Little House series: book vs reality

[Mela99]

I loved those books so damn much. Interesting to hear the reality behind them. I might look up that Ghost in the Little House book.

The Duggars consider these appropriate, yes? I think I recall the girls saying they liked the "pioneer theme" from LHOTP books.

I don't think Laura ever kept much of what she made. I think she only worked to please her mother and help Mary.

[Witsec7]

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.

I just did a search to bookmark some Pioneer house episodes for a repeat view. I'd love more suggestions for video and film within this genre.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

I just did a search to bookmark some Pioneer house episodes for a repeat view. I'd love more suggestions for video and film within this genre.

I think there was another one called Texas Ranch House.

eta: Link: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ranchhouse/

[Wolfie]

I just did a search to bookmark some Pioneer house episodes for a repeat view. I'd love more suggestions for video and film within this genre.

There is 1900's house. Which is a city house.

I enjoy watching the shows, but most of the people they choose really don't understand what they are getting into, and they do try to get away with modern cheats. (like walking around in their underwear in I think it was Texas Ranch House, might have been Pioneer House, and buying modern shampoo in Victorian house.)

There also is one about life in England during WWII, I don't remember what it was called.

Edited to correct the title, and add another show.

[freejoytoo]

Have you guys seen the 1900 House? It's on youtube and about Victorian English life and it's not very glamorous.

[hapamama]

I don't think Laura ever kept much of what she made. I think she only worked to please her mother and help Mary.

I re-read The First Four Years this past week. If that book is to be trusted, she spent her last teaching check on a colt, which she then sold a few years later and bought sheep...

[pixydust]

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.

IIRC, a girl that Albert liked was raped in the woods on her way home from school by a man in mime make up. She ended up pregnant. Wasn't the mime actually her father (he wore the make up so she wouldn't know who he was), or am I totally mixing things up here? I might have 2 episodes mixed up here.

I never understood bringing Albert. Why not just expand Carrie in the show and make her more interesting, give her more shows, etc?

[Witsec7]

I just checked Heartland is available on YouTube in a series of segments. Google Heartland Conchetta Ferrell and it will bring up the intro by Rip and Conchetta.

I know what I'm doing tonight. I just started some pizza dough and I'm gonna dig into this movie again.

[WokChop]

IIRC, a girl that Albert liked was raped in the woods on her way home from school by a man in mime make up. She ended up pregnant. Wasn't the mime actually her father (he wore the make up so she wouldn't know who he was), or am I totally mixing things up here? I might have 2 episodes mixed up here.

I never understood bringing Albert. Why not just expand Carrie in the show and make her more interesting, give her more shows, etc?

The rapist was Irv Hartwig, the town blacksmith and he wore a mask! lol :oops: The father didn't rape Sylvia but, almost as bad, he blamed her for her rape. Ugh.

[WokChop]

Just when I think FJ can't get any more awesome, a Little House thread pops up! I am enjoying this discussion immensely and I want to thank everyone for the excellent book recommendations.

My fifth grade teacher used to tease me about always having my nose in a Little House book. Where were all of you back then, my kindred spirits? I would have loved to have friends like you!

I am also a junkie when it comes to the TV series but for different reasons; that show is f’d up on so many levels and I find it endlessly entertaining. I would also recommend checking out the TWoP LHOP thread if you want to laugh your ass off.

ETA: Gizmola, I, too, now kick myself for not having taken an interest in my grandmothers' (my grandfathers both died young :( ) growing-up stories. When I finally grew up enough to start appreciating their stories, I no longer had contact with one of my grandmothers and the other was in the throes of dementia. The latter had grown up as a farm girl and loved to share anecdotes. This grandmother also taught in one-room schoolhouses.

[Gizmola]

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.)

I was basing my statement on my limited knowledge of corsets - the ones I've seen seem to be geared toward producing an hourglass shape and I thought if I had some of that naturally then corsets would be less confining, etc. I've never tried one on. I just know that I have a very deep aversion to anything that feels even slightly confining. It's not about comfort of the item; it's feeling contained I would hate.

