That single red tablecloth, the hope of bright geraniums in the windows, and the certainty that two volumes of poetry will be just the thing to make your home complete – it really is perfect. There’s no clutter. No stacks of junk. When you have few things to treasure, everything you own is of great worth. I’m sure as a child this wasn’t the reason I was drawn to these books, but as an adult, I continually come back to it. When Laura declares to Manly that, “I have always lived in little houses. I like them,” it resonates with me.
As I finished reading the last three books in the series this month – Little Town on the Prairie, These Happy Golden Years, and The First Four Years, I found that though these books are good, they are not nearly as enchanting as the first six books in the series.
As the spirited little girl grows into a teenager and adult, it’s as though bits of Laura become erased until there’s nothing but a faint outline of her. Some of this is the result of what happens when characters grow up, but the genre doesn’t. Veiled in Victorian modesty, Laura’s courtship with Manly was almost comically unromantic. The most passion to be found in their engagement is when Laura returns home with a ring on her finger and Ma says,” Sometimes I think it is the horses you care for, more than their master.” To which Laura replies, “I couldn’t have one without the other” and “Laura knew they understood what she was too shy to say.”
As I was reading, I was struck by the many similarities between these books and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne books. Montgomery has Tennyson, Wilder her folk songs, but they tell pretty much the same story of growth from girlhood to adulthood. While Montgomery writes with a humor that is utterly lacking in Wilder’s prose, Wilder takes the prize for realism. Want to know what happens when a twister hits your house or a freak snowstorm occurs when you’re out walking? It’s not pretty.
Though the writer’s methods vary, Anne and Laura essentially share the same fate as adult characters. Anne recedes into the background as the Anne series progresses and anecdotes of her plentiful offspring take center stage. Wilder tries to keep Laura at the forefront of the story, with rather disastrous results. The First Four Years was a bit of a shock. I kept asking myself, “what happened here?!” It wasn’t until I had finished reading it that I discovered that it was an unfinished draft, published long after Laura Ingalls Wilder’s death. Much like Harper Lee’s, Go Set a Watchman, one wonders if the publishing of this manuscript was a disservice to the legacy of the author.
What’s done is done though and the magic is almost quite gone in The First Four Years, which chronicles, at a rather brisk pace, Laura and Almanzo’s first four years of marriage. Strange incidents, like Mr. Boast offering to trade a horse for Laura and Almanzo’s baby, because they could have more children and his wife could have none, occur. Tragedy strikes over and over again - a burned down house, the loss of a baby, a crop that has failed three years in a row, and crushing debt. Gone are the days of music, laughter, star shine and violets. It’s as though Wilder is trying to prove that no matter how bright the flame of girlhood burns, there is nothing adulthood won’t bring your way that won’t attempt to extinguish it.
Both Montgomery and Wilder illustrate that when faced with the practicalities of married life, homes of their own, and babies, the dowdy, overworked housewife is waiting, just around the corner, to invade the optimistic girl of yore. Who has time to dream when there is a farm to take care of and children to bring up?
And, yet, I can’t see the adult Anne and Laura as failures of their childhood selves. I believe their success as characters rests not so much in what they became, as what they didn’t become. It is the absence of poor qualities that continues to distinguish them as valuable characters. For Anne, success meant not becoming a small-minded gossip and busybody. For Laura, success is avoiding mental breakdown and not becoming a wild, knife-wielding plainswoman (see book seven) that threatens to murder her husband in the night because he won’t take her back to civilization. Victory is not only being able to survive in a harsh environment, but also being able to see the beauty and poetry in it. Oh, and not killing your husband when he doggedly tells you there’s nowhere else for you to go. That is an accomplishment.
Anne retains her ability to dream and Laura retains her work ethic and pioneer spirit. These qualities enable Laura to not only survive, but also thrive in a harsh and unforgiving environment. In reading her story, I have felt my own “spirit rising for the struggle.”
