The Real Story Of Laura Ingalls Wilder

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Heard On The Morning Show
Laura Ingalls Wilder's home near Pepin, Wisconsin
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home near Pepin, Wisconsin Emilia Eriksson (CC-BY-NC 2.0)

Thanks to a hugely popular series of books and a hit TV show, millions of fans around the world feel a personal connection with Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose autobiographical Little House series tells the story of a childhood spent on the American frontier. But how much of that story was fact, and how much of it was fiction? This hour, the author of a new Laura Ingalls Wilder biography digs into her life, from the plains of Kansas to her later days in the American south, where she wrote her classic series.

Featured in this Show

  • 'Little House' Books Offer Sense Of Security, Country's History Of Pioneering

    The stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder have gripped readers for generations, telling the story of a pioneer girl, the value of family and their trials and tribulations along the way.

    To put it simply — people love the books, says Caroline Fraser, editor of the Library of America edition of Wilder’s the “Little House” books. Fraser is also the author of, “Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.”

    “The books convey a real sense of safety and security, and people read them over and over again, but they’re also incredible stories of survival,” Fraser noted. “I think they also open a window on a lot of our history, frontier history … they tell us a lot about ourselves, and I think that that’s one of the things that keeps us coming back to them.”

    Ingalls Wilder, a Wisconsinite, was born in 1867 in Pepin County. The first book in the “Little House” series, “Little House in the Big Woods,” addresses her childhood in rural Wisconsin.

    For Fraser, reading the books as an adult offer a difference perspective than when she read them as a child. As an adult, she was able to pick up on things that might not be clear to a younger reader.

    “When you read the very first book, ‘Little House in the Big Woods,’ which takes place in the big woods of Wisconsin, you realize that the family experienced a level of security there that they wouldn’t find again, really ever,” she said. “It becomes clear, both in the life and in the work, that if they had stayed in Wisconsin, they probably would have been a little better off.”

    But, they didn’t. Instead, Ingalls Wilder’s father Charles embraced his restless streak, taking the family to Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa and ultimately the Dakota Territory.

    “Every place they went they would experience different adventures, but also different forms of privation and they were just never really able to establish the kind of security they might have had if they stayed in Wisconsin,” Fraser said.

    Beyond The Books

    In her book, Fraser offers context to the world Ingalls Wilder was living in beyond the “Little House” stories — a world marked with extreme levels of poverty.

    “It was incredibly difficult, what these farmers are doing,” Fraser said. “You see this again and again with Charles Ingalls. He faces issues with drought, with the locust plague of the 1870s, and just not being able to reliably bring in an income from the farm itself, so even though he’s famous as a homesteader … he wasn’t really able to hold on to the land for very long because he couldn’t make a living off of it. And when you look at the history, you see that that was actually quite common.”

    By the time Ingalls Wilder was 18, she had moved countless times. Fraser noted that the family encountered difficulties and disaster everywhere they went. But those struggles weren’t something Ingalls Wilder tended to address in her books. Instead, she gave a view of a secure family life, emphasizing the success of her father as a provider.

    The motivation for glossing over some of her more trying times wasn’t just out of self-preservation Fraser noted, saying that she was also trying to make the stories less scary for younger readers.

    “She also, at many times, felt that certain things were not appropriate for younger readers, but she definitely had this overarching goal to memorialize her parents in a way that emphasized their success,” Fraser said. “What we’re left with is this kind of warm sense of the family as a real bastion of homesteading and pioneered living that leaves out some of the darker chapters.”

    While the books were first published in the 1930s, interest continues to build.

    More information, such as financial documents, deeds, letters and manuscripts are becoming available, peaking readers interest. For Fraser, the more these items are studied, the more there is to learn about her life and why she’s important not just as a literary artist, but as a historical figure.

    “I think for women she represents a cultural figure and historical figure that has risen in some ways to the importance of our Founding Fathers in certain ways,” she noted. “Obviously, she was never a political figure, she wasn’t a president, she wasn’t a general, she didn’t act out her life on that stage, but for women, she embodies a whole period of history … and remains a real inspiration.”

Episode Credits

  • Kate Archer Kent Host
  • Chris Malina Producer
  • Caroline Fraser Guest
  • Michelle Johnson Technical Director

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