[freejoytoo]

No one else I knew ever read Little House but they aren't very big in Britain.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

The rapist was Irv Hartwig, the town blacksmith and he wore a mask! lol :oops:

Heh. Sounds like a Scooby Doo crossover episode...

[KatPruska]

They would have got away with it if it wasn't for that meddlin' Pa!

[freejoytoo]

Remember the one where Carrie shrinks to the size of a penny? I wonder what the writers were smoking (and where I can get some).

[Gizmola]

Heh. Sounds like a Scooby Doo crossover episode...

When I was a kid that episode messed me up. I was terrified for a long time that I was going to be raped and that I would die from it (I don't remember now why she died, only that she did. I assumed it had something to do with being raped). I know that her father blaming her really scared the hell out of me. My father was that type - that I was responsible for anything bad that happened to me - if I fell off my bike it was because I was going too fast and not paying attention. If I cut my finger it was because I was being careless. In my life nothing was ever a simple accident - there had to be a reason and the reason was usually some failure on my part. So I was pretty sure if a mime raped me in the woods my father would blame me. So I was terrified for a long time. I still get the heebie jeebies over that episode.

[Loveday]

Remember the one where Carrie shrinks to the size of a penny? I wonder what the writers were smoking (and where I can get some).

:shock: Please tell me you're making that up.

[freejoytoo]

I wish I was. In all its drug-induced glory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGtntYrlKkw

[WokChop]

Remember the one where Carrie shrinks to the size of a penny? I wonder what the writers were smoking (and where I can get some).

Is that the episode where no one wants Carrie around and so she goes off into the woods, where she repeatedly has narcoleptic-like bouts of unconsciousness, meets Alyssa, and sees gigantic strawberries and spiders?

It's really sad that Carrie is so pathetic and annoying that she has to pass out cold in the woods in order to find a [make-believe] friend? The only good thing about that episode is when Carrie sees Jack in "heaven." I loved Jack!

Now that I think about it, Carrie may have had other make-believe friends in the outhouse. She spent a lot of time there...

ETA: Yes, it was THAT episode!

[Markie]

I have loved reading through this thread. I was a Little House junkie, too. I read all the books and was anxious to catch each episode on Monday nights! I preferred the early shows, before the series became too preachy and the Ingalls had adopted every orphan in the mid west. I used to get annoyed by little things on the show -

Charles Ingalls would never have went to church with his shirt unbuttoned to his chest (in the early series, he wore a suit),

he didn't seem like the type of man who would cry as much as ML,

Laura was not as boy crazy in the books as she was portrayed on the show,

they had hay stacks - not bales,

Carrie hardly had any story lines and then when she was older to carry more story lines, they brought in Albert, Cassandra and brother?,

I am looking forward to checking out the links provided by so many of you.

[freejoytoo]

Why didn't they give Carrie a half decent storyline? I know she couldn't act but none of them could.

[stabbycat]

There is 1900's house. Which is a city house.

I enjoy watching the shows, but most of the people they choose really don't understand what they are getting into, and they do try to get away with modern cheats. (like walking around in their underwear in I think it was Texas Ranch House, might have been Pioneer House, and buying modern shampoo in Victorian house.)

There also is one about life in England during WWII, I don't remember what it was called.

Edited to correct the title, and add another show.

Frontier House was the one where they were walking around in their underwear. There was one family from California who whined all the time, and at one point the dad is like "I'm starving to death!" and a doctor examines him and says something like, "No, you were just overweight before." Then they did a Where Are They Now episode where the dad was was overly proud about being able to mow his grass by himself (with a riding lawn mower). There was also an Edwardian version of the show where the dad gets a little too into the rich patriarch role.

[Guest Anonymous]

I've been lurking for a while and just have to make a comment. My dad's family is from the Dakotas, settling there right after coming to the US in the 1860's. A lot of aspects of prairie life are still a part of our family culture, even though we have modern conveniences. Making butter, sewing and repairing clothes, recycling old clothes into rag rugs, and even our family recipes are very interesting because they don't say this ingredient is optional or that, but "use X, Y, or Z," on many lines because they didn't always have reliable access to any given ingredients. You made due with what you had. Cooking this way is still passed down in my family, and I learned from my grandma the way of cooking that seems a lot like it's made up as you go along, but it's improvising and knowing how because of knowing the recipes well. A lot of my family still has to tough out those frigid, deadly winters that aren't always that much easier now. Enough propane to heat the house is so expensive it takes my breath away, and wood heating is used a lot. My relatives are already stockpiling the fire wood because this is expected to be a really bad winter. A normal winter there is bad. A really bad winter is something you don't even want to know.

