to have the ladies contained when doing some work. If they fit right they're comfortable. Also, they would have been wearing them from a young age, so they would feel uncomfortable without them.

And yes, a lot of the stuff you read about them is either fiction or only what the extremists would to (like tight lacing).

[Wolfie]

Hmmm, I wonder if they would let the dresses out at the waist and hips and maybe leave the dress unbuttoned a bit while pregnant. Given the rates of infant and maternal death, I figure Laura and Ma were put on best rest for periods of time and limited to lighter domestic work. Pa may be an ass, but I can see him shouldering more of the burden while Ma was pregnant. Same with Almanzo, he appeared to be more in tune with Laura's needs in the series.

Edited to add section on corset discussion

There was no time for that, the women continued to work. It was a hard life for everybody. It's not like they even got to see a doctor on a regular basis. And, the facts that they couldn't stop working, had poor nutrition and that even if they could see a doctor, they didn't know much about the human body were all contributors to the higher maternal and infant death rates.

[Wolfie]

I was looking for this on Amazon but couldn't find it with this name. Perhaps it is "Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier" ?

Yes, that's it. As I said, my mom has my book so I can't look it up.

[Deleted01]

I've read Alison Arngrim's bio, as well as both Melissas'. Alison's and Melissa Gilbert's are good reads. Don't bother with Melissa Sue Anderson's book. *yawn*

[Loveday]

I figure it's easier to replace the books- but some family stuff that was brought to California in the 1850's and 1860's will go with me. (if I'm home to be able to grab stuff.) (one came out in a wagon, then the next came around the horn to meet the first)

Yeah, it is easier, but my copies just have too much sentimental value to me to leave behind. ;) I do wish I had some family things as old as yours--well, I have my grandmother's butter churn and cast iron skillet, but they're only from the early 20th century. I'll have to find room for them in the back of the car, too, if an emergency ever arises. :lol:

[pixydust]

These Happy Golden Years is my favorite. And, yeah - Farmer Boy is full of food porn.

West from Home made me think Rose was kind of a bully, but it's been years since I read it.

I didn't like Rose in "West From Home", either. I hope that she fust came off badly and wasn't like that all ofthe time IRL.

As for corsets, I think that they look comfortable, too! Scoliosis and big boobs...a corset would rock! It's actually hard for me to stand with my shoulders back and not hunching, a corset could make me do that and hold up my breasts at the same time (I'm one of those weird people that loves wearing a bra, takes some of the weight off of my upper back).

[ilovetchotchkes]

I didn't like Rose in "West From Home", either. I hope that she fust came off badly and wasn't like that all ofthe time IRL.

As for corsets, I think that they look comfortable, too! Scoliosis and big boobs...a corset would rock! It's actually hard for me to stand with my shoulders back and not hunching, a corset could make me do that and hold up my breasts at the same time (I'm one of those weird people that loves wearing a bra, takes some of the weight off of my upper back).

If they're custom made, they're insanely comfortable. I'd rather wear my reenacting corset than a bra.

[LaydNimue]

I consumed the Little House books as a child, and when our town librarian noticed, she let me into the loft (the library was a revolutionary war church) and gave me access to their library of pioneer diaries and writings, which shed an entirely different light on pioneers, homesteading and the privations faced by settlers.

For those that would like a different look at life of a pioneer woman I highly suggest, "Letters of a woman Homesteader" by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. This book was made into a worthy independent movie called Heartland, staring Rip Torn and Conchetta Ferrell. These are the letters of a woman who once widowed with a child, travels to WY from Denver to become a housekeeper for a rancher, in order to secure a livelihood that could support her and her daughter. These letters are unedited, and the book is lightly illustrated by N. C. Wyeth.

There are many good accounts of life and traveling to the west available in some Smithsonian collections online and in oral histories gathered by the WPA. The address the reality of hardships, starvation, the dangers of childbirth and the often tenuous and abusive marriages many woman had to make to ensure that they had a roof over their heads and some bread to eat.

I 2nd this, it's a very interesting book. I didn't know it had been made into a movie!

[Witsec7]

I 2nd this, it's a very interesting book. I didn't know it had been made into a movie!

The film is so worthy. Lot's of Elinore's dialog comes from the book. There is an edge of cruelty about Torn's character, hinting at a certain darkness within. The film was made around '88, Conchetta had done HotLBaltimore and a few other pieces of off Broadway and really wasn't known to TV viewers at the time.

ETA: I'm surprised so many know about the book, it's an all time favorite of mine.

[TyleredOne]

Great thread ! I have a bunch of Little House books in this house *somewhere*, can't wait to dig them up and read them again ! ( I had no idea the fundies were so into them, but, looking at how they dress, I should have guessed ! )

[jenny_islander]

Re women's clothing in Laura's day: Check out the back issues of Harper's Bazar at the HEARTH Project. Items featured in 1867, the year Laura was born IIRC, include a crocheted corset and a house dress that came with a matching maxi-vest (called something else of course). The house dress wasn't sold explicitly as maternity wear, but the wife's lace cap on the young model and the way she was posed with a visiting mother (as shown by the presence of her daughter) leaning solicitously toward her strongly suggest expectancy. In that case, the roomy vest would have concealed whatever adjustments the pregnant woman needed to make to the dress underneath it. These are urban fashions for the well to do, of course.

