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Exploring Identity Construction in Laura Ingalls Wilder’S “Pioneer Girl”

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Exploring Identity Construction in Laura Ingalls Wilder’S “Pioneer Girl” WOMAN WRITES HERSELF: EXPLORING IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN LAURA INGALLS WILDER’S “PIONEER GIRL” Nicole Lauren Mancino A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2010 Committee: Dr. Jonathan Chambers, Advisor Dr. Stephannie Gearhart Graduate Faculty Representative Dr. Lesa Lockford Dr. Ronald E. Shields © 2010 Nicole Mancino All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Dr. Jonathan Chambers, Advisor For scholars of Theatre, Performance, and Women’s Studies, the problem of discovering and resurrecting voices of those peoples who have been silenced, oppressed, and erased from traditional histories looms large. In particular, the force of a patriarchal culture, which privileges the masculine public and oppresses the feminine private, has proven a difficult negotiation for those who wish to rectify the historical imbalance. In this dissertation, I use Hélène Cixous’s concept of feminine writing as a method to explore the possibilities and connections between feminine writing and the female body, and to discover to what extent women have agency to construct who they are through writing, using Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Pioneer Girl” as my main primary source. While many scholars have focused attention on Wilder’s published “Little House” series, I center my study on her lesser-known, handwritten, unpublished, autobiographical manuscript. In an attempt to re-conceptualize what kinds of writing contain value, I examine how “Pioneer Girl” and a few other articles and personal letters are viewed in tandem with their “finished” counterparts. My three main chapters revolve around Wilder’s feminine identity, as connected to the process of writing her life and sense of Self in “Pioneer Girl”: Chapter 2 explores the social context and values of pioneerism and the American First Wave feminist movement as intertwined with the creation of Wilder’s subjectivity; Chapter 3 tracks the construction of “Laura” within the body of the text; and Chapter 4 concentrates on the identity of the text itself, viewing the process of its writing and audience as a performance. My work with Laura Ingalls Wilder and “Pioneer Girl” produces the author and text as exemplars of the notion that women who construct themselves outside of the strictures of iv andocentric culture is both possible and valuable. In placing different permutations of her work on an equal plane, I piece together a new framework of Wilder’s “body” of/as work. v This dissertation is dedicated to my sister, Rachel, and to all the pioneering women who came before me. When I speak, it is your voices that echo back to me. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS If there’s one thing I hope my dissertation advocates, its that identity does not exist in a vacuum. I am certainly no exception, and have many people to thank for who I am and what I’ve been able to accomplish (so far). I’d like to thank my parents – Maxine and Bill, and Ray and Stacey – for always caring about my health and happiness, and for being nothing but supportive when I announced I wanted to get a PhD in theatre. I feel lucky to have four people that love me as much as you do. To my sister, Rachel: I’m so happy I get to have you in my life. I hope one day we get to be roommates again. And to the rest of my family, nobody has ever had more people show up for a graduation or a performance, and I’ve always been so thankful for that. So…Aunt Beth, Uncle Emy, Aunt Ilene, Uncle Coleman, Joanna, Abby, Jenny, Isaac, Bubby, Zayda, Grandmom, Grandpop and all the extended members…you mean more to me than I can ever say. I’d like to thank the Revered Peter Donohue, for suggesting I apply to Bowling Green State University because he had gotten his doctorate in the Midwest. And to Michael Hollinger, Earl Bader, and Harriet Power, for encouraging me to continue my studies on the doctoral level. Here at Bowling Green, I honestly feel as though I not only have teachers, but mentors and friends as well. To Jonathan Chambers, thank you for your generosity, your instruction and your support. To the rest of my committee: Lesa Lockford, Ronald Shields, and Stephannie Gearhart; you have all gone out of your way for me over my time here, and I thank you for that. From all of you, I have learned not only how to be a better teacher and scholar, but also a better person. And to Sara Chambers, Scott Magelssen, Kimberly Coates, and Vikki Krane; thank you for your kindness, your teaching, and your yoga. vii Thank you so much to the Western Historical Manuscript Collection in Columbia, Missouri; and to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association in Mansfield, Missouri; for granting me the rights to transcribe and reproduce “Pioneer Girl” here. To all the people who granted me interviews everywhere from Kansas to Minnesota to Wisconsin to South Dakota: thank you so much for your generosity. Nobody that I asked to speak to turned me away, and everyone I spoke to not only gave me their time and attention and patience, but also showed me a kind, Midwestern spirit. Thank you to the people and organizations that run the Laura Ingalls Wilder homesites so that others may benefit and share in Wilder’s life. To my friends – thank you for allowing me to call you that despite the fact that I haven’t stopped studying since I was about six years old. Thank you to Kate, who always asserted that I needed to go to graduate school, and to Amanda for encouraging me to do dinner theatre with her. And to C.R., who always checks up on me and has always been a good friend. Thank you to Erika, who doesn’t mind when I accidently say that I love her, and to Gina for getting no sleep and coming to visit, and doing academic presentations that contain children’s dragon costumes. Thank you to my special Bowling Green Ladies: Hope, Vanessa, Season, and Heather. We have shared work, living space, sushi, karaoke, and salmon hats, and I love y’all for it. And thank you to my honorary Bowling Green Ladies: Mark, Lawrence, Rob, and Darin. To everyone else in the Department of Theatre and Film and in the Women’s Studies program: it’s been such a pleasure and an honor getting to know and work with you. To Tim. It takes a special kind of person to spend their summer vacation at multiple Laura Ingalls Wilder homesites when they aren’t super familiar with her works and aren’t writing their dissertation on her. Thank you for the love and support. Thank you for giving me a home. viii Thank you to my computer’s thesaurus for being there for me in my time of need, to Star Trek: The Next Generation for the entertainment when I needed a break, and to the city of New Orleans for the courage and perseverance and love. And, of course, to Laura and her family, thank you for being. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................... 1 Chapter Breakdown.................................................................................................... 2 Literature Review, Theoretical Frameworks and Methods ........................................ 7 Conclusions ................................................................................................................ 19 Laura Ingalls Wilder Biography ................................................................................. 20 Major Differences Between “Pioneer Girl” and the “Little House” Series ............... 23 Use of “Pioneer Girl” ................................................................................................. 24 CHAPTER II. COMING TO WRITING: CONTEXTUALIZING THE AUTHOR ............ 29 Pioneering Woman ..................................................................................................... 32 Charting the Construction of Feminism: The First Wave .......................................... 47 CHAPTER III. PUTTING HERSELF INTO THE TEXT: BECOMING “LAURA” .......... 62 First Impressions: I / Laura ....................................................................................... 68 Masculine Identification: Towards the Tomboy ........................................................ 76 Feminine Identification: Constructing the Young Lady............................................. 94 Transformations: Becoming Bess ............................................................................. 109 CHAPTER IV. BY HER OWN MOVEMENT: THE PROCESS OF WRITING AND THE BIRTH OF THE READER ........................................................................................ 120 Form and Function ..................................................................................................... 123 A Work in Progress .................................................................................................... 138 Constructing Subjectivity and Audience .................................................................... 146 Auto / Ethnography .................................................................................................... 162 x CHAPTER V. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................. 171 Little Pageants on the Prairie ..................................................................................... 173 Summaries and Conclusions ...................................................................................... 185 WORKS CITED ...…. ..............................................................................................................194 APPENDIX
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