Because of my family ties to the prairie between the town of DeSmet up to Bismarck, I grew up with a different connection to the LH books that wasn't just like it was a fun series of books. There wasn't any getting away from what was between the lines.

A couple months ago at a moms' group these books came up. One of the moms started panning Charles and Caroline as awful racist people because he did the minstrel show and she didn't like the Native Americans, her words. I tried to explain to her that the 1860's-1870's wasn't like it is now where people had easy access to learning about other cultures. What they had was their experience and the experience of people they know and what rumors got to them, and if all you know is warring and killing, you're going to be scared. If there are peacemakers in the group, you're not going to know that, and when trying to find out can mean you are killed, you aren't going to be willing to go visit a tribe and learn for yourself if it's the truth. It's really easy to take for granted our access to information and safety. And for the minstrel show, for the time that was mild entertainment that didn't actually insult the black people. There were entertainments portraying them as stupid instead of as good dancers, and for a lot of minstrel shows, part of the fun was not knowing who each person was and trying to figure it out. It was easier to spare some grease paint than it was to spare extra fabric to make a mask for a one-time show.

For the time period, Charles was a progressive man. He wasn't in favor os slavery and defended the Indians when they were called savages, and when Caroline panned them later in the series, he reminded her how it was one of those savages, the word said with a tone of quote-unquote, that saved their likes in Indian Territory. Even for the time these books were written, with Civil Rights still decades away, these books were progressive.

Then she started in on them calling the Native Americans Indians instead of Native Americans. How dare the Ingallses call them Indians when that's not PC, and how dare the families settle in Indian Territory which shouldn't even be called that. Well at the time, what a lot of people thought is that fair deals of some sort were being worked out, not that the deal was get off the land or be killed off, and they were called Indians because that's what they were called when Columbus decided to take over the land, and was just a name. Savages was derogatory. Indian was no different than referring to the Swedish people or something. Cultures were only starting to cross, and so this was relevant. And people didn't get to learn so much. Knowledge breeds tolerance. Fear breeds intolerance. Getting knowledge was risky, and a lot of groups kept to themselves.

Another thing she got up in arms about was how mild the books are compared to real life. Well the books were written to be children's books and were plenty scary! Going into the realities of it all even more would have been more than many children would handle. Did Laura and Rose really have to write that the reason Ma wanted the girls to lock themselves in the room was so that the men wouldn't hold them down and rape them? Kids know strangers can hurt them. Kids know that the girls were going to where they were safe from strangers. Do kids need more detail? And when the Indians in the Territory invaded the little house while Charles was gone, do kids need to know they could have raped Caroline for it to be sufficiently scary? Isn't thinking the Indians could have killed and scalp then?

These books are an age-appropriate introduction to prairie life for kids.

I just have to add something to the disrespect for Charles running out on the debts. If you want to look down on him, then go find a family member or a friend who has filed bankruptcy because circumstances beyond their control made it so they either left their debts behind or paid their debts at the expense of their family having a place to live and food to eat. Bankruptcy and what Charles did are really the same thing. The debtor is left holding the bag when an honest person falls on hard times, only bankruptcy is official and through the court. Charles didn't run out on debts he accumulated from living beyond his means to buy fancy toys, expensive clothes, electronics, cars, and other things. He ran into debt to build the family a stable future that ended up not happening because he couldn't control the weather. It was a good risk that didn't work out. We encourage people to start small businesses today even if the idea is a bad one, and don't blame them if they fail and file bankruptcy and don't ever pay the bills. Why is Charles held to a different standard? Why is he the bad one not worthy of any respect over this?

