Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 1980 Laura Ingalls Wilder: art vs. reality Mary Victoria Gach Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Gach, Mary Victoria, "Laura Ingalls Wilder: art vs. reality" (1980). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 16073. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/16073 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Art vs. reality by Mary Victoria Gach A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Major, English Signatures have been redacted for privacy Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 1980 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 CO&~ARISON OF ART AND REALITY 6 REASONS FOR DISCREPANCIES 21 CONCLUSION 35 NOTES 38 WORKS CONSULTED 43 1 INTRODUCTION From 1932 through 1943, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote a series of eight children's books. These recollections of her growing up on the American frontier of the 1870s and 1880s (called the "Little House" books) begin with her earliest remembrances of family life in Wisconsin in Little House in the Big Woods,l and continue through to her marriage at age 18 in These Happy Golden Years.2 The intervening books detail her family's moves to Indian Territory in Kansas; Walnut Grove, Minnesota; and De Smet, South-Dakota.