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Freedon and Control in Laura Ingalls Wilder's De Smet

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Freedon and Control in Laura Ingalls Wilder's De Smet University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 1989 Freedon and Control in Laura Ingalls Wilder's De Smet John E. Miller South Dakota State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Miller, John E., "Freedon and Control in Laura Ingalls Wilder's De Smet" (1989). Great Plains Quarterly. 538. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/538 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. FREEDOM AND CONTROL IN LAURA INGALLS WILDER'S DE SMET JOHN E. MILLER Faith in the future, the virtues of persistence a homestead in the West. "The hunting's good and hard work, the beneficence and occasional in the west, a man can get all the meat he destructiveness of nature, the centrality of fam­ wants," Charles cheerfully told his wife Caro­ ily, and the search for community are dominant line. 2 themes of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books for chil­ After four years in Dakota Territory, the wes­ dren; one more theme is freedom. 1 But this free­ tering urge had not diminished. Pa's wandering dom is never conceived of as absolute; rather, foot began to itch. "I would like to go West," it is subject to a variety of constraints-external he told Ma one day. "A fellow doesn't have and internal-that interact with it in uneasy room to breathe here any more." But she was tension. The Ingalls family moved west to Da­ having none of it. She had been willing to come kota Territory in 1879 because of Pa's quest for to De Smet, a town on the Chicago and North freedom from the constrictions hemming him Western Railroad in central Dakota Territory, in on the more settled frontier. Farther west, but intended to go no farther. "Oh, Charles!" he believed, people could exercise greater con­ she exclaimed. "I was so tired of being dragged trol over their lives and in so doing fulfill their from pillar to post, and I thought we were set­ destinies. People could make a decent living on tled here. "3 The parents' disagreement over the desirability of the settled life versus a continual push toward the edge of the frontier is one of the central tensions providing interest and con­ tinuity in the Little House series. Pa yearned for the freedom to be found over the horizon; A professor of history at South Dakota State Uni­ versity, John E. Miller has published articles on Ma sought it in settled surroundings. Pa, in agrarian radicalism and the book Governor Philip many ways, represented the typical frontiers­ F. LaFollette, the Wisconsin Progressives, and man-willful, self-sufficient, industrious, and the New Deal, (1982). He first became interested above all individualistic. Ma, on the other hand, in the Little House books by reading them to his reflected submissiveness, self-abnegation, and daughter. commitment to the larger whole. Yet, such di­ chotomies can never be neat or complete. Both [GPQ 9 (Winter 1989): 27·35] husband and wife desired freedom in their own 27 28 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 1989 ways, and both recognized the need for and contradicted. "It shows all the time. You're sought to establish the kind of control over their always perfectly patient and never the least lives and their surroundings that would enable bit mean."6 them to realize their dreams. 4 Laura closely resembled her father; her older Mary, because she was blind, understood that sister Mary resembled their mother. Laura, too, appearances deceive. Her own character was thrilled at the prospect of moving West. Think­ more complex than any broad brush strokes could ing of the Wessington Hills to the west and the adequately describe, and likewise every reality mysterious shadow they presented against the that might be adduced in De Smet carried within sky, she "wanted to travel on and on, over those it its own contradictions. Laura's and Pa's quest miles, and see what lay beyond the hills." Laura's for freedom cannot be considered the polar op­ discomfort at being thrown among so many peo­ posite of submission to control. Rather, we must ple when the family first moved to De Smet recognize that in the frontier milieu, freedom reminded her of a passage from the Bible about and control constituted interpenetrating-al­ the wings of a bird: "If she had had the wings beit contradictory-forces that simultaneously of a bird, she, too, would have spread them and pushed people in different directions. After all, flown, fast, fast, far away." Laura's birdlike de­ when Ma remonstrated to Pa, "I was so tired of sire to be free and independent manifested itself being dragged from pillar to post, and I thought in many ways. She loved horses and, though we were settled here," his response was, "Well, she was frightened a little at first, she enjoyed I guess we are, Caroline. Don't fret. It's just driving the young frisky colts out over the prai­ that my wandering foot gets to itching, I guess. "7 rie. Almanzo Wilder won her affections, in large He reconciled himself to staying put in De Smet, measure, because of the sleigh and buggy rides although the urge to move never completely he offered her. Sometimes it must have seemed left him. that she enjoyed the horses more than she did Laura understood just how her father felt, Almanzo. When storms blew up on the treeless, for she too accepted the need to sacrifice her unprotected prairie, Laura appreciated the safety own personal inclinations for the good of the of the cellar, but "she could hardly bear the family. Nothing appealed less to her than teach­ closed-in, underground feeling of it." Thus, ing school, but because she realized it was the when she insisted on leaving out of her wedding best and practically only way she could earn ceremony the traditional promise to love and money to help send Mary to college, she reluc­ obey Almanzo, she was playing out the role tantly did it. Laura responded to duty just as stamped indelibly by her character. 5 her father did: "He must stay in a settled country Laura admired her sister Mary but could not for the sake of them all, just as she must teach be like her. Mary's going blind only seemed to school again, though she did so hate to be shut accentuate the older girl's patience, self-con­ into a school room."8 trol, and underlying goodness. Writing her autobiographical novels fifty years later, Laura Ingalls Wilder clearly under­ "I wish I could be like you. But I guess I stood that the frontier environment entailed a never can be," Laura sighed. "I don't know web of duties and obligations for its inhabitants, how you can be so good." requirements that for most settlers heavily out­ "I'm not really," Mary told her. "I do try, weighed the kinds of freedom or independence but if you could see how rebellious and mean it facilitated. Efforts to establish control over I feel sometimes, if you could see what I really the environment, over economic conditions, am, inside, you wouldn't want to be like over social interactions, and over personal in­ me." clinations were central ingredients in every­ "I can see what you're like inside," Laura one's life. All of these impulses interconnected. LAURA INGALLS WILDER'S DE SMET 29 If we endeavor to understand the multitudinous The most obvious characteristic of the fron­ ways individuals attempted to establish control tiersman, in Turner's scheme, was individual­ over their lives, we may better understand the ism. Here was a supremely self-reliant character, frontier agricultural society that is the setting independent in thought and action, and pos­ for Wilder's novels. sessing unlimited confidence in the future. Self­ Wilder's books, though fictionalized for chil­ reliance and optimism constituted positive fea­ dren, have much to teach us about history. The tures of individualism; it also bred impatience sleuthing of scholars such as Rosa Ann Moore at restraint, suspicion of government, and rest­ and William T. Anderson has clearly demon­ lessness under authority. Civilization stifled strated how essential were Rose Wilder Lane's people. The T urnerian frontiersman opposed all editing skills to her mother's success. Without order and restraint, saw little need for education Laura's observational powers and ability of re­ and tradition. He retreated to the family unit, call, the books could not have been written at resulting in an atomistic society. 11 all, but without Rose's expert hand in shaping Turner was not the first to stress American the material, the stories would have remained individualism. During the 1830s Alexis de Toc­ obscure local tales that would fail to interest queville, individualism's classic explicator, New York publishing houses. In the process of helped to introduce the concept. "Individual­ collaboration, the stories acquired dramatic ism," he wrote, "is a calm and considered feel­ tension and literary embellishment. Rose forced ing which disposes each citizen to isolate himself Laura to tighten the structure of her books, from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into maintain consistency of tone, dramatize them, the circle of family and friends; with this little and fill them out.
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