[Beammeup]

I remember being horrified in one of the books where Carrie(?) was at school doing her work and swaying back and forth making the desk move a little and the teacher like flipped out and went all crazy on her. And Laura came to her rescue because the teacher was a mean bitch.

If my memory serves me, the teacher in this instance is Eliza Jane, Almanzo's sister. Laura didn't like her one bit.

[freejoytoo]

Pa was such a fuck-up!

Your family lives at a subsistence level, so absolutely spending $100 on an organ your daughter will be able to play at a mediocre level a few times a year for the five or six years it took Mary to graduate from the school makes total financial sense.

Also, I have been sucked into a youtube little house television show vortex and I cannot escape from all the feathered hair and Pa's ceaseless meddling. This show is so incredibly fucked up, I had no idea. I could snark for hours about how saccharine and traumatizing Michael Landon's (and his 40 pounds of hair) favorite plot devices were. So many orphans! So many people going blind! Death by fire! Rape by mime! (WTF??) Pa is alternately psychotherapist, physiotherapist, substitute preacher and all-around town scold. It's delightful and I can't stop watching.

What's both laughable and depressing are the comments underneath where people believe this shit is the real deal. They actually think that in Laura's prairie town there was a town 'fire alarm' and everyone with perfect seventies hair would run out and help with whatever crisis there was. See, no one needed the government then, or even the fire service :roll:

[Gizmola]

I was a LHOP fanatic as a child. My grandmother made me a dress and bonnet. I would dress up my little brother and try to force him to be Baby Carrie. He preferred to be known as Baby Rabbit. He's now over 6' and 35 years old and I still refer to him, when I can get away with it, as Baby Rabbit.

I guess one of the reasons the books were so fascinating to me is because my family's land in Oklahoma was settled by my great-grandfather during the land rush. My mom remembers Native Americans who would come to the land each year and my great-grandfather would basically give the land over to them for the weekend and they would visit and camp, etc. She still has a pair of beaded moccasins they once made for her. Of course, it still jars me to think of those coming to stay on what was, at one time, their own land and how unfair it truly was. As a child, however, it was fascinating.

My grandparents met and married in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. In fact, all my family stayed on the land during that whole time. I only recently found my grandmother's diarie which started the year she came to live with the family (she was a school teacher for the small town and boarded with local families), fell in love with my grandfather, married, quit teaching and became a farm wife. It actually spans until my mother is twelve. Believe me, there was nothing romantic about OK farm life during the depression. It was 24/7 work, with only a sprinkling of "Mrs. P and I went to the early service at church while Mr. P and C planted the east field" every few weeks. I look at the diaries and I'm terribly ashamed I never asked my grandparents about their lives or what it was like to be in OK at that time, etc. But I daresay their life was nothing like the fundies assume. My grandmother wasn't creating craft projects with pink glitter and paper maiche. True, there were some defined gender roles: my grandfather did not cook, change diapers, clean the house, look over the children's grades, help with homework. My grandmother did. After she milked the cows, fed the chickens, tended the garden, assisted with working cattle, planting crops, harvesting crops, canning the food, etc. I daresay neither had time to sit around worrying about whether he was being a true headship or whether she was meeting her requirements as a helpmeet. They were busy making sure they had food on the table.

Oh, on the subject of corsets - I have a perfect figure for corsetry - big boobs, small waist, ballooning hips. But I could never, ever put one on voluntarily to save my life. I also had scoliosis and I wore a back brace - basically a big Tupperware corset - for four years and I thank the baby Jesus every day that I haven't anything binding me anymore (had surgery at 14). I've often thought that's why I became claustrophobic. I had to wear that thing 23 hours a day. Even when I slept and I swear it just drove me nuts. So I take off my hat to you FJers who could stand a corset; I think I'd feel like I was being smothered. Damned crooked spine.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

I'll speak up for the Ingalls' racial attitudes in the books....I actually thought what made the books so appealing was that Laura in the books had a positive view of the Indians, which contrasted sharply with her mother's.

I noticed that too, and appreciated it.

I think it was one of many normals at the time. My family's experience was pretty isolated at that time, even if they didn't move around a lot. Cousins still own the property that my family lived on starting in 1863. It's not isolated at all anymore, but was then. My great-great grandmother was one of the first "white" children born in that county. (I say "white" as there were some Cherokee intermarriages in the 1600's on the east coast) The US is a big country and even now there isn't one "normal."

I live on a rural one acre lot, there are one acre lots in cities that aren't as rural as my lot. I drive an hour to get to work, my brother lives on a 1/8 or smaller lot in a big city and bikes a couple miles to work. Are either of our experiences not "normal" for now?

It's not so much that it wasn't "normal," for some, but just (probably because they're children's books and so focused on the one family) they just gave me a completely different image of the era than I get when I read actual historical accounts or timelines. I mean, they live in the country, yes, but there EXISTS infrastructure out there, beyond where they were. Probably part of the odd feeling I get is just due to me having read the books first as a kid, too, but when I read about all the other stuff that was going on in 1867 (the year Laura was born) it seems like a different world entirely, in some ways. Just the two different perspectives.