He had "itchy feet" and should have settled sooner. But don't forget how in America in that time, there was so much more to explore, and it was easier to move along. Instead of gas, you fed your animals grass for free. Instead of hotels, sleeping on the ground or in your wagon was normal, and it was free. You ate what you hunted, free except for the bullets and powder, instead of paying for food at restaurants. A lot of the moving was to places they thought a better living could be made. A lot of families today move to where they think there's better work. When a family is on hard times, someone's going to suggest moving to another state where living is cheaper and there might be jobs. It's not like the Ingalls family left any home because they were bored of the landscape. It was to chase the dream of having plenty or of having plenty by making a lot of money. Charles being one of the founding men of DeSmet was luck of being in the right place at the right time, and when he wanted to leave, it was for the great dream of Oregon territory, but the move didn't happen when Caroline put her foot down. They were finally getting by all right, so there was no reason for it. But earlier on, when there was little or no chance of eking out a decent living and the cost of moving was nearly free, why stay where it's just not working?

They weren't proud of accepting help sending Mary to college because they were in a time where people worked 16 hours a day every day but Sunday, and taking help was the last case resort. It's not like today where if you work 40 hours, you're working hard enough, so there's no shame in taking aid so you can be off work for 16 hours a day with 2 days a week off. It's gone backward from what it was. You think waiting tables is hard? In those days, the woman waiting the tables did it all day and often cooked and cleaned dishes on top of it, and many also had to keep an eye on their kids. Waiting tables 8 hours is nothing for what they used to do. You did everything you could to pay for your family first, you worked until you could work no more and still couldn't pay. 16 hours a day of not working and 2 days off wasn't a right back then. Finishing chores by 6 was a luxury. Sunday was a luxury. I'd like to see a waitress from 2012 complain to a woman in 1872 that her feet are aching at the end of the day, and the woman from 1872 would lay on her a verbal smackdown of epic proportions. Our grandmothers in the 1930's and 1940's had it hard compared to today, but each compared to the 1870's, so look at how big of a jump the 1870's to now are. In the 1870's, people were expected to work so much harder than we can even fathom because most of us have never had to work half as hard and are expected to get aid before working so hard. When someone works 2 jobs, we see it as a travesty. But back then, people worked even harder than that, and it was normal and expected. So taking aid of any sort was felt like a personal failing.

When the books were written, the New Deal was something even a lot of poor people didn't want. They didn't want the government meddling and making it harder. A lot of people remembered the government not being there in the past. Why would they all want to give more money to the government and hope it would work out? It was an experiment, and one that could have failed instead of going well at the time. And as far as Laura and Rose and many others were concerned, they didn't have much, by by George they were still alive. They didn't have this idea that kids deserved Easter baskets for being kids, and they didn't have the idea that parents deserved to take a lot of time off every week, and any entertainment aside from what you could do for free in your living room was a luxury and not a right. If you got your family through alive, that meant you did okay enough. These days we see getting to go to movies and having cable TV and other things as rights, and we see relaxation and entertainment with a price as the sort of things we should all be willing to give money to make sure others can have. But back in those days, these things were motivation to work harder. People were more likely to accept help if they had a disabled family member, but for anything else, you were expected to supply that on your own. It's easier to judge them from a 21st world perspective, but you need to look at it how even the poor of the time saw it. Even the poor of the day were weary and a lot were against the New Deal. What the rich thought doesn't matter. The ones who could have received money do, and a lot of them didn't want it. So why would the poor have jumped on the chance of taking any sort of aid 0 years earlier?

If you want a series where families don't have to work more than 40 hours a week because they make enough working those hours or get aid so they don't have to work any more, and all the words and activities are PC by today's standards, then a book about a different time isn't for you. That one mom thinks the books should be edited, but trying to change what's written about history doesn't make what happened something different. And activities of the time can't be compared exactly to today. A minstrel show depicting dancing and singing and defending Indians was extremely progressive in a time only a few years past the time when blacks were owned like farm animals and could be raped and beaten to death. Think about the size of the leap that was.

[Guest Anonymous]

Why didn't they give Carrie a half decent storyline? I know she couldn't act but none of them could.

The show already had a large female fan base. A male center character was an attempt to draw in the male market.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

Does anyone know if you can watch 1900s house online? I've been enjoying stuff set in that time period lately.