Laura was 33 in 1900. That makes her about the same age as the mom in "O-shin" (speaking of TV shows about horribly deprived people around 1900) which is interesting to think about too, timewise...

What does boggle my mind about that time period (in the city, in the country, in Japan, in the US) is just how much WORK was involved in day to day household activities. That and just HOW poor the food was for people who were poor.

...perfect seventies hair...

Heh. I'm reminded of the perfect EIGHTIES hair in "Red Dawn" - because of course when you're living as survivalists in the wilderness for months and months hiding out from the Evil Communist Horde, you'll continue to have that perfect Swayze coif. Yeah. :D

The first season of the TV show seemed to follow the books somewhat (at least they had episodes where you could tell what part of the book they were based on) but after that, not so much. I've only rewatched the first season on YouTube (someone has posted all the episodes there, not sure how long they'll last) and now I'm wondering just when the first shark is jumped. I should go to Wikipedia...

[freejoytoo]

I remember the bit where the Indians came into the house in LHOTP. At the time I didn't think about what they could have done to Ma, I just thought Ma was being a racist bitch. And she was racist, but I sort of understand why she was so worried now. I'd forgotten about Pa eating all the pancakes. How could he have done that and not felt guilty?

Holy hell, I didn't know about Charley trying to kiss Laura during On the Shores of Silver Lake. I do remember Laura talking to her a cousin about a girl who had got married at thirteen and how glad they were they weren't getting married. I bet fundies love the idea of that, or at least promising a thirteen-year-old to someone. I'm going to have to read that one again because I remember it freaking me out when I was younger and I never read it again.

I think what fundies like about the books is the big emphasis on owning a gun and Pa being the family protecter but they were very different times. How they block out the parts of dying from diptheria and going blind from infections is a puzzle to me.

I remember hiding under my bedclothes and pretending I was in a blizzard :)

[Arete]

The first season of the TV show seemed to follow the books somewhat (at least they had episodes where you could tell what part of the book they were based on) but after that, not so much. I've only rewatched the first season on YouTube (someone has posted all the episodes there, not sure how long they'll last) and now I'm wondering just when the first shark is jumped. I should go to Wikipedia...

To me the real 'jumped the shark' moment in that series came with the adoption of Albert.

[Wolfie]

Oh, on the subject of corsets - I have a perfect figure for corsetry - big boobs, small waist, ballooning hips. But I could never, ever put one on voluntarily to save my life. I also had scoliosis and I wore a back brace - basically a big Tupperware corset - for four years and I thank the baby Jesus every day that I haven't anything binding me anymore (had surgery at 14). I've often thought that's why I became claustrophobic. I had to wear that thing 23 hours a day. Even when I slept and I swear it just drove me nuts. So I take off my hat to you FJers who could stand a corset; I think I'd feel like I was being smothered. Damned crooked spine.

I don't think that there is a perfect figure- if you look at the shape of stays/corsets over the 100 years that they were worn, you'll see quite the variety of "ideal" body types.

But for me, the scoliosis is one reason the corset is comfortable, and I noticed that a few others with scoliosis said the same thing. (And a period corset is nothing like the tight plastic braces for scoliosis, it's fabric and metal, mostly fabric. and it has a bit more flexibility.)

[gardenvarietycitizen]

How they block out the parts of dying from diptheria and going blind from infections is a puzzle to me.

The specifics of how is they had a giant time jump in between two books ("On the banks of Plum Creek" and "By the Shores of Silver Lake"). At the end of the one book all is fine, then the next starts up with "oh and Mary is blind now due to scarlet fever." I don't think they even mentioned the brother at all in the books though. But basically she just jumps over this part in time where tragedy happened.

I remember thinking that that divide really made the tone of the books different too, suddenly Laura was a lot older-seeming.

To me the real 'jumped the shark' moment in that series came with the adoption of Albert.

Heck yeah that was a HUGE killer white of a shark! Even if things maybe had diverged from the books quite a bit before, there's no going back once Albert arrives. Seems that was in Season 5.

[pixydust]

THanks for all of the book suggestions! I should be done with "Waiting For THe Apocolypse" by Tuesday, so I will need another list to take to the library.

[freejoytoo]

Yes and yes to both of your comments. I didn't like On the Shores of Silver Lake because it seemed so mch more serious (though oddly I adored The Long Winter) and my favourite was On the Banks of Plum Creek because it was so happy and playful, even during the more serious chapters like the grasshopper plague. And Dear God, I hated Albert. It basically became his show. I never saw the raped by a mime episode but it sounds horrific.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

I can't beleive it took me so long to remember this, but PBS's Pioneer House is great and shows just how hard the lifestyle actually was.

[hapamama]

If the state paid for Mary's education, why did Laura have to work so hard? She spent all of those hours sewing and teaching and often being miserable and overworked. It was mostly assumed she did so to help pay for Mary's education. Did Laura ever get to keep any of her earnings?

They probably still had to pay for travel to and from the college, plus clothing and other living expenses...